I've created a home automation system that controls my 3 heating zones, hot water, some lights, green house watering etc. It's a python back end, apache/web front end etc.
I've been doing some alexa integration, it's going great and all working, but a little inefficient. I've used Flask-ask on the back end raspberry pi.
At the moment each device/zone has a zone number and it can be boosted for a specific number of minutes at a specific temperature (if it's a heating zone)
The dialogue is along the lines of: (my invocation name is "control") check out www.totalcontrol9000.co.uk if you're interested....i've only got one in my house and a friends got one.
Me: "Alexa, ask control"
Alexa: "Welcome, you can boost a zone, cancel a boost or request the current temperature."
me: "please boost zone 3 for 30 minutes at 21 degrees."
Alexa: "You've requested to boost the main living area zone for 30 minutes at 21 degrees, is that correct?"
me : "Yes" Alexa : "your boost is activated, good bye."
So this all works fine...but it's quite wordy and i need to remember the zone numbers. I could trim down the words, but i actually wanted to set up some standard/preset boost commands.
For instance, when i get in from work and its cold in the house, I always just boost for an hour on zone 1 at 20 degrees....
My question is, how can i set up a new intent that passes default slot values....such as:
Me: "Alexa - ask control." Alexa: "Welcome......" Me : "It's cold" (this is the new intent that calls the same function in my code as the full boost command above) Alexa : "You've requested to boost the main living area zone for 60 mintutes at 20 degrees, is that correct?"
I can find no way to set default slot values in an utterance. (intent = "Cold", zone slot =1, temp slot = 20, duration slot = 60)
I could code up a new function on the back end, but i would prefer to be able to create new features that feed into an existing function in the code directly from the alexa end, then i'd have far more flexibility. i could just say "water green house", "i need hot water", "it too dark in the garden" etc to boost various zones for various periods.
many thanks for any info.
G
