Time for revised and new Alexa commands - suggestion

It's about time to create new commands for Alexa when it comes to shades and lighting zones. The commands "raise" and "lower" should be added to the library. Also, it's about time to include toggle commands like "turn on/off" lights, and go beyond only being able to activate scenes. As you all know, Home Owner keypads can only include toggle actions, not scenes, so in order to be able to get full potential of Alexa the RA2 programmer is required to create fake keypads with scenes. Fake keypads generate errors during Transfer.

Hello Dimerize,
Thank you for your post.
I will ensure your feedback gets to the appropriate teams for review.

"Open" and "Close" would also be critical for shading (draperies). Could you please pass this along to the appropriate teams?

We need Lutron to urgently take action on the integration with Alexa, it's been almost a year now that my clients complain about the louzy integration for shades. It's impossible to raise or lower a shade without sending weird repeated commands to Alexa, such as "Alexa, turn on Master Bedroom shade", that doesn't mean anything in verbal language, it's a code. They need to repeat that three times for a shade to lower... Clients notice this type of shortfalls...

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Originally Posted by Dimerize

... Clients notice these type of shortfalls...

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Agreed. Given this is NOT a customer-wire solution, but something ENTIRELY up in the cloud, this should be a no-brainer for Lutron to make a priority. Only one set of code to implement and test, that runs against only one set of server hardware.

Blair S - Could you please confirm that all of the above feedback is shared with the appropriate product manager?

I was just wondering about this too. Still no support for toggle or individual devices is crazy.

lack of improvement in wording is also suprising too.

Alexa turn on All (silent mutter "off")

Being new to Caseta and Alexa (and HomeKit) I find it hard to make sense when telling Alexa to do scene things. I have a Goodnight, Leaving Home and other scenes. Its not a natural voice cadence of sorts saying 'Alexa, turn on Goodnight'. You need to permit the work 'set' to the command library. Much more natural 'Alexa, set Leaving Home'.

Hi Lutron contributors,

Could we please get an update on whether the requests in this thread have been shared with the appropriate parties and whether there is any feedback that can be shared with us?

Thanks

Hey Guys, keep in mind that Lutron has only half, or less, of this equation. Alexa has to understand those actions and button models for it to work.

Lutron already supports all the actions you are asking for. Amazon needs to update Alexa for the logic of home control in the real world.

Team Lutron, are you making any headway on this? Anything new showing at CEDIA that improves it?

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Originally Posted by Lukeetal

I was just wondering about this too. Still no support for toggle or individual devices is crazy.

lack of improvement in wording is also suprising too.

Alexa turn on All (silent mutter "off")

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I completely agree the Alexa-RR2 command set is lacking. BUT, it is possible to make rooms, floors, or areas of your home (not individual devices) controllable via "on" and "off" commands. You just need to create a virtual button that controls the set of lights and make sure the button is set as a toggle. You then expose this virtual button to Alexa with a custom name like "Kitchen lights" or "outside lights" Then "Alexa, turn on kitchen lights" will work as desired, and "turn off kitchen lights" will as well.

I set up a number of these virtual buttons with every possible set of lights i might ever want to control, so that Alexa will properly do "Alexa, turn off everything", "Alexa, turn on upstairs lights", "Alexa, turn off outside lights"... all work fine. So you should NOT have to do "Alexa, turn on All Off". You just haven't set your programming and your Connect App settings properly.

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Originally Posted by joshg

I completely agree the Alexa-RR2 command set is lacking. BUT, it is possible to make rooms, floors, or areas of your home (not individual devices) controllable via "on" and "off" commands. You just need to create a virtual button that controls the set of lights and make sure the button is set as a toggle. You then expose this virtual button to Alexa with a custom name like "Kitchen lights" or "outside lights" Then "Alexa, turn on kitchen lights" will work as desired, and "turn off kitchen lights" will as well.

I set up a number of these virtual buttons with every possible set of lights i might ever want to control, so that Alexa will properly do "Alexa, turn off everything", "Alexa, turn on upstairs lights", "Alexa, turn off outside lights"... all work fine. So you should NOT have to do "Alexa, turn on All Off". You just haven't set your programming and your Connect App settings properly.

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That particular method/workaround is reasonably well understood and well documented in other threads in this forum. (Perhaps Lukeetal wasn't aware, hence his example, but I think it's how just about everyone got Alexa working.)

But it does not address the original 3 or 4 posts in this thread. As you have also said, more commands are needed. Not clear whether it requires work from Lutron or Amazon or both. But Lutron is our point of contact regardless and it's very frustrating that there hasn't been any feedback from them on this.

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Originally Posted by joshg

You just haven't set your programming and your Connect App settings properly.

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Thank you for the tip. I am not sure if I missed that keypad toggles could be included or if this was added to the Alexa skill after initially added Alexa to my system.

However, I would call this a work around, not incomplete or improper programming on the part of the installer.

Siri integration picks up all loads (dimmers, switches, shades) but can see scenes.
Alexa integration can only see scenes and toggle keypad buttons.

I do not think an installer should not need to create virtual buttons for every load just for Alexa. Yes, I know I can create a ton of tabletop virtual keypads so the system can stay under the 200 device limit but it gets really sloppy in the app with pages and pages of virtual buttons.

So when you price out a system and they don’t have plans to use Alexa integration do you program all these virtual buttons any way? Or if you don’t and they call you back because they got an echo dot for $50 do you then tell them you need to charge them X hours of programming to support Alexa device toggles?

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Originally Posted by pscheetz

Anything new showing at CEDIA that improves it?

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And after CEDIA, yet no improvements on Alexa. However Lutron "proudly" releases a semi-RA2 platform called "Select" that nobody understands and that looks like the Premium Economy of American Airlines (which nobody understands either). We need innovation, not short-cuts or patches.

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Originally Posted by pscheetz

And after CEDIA, yet no improvements on Alexa. However Lutron "proudly" releases a semi-RA2 platform called "Select" that nobody understands and that looks like the Premium Economy of American Airlines (which nobody understands either). We need innovation, not short-cuts or patches.

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This. Is management THAT tone deaf that they don't get it?

As you all know Caséta (and I believe Select now too) has a much better integration with Alexa than the powerful RadioRA2 system w/ Connect Bridge. For example, with Caséta you can say "Alexa, dim kitchen lights to x%", with RA2 you cannot.
Today a Lutron rep told me that if you upgrade the RA2 Main Repeater to 11.6.0, you will be able to control individual rooms and lights with Alexa. Whether that's the case, I cannot find any documentation on the new list of commands. Is anyone aware of this? Apparently it was announced during CEDIA...?

I don't see any evidence of that, but maybe I'm not looking in the right place.