Improving Alexa Integration

[ChicagoAndy]

A few items that would help improve the Alexa integration.

1. Allow creation of a named ‘Group’ of zones. I could combine my 5 backyard zones into one ‘Backyard’.
   e.g. : ‘Alexa, water the back yard for 5 minutes’ will water all backyard zones.

2. Enable a default watering time for each zone & group.
   e.g. ‘Alexa, water the back yard’.

3. Allow multiple aliases for zones & groups. I would set this new group Backyard to have an alias ‘behind the house’.
   e.g. “Alexa, water behind the house”, & “Alexa, water out back”, & “Alexa, water the back yard” could all do the same thing.

4. Work with Amazon on getting rid of “Tell Rachio to…”. Yeah, I know this one is a long-shot.

[benblackmer]

Thanks @ChicagoAndy.

@tburch, thoughts on these?

[tburch]

Thanks @ChicagoAndy. #1, #3, and #4 are all kind of related and we’ve already talked to Amazon about them (mainly around getting our skill into the Connected Home section which mostly solves those items).

I think at one point I had #2 in our skill and was asked (by Amazon) to remove it because it was “confusing”.

-Tristan

[ChicagoAndy]

ation of a named ‘Group’ of zones. I could combine my 5 backyard zones into one ‘Backyard’.e.g. : ‘Alexa, water the back yard for 5 minutes’ will water all backyard zones.
Enable a default watering time for each zone & group.e.g. ‘Alexa, water the back yard’

I think on #2 you could implement it in the Rachio zone configuration rather than the skill. Make it an optional parameter in the skill.

Thanks for the reply, good to know there’s more coming.