Just a heads up that SmartThings announced that they will be shutting down the existing implementation of Echo Speaks within their platform.
Echo Speaks has been a popular integration with the SharpTools community – frequently used to build beautiful dashboards with album art and interesting rules – so we wanted to make sure the community was aware of the changes.
He has indicated that the functionality in the lite version will be reduced and will require a new installation. At this point, it’s unclear what functionality will be included in the initial release, but initial indications point to the core ‘speech’ features as a primary focus.
As such, I would expect that your dashboards which display album art and playback status will stop working and likely won’t be available in the initial ‘lite’ release. More broadly speaking, anything using the existing Echo Speaks integration will stop working and we’ll have to wait to see what tonesto7 includes in the new version.
I look forward to whatever features we get as tonesto7 has been a big asset to our community. Waiting on SmartThings Dev teams to provide a native solution may be a forever wait. This migration has been upsetting to many and as a retired IT person i understand the need to change to faster and newer platforms but offer a solution and not just a headache. I have been using SmartThings since the inception offer and really love it but that love is quickly fading into the sunset.
I picked up a Hubitat hub to play with. It looks like it runs Echo Speaks, so I might transition that over depending on what tonesto7 comes up with for the lite version.
OH well that’s bright. So anybody that they haven’t yet managed to piss off thru lost functionality or a botched migration, start chipping away at those folks existing beloved functionality which did manage to successfully translate. The platform name is beginning to become ironic.
I feel your frustration and I’m glad to see that many of you have been sharing your feedback directly with the SmartThings team so they are aware of what’s important to the community.
The SmartThings community has some brilliant developers, so I’m hopeful that Anthony (Echo Speaks Developer) can come up with something creative in the ‘lite’ version.
My gut feeling is that the initial Echo Speaks Lite release will be primarily focused on the ‘speaking’ side of things and will likely drop some of the status/album art stuff. But I’m hopeful that he’ll at least get a good base implementation in place that the community can help build on and fill back out.
I’m just gonna port entirely over to Home Assistant. When a product begins showing multiple signs of regress, whereas a user needs to be creative and build workarounds (sometimes entirely rethinking their setup) just to regain or recreate functionality and features they have already enjoyed in full, it’s tedious, disillusioning and (with multiple instances of it) fairly indicative as to where the future roadmap’s priorities lie. Or where they don’t rather. The joy and passion for it have been dampened for me. It’s like a bad relationship … time to move on. Smart things, dumb decisions.
I have been on the Smart Things platform for two years and loved it. It wasn’t until this week that I discovered addons like Sharp Tools and Echo Speaks. Yesterday I spent several hours digging into Echo Speaks attempting to set it up but never finished. I just happened upon this forum to learn that the version I started installing is ending soon. Well, that’s a life saver – I’ll just put this project on the back burner until the new release is announced. Thank you Josh for sharing.
I just noticed my syncronization of Amazon Guard and Smartthings Smart Home Monitor went offline, probably because Echo Speaks is no longer being supported on Smartthings. … ROYAL BUMMER … Is there an update to Echo Speaks or an alternative to get my Smartthings Smart Home Monitor to sync with my Amazon Guard?
I am also noticing my Echo devices are losing connectivity on my Smartthings Dashboard.
One last thing, I noticed that commands from Sharptools are not longer causing my Echo devices to do anything, probably because Echo Speaks was the link that got the 2 to work together.
From the SmartThings community… it looks like the original author had other things come up and wasn’t able to get a ‘lite’ version released before the cutoff. He mentioned that’s he’s still committed to getting a lite version out and is targeting the end of the week.
I’ve been experimenting with an Alexa skill and combined web service called “Voice Monkey” that allows requesting an Echo to say something via a webhook, with the phrase to say as one of the arguments. This accomplishes most of what I was using Echo Speaks for, although it can’t do things like guard control.
Is there a way to call a webhook / REST api from within the rules engine?
Kinda Quirky but it works… If you have simulated switches or even real devices you want to trigger voice monkey, you can also use the Make Web Requst feature of WebCore to do it.