Bridge Amazon Echo to Vera, on github!

Aaron · December 26, 2015, 9:26pm

I googled many times/ways, could not find it… even Barry does not have it in his own sig on the ISY forum. But finally I found it…

http://www.the-gordons.net/homepage/DLF_AWS_Config.html

… install throws TONS of file conflict errors and such. And then it seems to be coded for specific network addresses - looks like we need to change the INI.

Stoltenberg · December 27, 2015, 2:44am

Looks like another echo update, I’ll need to test and see what changed.[/quote]

Have a new Echo, running software version 2723. I’ve been able to load both Version 0.2.1 of the echo bridge (hue emulator) as well as the 1.2.3 version of the HA-Bridge. I’ve been able to successfully create devices in both (much easier in the eco bridge than in HA since I don’t use a Harmony Hub). I’ve been able to successfully operate devices through my vera in both, but have had absolutely no luck in getting a brand new Echo to discover any devices using either bridge. This leads me to believe that it’s an issue with my Echo being unable to discover the devices. When I do a search, it prompts me to push a button on the Hue, this isn’t something that I’ve read about in the 80 some pages dealing with these bridges. Is this something new from Amazon?

integlikewhoa · December 27, 2015, 6:27am

My existing devices are still working but when i run the echo descover in the phone app it doesn’t find any new devices and it say my old devices are “Offline” but they work.

I also can no longer get my harmony hub to discover the hue bridge and that stopped working all together.

Any changes made that could cause both to atop discovering?

nkeller1 · December 27, 2015, 10:17pm

All, i have been reading and can’t figure out what is going on with my setup. i followed the below instructions and got to the configurator and am able to add items but when i test them it provides me a time out page. I have verified the IP address of the vera controller by its mac address and IP. i can ping it but no go. I also can log into another system and look at the http://192.168.1.XXX:8080/api/devices and see that the configurator as added the code. But again no go and the echo will not find any devices? any help would be greatly appreciated. Its amazing all the work you all have done. Thanks in advance.

Install Java 8
Download from here:https://github.com/armzilla/amazon-echo-ha-bridge/releases/download/v0.1.3/amazon-echo-bridge-0.1.3.jar
Create a folder called “echobridge” on the C drive
Put .jar file in “echobridge” folder
Create .bat file named “start.bat”
Type this into the bat file (Remember to change IP to your computer’s IP!):
java -jar -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true amazon-echo-bridge-0.1.3.jar --upnp.config.address=192.168.1.5
Double-click “start.bat”
Head over to http://192.168.1.5:8080/configurator.html
Enter your devices in. (Dimming support WORKS! See release notes on GIT)
Ask Echo to “Discover my devices”

lemrock · December 28, 2015, 2:19pm

[quote=“integlikewhoa, post:1123, topic:187039”]My existing devices are still working but when i run the echo discover in the phone app it doesn’t find any new devices and it say my old devices are “Offline” but they work.

I also can no longer get my harmony hub to discover the hue bridge and that stopped working all together.

Any changes made that could cause both to atop discovering?[/quote]

I’m having the exact results as integlikewhoa. The HA bridge is running just fine on ver 1.2.3 on RPI but Echo won’t discover any new devices and my old devices are offline in the phone and PC apps but they continue to work. I went back to older versions of the bridge that I knew Echo discovery worked fine and they too no longer work with Echo discover. I’m afraid to try deleting the bridge from Harmony Hue device discovery because I may lose the bridge and access to the offline devices. Any clue whats going on?

mrv777 · December 28, 2015, 2:31pm

Not sure if it would help at all, but I had to set this too: Dupnp.config.address before my echo would find my devices

Stoltenberg · December 28, 2015, 3:11pm

Can you expand on this for the non-technically inclined? Still trying to learn a lot of this.

big517 · December 28, 2015, 5:33pm

I too think something changed… I’m unable to discover new devices. Did a forget and now I cannot get anything back. Tried server 1.2.1 and 1.2.3. No luck whatsoever… Retried to learn new devices multiple times.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

mrv777 · December 28, 2015, 5:51pm

Can you expand on this for the non-technically inclined? Still trying to learn a lot of this.[/quote]

When you run the bridge, you can set some variables as described here: GitHub - bwssytems/ha-bridge: Home automation bridge that emulates a Philips Hue light system and can control other systems such as a Vera, Harmony Hub, Nest, MiLight bulbs or any other system that has an http/https/tcp/udp interface. This is a compact impl to run on small format computers. This is impl started from this project https://github.com/armzilla/amazon-echo-ha-bridge.

