After having integrated as many devices in my home automation system as a home can possibly handle, I started a quest for the perfect Human-Home Interface. I have been looking for ways to easily display or communicate status messages to the user and to allow an intuitive control of the system in every situation and location in the home. Interactions with the system have to seem as natural as possible without having to move close to the device or touch it.

Below are some examples of my experiments with gesture and speech based controls. I have ordered 2 new innovative control devices which I will integrate and test very soon...


The Myo armband is a wearable gesture control and motion control device. I got an early version of it when it was still in its initial crowd funding stage. It has since developed into a very mature product,

The Myo data can retrieved by IP-Symcon or any other customizable Home Automation system with the Myo WebSocket interface. The system can receive data about movements and gestures and can then trigger dedicated scripts.

In this demonstration, spreading the fingers triggers a script that switches a lamp connected to a Homematic switch. Rotating the arm then in turn triggers a script that switches a Neopixels LED strip connected to an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi controlled from a web interface.




For this Amazon Echo IP-Symcon interface, I created a Custom skill for the Echo based on the instructions provided by axelroro in the IP-Symcon Forum.

Although it would be better to implement a Smart Home Skill instead of a Custom Skill to avoid having to speak out an invocation name ("Jarvis" in the Video), Custom Skills are easier to set up and support any type of command. Smart Home Skills are currently limited to switching and temperature control commands.

I am using the skill mainly to switch devices but also to request status information about the house (temperatures, indoor pollution, doors and windows status,...) or the monitoring devices.




The release of new display-enabled Echo devices by Amazon opens the way for easier and new interaction possibilities with home automation systems.

An issue I am often confronted with when speaking to the classic Echo is remembering the correct wording of requests. The time to think about it and trying to remember the exact phrasing and Alexa either ends the session or asks you to repeat, leading to precious time lost.

The new devices bring the ability to add simple visual cards or lists bases on a few templates to the response of the device. For home automation, this feature provides the possibility to display a list of status variables, pictures of graphs or even videos for example of recordings from an alarm triggered in your absence, provided these media contents are stored and accessible online somewhere.

I found it quite useful to return a list of additional available requests with a response so you don't have to remember the exact phrasing. It requires you to be in front of the device to be able to read the display. But I am never far from it even with the classical Echo as I don't like shouting across the room. The items from the list can be selected directly on the touchscreen of the Echo Show to get more detailed reports. These reports can also be requested by speech from Alexa using the keywords from the list. The display then provides a nice way to remind the wording of the requests.

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