Alexa Echo and Big Timer Alexa control of 433MHz switches...

And finally, I added the capability to control one of the switches from Alexa Echo. Easy...

  • Add an Alexa Local node, discoverable on the local network by Echo; this is only capable of on/off and %age signals, but that's enough
  • Connect it to a simple Function node that converts the input to the right form for the TriState Control node 
  • Route it via an Output Link node to the Tristate Flow
Alexa and Big Timer flows for switch control
The screenshot above shows the appropriate flow. Because Alexa Local can't distinguish which switch you're addressing and supply the right code/channel values, they have to be added. This actually works, much to my extreme and highly pleased surprised. The twins think it's pretty cool too, especially as they're already agog at the whole Echo thing.

You can also see a Big Timer (a Scargill-provided timer function) linked up to send timed control messages to the same switch. This hasn't been so successful yet, but that's probably due to my own indecision - basically I have to decide how I'm going to interface it to the TriState Control node - it has a "state" variable already, which is unfortunately set to "auto" when it's in automatic mode, and that confuses the other node. Otherwise, it's pretty cool, and includes a "dusk/dawn" timing point feature, configured by lat/lon, that is just what one needs for security lights and so on.

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