(I guess I should have noted too that I am using the ha-bridge)

crush157 · December 28, 2015, 7:08pm

So, I have been looking at the discovery from the Echo and it is working well.

The Caveat is that a few have pointed out (mrv777) is that you should use the -Dupnp.config.address parameter if you multiple interfaces showing up on your ha-bridge computer. To check and see if you have that right address, go to the ha-bridge web page and expand the bridge settings and see if the upnp.config.address is your well known ip address on your network. If it is not, the bridge is picking the first available interface and it is not the correct one. To be safe, adding the -Dupnp.config.address= is the best thing to do.

Thanks

Stoltenberg · December 28, 2015, 7:37pm

[quote=“crush157, post:1130, topic:187039”]So, I have been looking at the discovery from the Echo and it is working well.

The Caveat is that a few have pointed out (mrv777) is that you should use the -Dupnp.config.address parameter if you multiple interfaces showing up on your ha-bridge computer. To check and see if you have that right address, go to the ha-bridge web page and expand the bridge settings and see if the upnp.config.address is your well known ip address on your network. If it is not, the bridge is picking the first available interface and it is not the correct one. To be safe, adding the -Dupnp.config.address= is the best thing to do.

Thanks[/quote]

Will this work the same for the Bridge 0.2.1 or just the ha-bridge. Having some confusion over the differences between the two.

crush157 · December 28, 2015, 7:46pm

[quote=“KCArchitect, post:1131, topic:187039”][quote=“crush157, post:1130, topic:187039”]So, I have been looking at the discovery from the Echo and it is working well.

The Caveat is that a few have pointed out (mrv777) is that you should use the -Dupnp.config.address parameter if you multiple interfaces showing up on your ha-bridge computer. To check and see if you have that right address, go to the ha-bridge web page and expand the bridge settings and see if the upnp.config.address is your well known ip address on your network. If it is not, the bridge is picking the first available interface and it is not the correct one. To be safe, adding the -Dupnp.config.address= is the best thing to do.

Thanks[/quote]

Will this work the same for the Bridge 0.2.1 or just the ha-bridge. Having some confusion over the differences between the two.[/quote]

For that version of the bridge the --upnp.config.address= is required or it will not work at all unless your ip is 192.168.1.1 which is the default in the software …

integlikewhoa · December 28, 2015, 7:59pm

[quote=“crush157, post:1130, topic:187039”]So, I have been looking at the discovery from the Echo and it is working well.

The Caveat is that a few have pointed out (mrv777) is that you should use the -Dupnp.config.address parameter if you multiple interfaces showing up on your ha-bridge computer. To check and see if you have that right address, go to the ha-bridge web page and expand the bridge settings and see if the upnp.config.address is your well known ip address on your network. If it is not, the bridge is picking the first available interface and it is not the correct one. To be safe, adding the -Dupnp.config.address= is the best thing to do.

Thanks[/quote]

I have yet to test, but I think this is my problem. I have slimmed down on the run command and have removed the “-Dupnp.config.address=”. The reason I didn’t see this as a problem was because the instructions under “RUN” located on here GitHub - bwssytems/ha-bridge: Home automation bridge that emulates a Philips Hue light system and can control other systems such as a Vera, Harmony Hub, Nest, MiLight bulbs or any other system that has an http/https/tcp/udp interface. This is a compact impl to run on small format computers. This is impl started from this project https://github.com/armzilla/amazon-echo-ha-bridge. don’t show that info as being needed. I’m sure maybe for a few it’s not, but seems like most of us it is and MAYBE it should be included in that section of the instructions?

Anyhow I’ll test shortly and hope everything is back to normal.

Thanks!

integlikewhoa · December 28, 2015, 8:43pm

Well still not having any luck. Another thing I never got to work is my HARMONY Activities or devices TAB. In the Bridge UI both of those tabs are blank. Even tho I do have a Harmony hub and have the Hub IP set.

My bridge settings from UI are below if you see any problems. I only have one Harmony Bridge in the house.

