Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel
That's in line with my own experiences. Alexa responds much better to "Alexa, would you turn the upstairs lights on, please?" than "Alexa - Upstairs Lights ON". The second will usually work, but less reliably than the first.
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The article make a bit of sense, but Alexa can get really specific on the formats you must use for things like routines, scenes, and skills. It gets even more complex if you use 3rd party skills that don't necessarily follow the rules. Alexa can in fact be very anal about how you ask her to run a routine. She might not be as strict as a command line operating system, but she can get rather close to that sometimes. Then add to that the fact that routines can only be turned ON, never OFF. So for example, a routine to turn ON lights in the night for a trip to the bathroom will only turn them ON. You have to create a separate routine to turn the lights back OFF. You can say, "Alexa, [routine name to turn on
bathroom room lights] ON." She might or might not respond, but probably will sooner or later. But you can never say, "Alexa, [routine name to turn ON
bathroom room lights] OFF" and expect anything to happen. Instead you have to say, "Alexa, [routine name to turn OFF
bathroom room lights]". And there are many unwritten rules about having names for scenes and routines that are too similar in Amazon's opinion. So in my opinion, merely being nice to Alexa and talking to her like she is human might help a little bit, but until the Amazon developers learn how to write much better and more logical code, don't expect her to be more than a moron.