extending the smart home skill
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One limitation I soon hit is that the smart home predefined language model of alexa only supports: on, off a number, a percentage or a colour.
reading the skill docs I see modes are supported, ie one of a set of named values. This or similar use of custom words in utterances would be really useful in my application. You can also provide alias for words like set.
It would be great if the commands file had a field where you provide list of words and the allowable values for each. Or other lists of words for the controls that support them.
The spoken option could be passed as an argument to the command field. I guess it would need to be encoded as a name,value pair.
Just an idea.
https://developer.amazon.com/en-GB/docs/alexa/device-apis/alexa-modecontroller.html#utterances
https://developer.amazon.com/en-GB/docs/alexa/device-apis/alexa-rangecontroller.html
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@Steve-Lee, it might work. I'll need some time to read about it and test it. Thanks again for the suggestion.
EDIT: I read through the Mode and Range controller docs. Neither one allows arbitrary lists of words. At this point I'm using PowerController, BrightnessController, and ColorController so you can pass on, off, a number from 0 to 100, or a color to your command as a parameter.
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@Russ Oh, I must have misunderstood, they seemed to in the articles I linked. Oh well, shame and very limiting to skill creators. may words get pick on my Alexa for other purposes - eg play - so it's hard.