I’m using the following startup

java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.212 -Dupnp.config.address=192.168.1.121 -Dharmony.address=192.168.1.116 -Dharmony.user=XXX@Gmail.com -Dharmony.pwd=XXX /usr/local/echobridge/ha-bridge-1.2.3.jar

My reserved IP’s;

VERA= 192.168.1.212
PI2= 192.168.1.121
HarmonyHub= 192.168.1.116

big517 · December 28, 2015, 11:42pm

Downgrade to 1.2.1. See f that works. Meanwhile i completely lost all devices and cannot find them still…

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

chhorton · December 29, 2015, 12:57am

This is a really long thread, so I apologize in advance for any seeming NOOBness in my question, but I’ve read (nearly) every post in the 76 page thread…

I have successfully implemented the java 0.2.1 bridge on a Raspberry Pi.

I can get to the configurator through the LAN, add scenes in the manner suggested by user “zendick” on page 9 of the thread and the excellent treatise by “hmspain” on page 22 of the thread. The scenes work as expected when I use the configurator buttons, indicating that the Pi and Vera are happy with one another.

I cannot however, get devices to work at this time using the URL generator.

What’s more important to me, since I have a lot of scenes that do just what I want them to, is that I cannot get the Echo to recognize the devices (scenes). I’ve tried “rebooting” the echo, and have disconnected my Hue bridge (I have 4 hue devices in addition to the ~30 z-wave devices controlled by Vera) prior to the reboot; have tried “forgetting” all the devices using the mobile app, etc… but the Echo will not recognize the device (scene) that I have set up in the Pi and can manipulate in the configurator.

Any ideas? I’m running out of choices at this point. Thanks for any thoughts/suggestions. I am very excited by the prospect of bringing voice control to my Vera universe.

CH

Stoltenberg · December 29, 2015, 1:10am

[quote=“crush157, post:1132, topic:187039”][quote=“KCArchitect, post:1131, topic:187039”][quote=“crush157, post:1130, topic:187039”]So, I have been looking at the discovery from the Echo and it is working well.

The Caveat is that a few have pointed out (mrv777) is that you should use the -Dupnp.config.address parameter if you multiple interfaces showing up on your ha-bridge computer. To check and see if you have that right address, go to the ha-bridge web page and expand the bridge settings and see if the upnp.config.address is your well known ip address on your network. If it is not, the bridge is picking the first available interface and it is not the correct one. To be safe, adding the -Dupnp.config.address= is the best thing to do.

Thanks[/quote]

Will this work the same for the Bridge 0.2.1 or just the ha-bridge. Having some confusion over the differences between the two.[/quote]

For that version of the bridge the --upnp.config.address= is required or it will not work at all unless your ip is 192.168.1.1 which is the default in the software …[/quote]

I’m running NOOBS rather than raspbian, that’s not a recognized command. Is there a different command line in NOOBS?

From my Command window I’m entering:

java -jar -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true /usr/local/echobridge/amazon-echo-bridge-0.1.3.jar --upnp.config.address=192.168.81.107

The IP Address of my PI is 192.168.81.107
The IP of my Vera Unit is 192.168.81.1

It appears to run ok, I can connect to the bridge and when using the test buttons can trigger the appropriate response from the switches, but My ECHO still doesn’t discover.

Aaron · December 29, 2015, 3:52am

No matter what I try Echo never detects any Vera devices even though HA-Bridge shows all my Vera devices.

Here’s the command I’m running…

#!/bin/sh nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.2.71 -Dserver.port=8099 -Dupnp.config.address=192.168.2.50 -Dupnp.response.port=50099 -Dupnp.device.db=/volume1/@appstore/HAbridge/devices.db /volume1/@appstore/HAbridge/HAbridge.jar 2>&1 | tee /volume1/@appstore/HAbridge/HAbridge.log & exit 0

integlikewhoa · December 29, 2015, 4:35am

I’m thinking all these problems are something new, as I never had this problem before.

lemrock · December 29, 2015, 5:01am

[quote=“crush157, post:1130, topic:187039”]So, I have been looking at the discovery from the Echo and it is working well.

The Caveat is that a few have pointed out (mrv777) is that you should use the -Dupnp.config.address parameter if you multiple interfaces showing up on your ha-bridge computer. To check and see if you have that right address, go to the ha-bridge web page and expand the bridge settings and see if the upnp.config.address is your well known ip address on your network. If it is not, the bridge is picking the first available interface and it is not the correct one. To be safe, adding the -Dupnp.config.address= is the best thing to do.

Thanks[/quote]
I have had the -Dupnp.config.address parameter set all this time and it shows up correctly when I expand the Bridge settings. I have done nothing wrong in how the bridge is setup because it has been working very well. Several of us are experiencing the same Echo discovery issue thing all of a sudden and that can’t be odd. Something has changed somewhere.