I just bought Lifx WIFI bulbs and their Amazon Echo integration is great. They did not do it as a skill, so no awkward “Tell Rachio to do bla bla bla”. It is simply, “Alexa, turn on my bedroom lights”.
I would like, if possible, to simply say “Alexa, water my front yard for 10 mins” or “Alexa start zone 1 for 5 mins”.
Please please provide this new integration as the current Rachio skill for Amazon is not “insanely” great.
What would Steve Jobs say if he were to use this on Amazon Echo with Rachio in its current state? Just teasing.
Love Rachio. Love love it. Thank you for listening.
Thanks for the suggestion. We initially looked into this when implementing the skill, but it only supports the idea of things being on/off. This would work well for running a single zone for a fixed amount of time or running a schedule, however, you would be unable to run a zone for a custom amount of time or combine multiple zones into a group to be run (Rachio can can only run a single zone at a time at the moment).
We’ll add this to the things we’d like to improve on our Echo integration!
Thanks and I hope it can be done. Just to let you know, Amazon just added support for Ecobee thermostat that you can say directly “Alexa set Ecobee heat to 70 degrees”. Just saying…
Thanks for that tip; I hadn’t seen the notification yet in my app. I’ll reach out to them to see if we can get some special integration like Ecobee (other than just the Lighting API).
With a thermostat from ecobee, you can now manage the temperature in your home with just your voice and a simple set of commands. Raise or lower the temperature, or set a target temperature, just by asking.
To connect an ecobee thermostat to Alexa, you need to link the cloud-based service to Alexa. For more information, go to Connect a Smart Home Service to Alexa. Once you have linked and discovered your ecobee thermostat, just ask:
“Alexa, set my bedroom temperature to 65.”
"Alexa, increase the temperature in my home.”
For anyone who is curious I put a quick video together of the Echo working with my Rachio. I didn’t o too in depth and I also show how it works with LIFX bulbs. The Rachio part of the video is more towards the end.
Just teasing.