bbtinkerer

Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, you are correct the schematic and layout has a typo and incorrectly specified in Step 8. I will make the corrections as soon as possible.

My advice would be to first check the IR LED portion of the project by swapping out the IR LED with a plain red/green whatever is within reach LED and adjust the current limiting resistor accordingly so you don't burn out the LED. Remove the receiver portion so you just concentrate on the LED portion. Execute the irsend commands with a working remote configuration file that you can get from the LIRC repo. If no errors show in the terminal, you should see the LED light up. Another thing you could try is measure the voltage at the GPIO, should be 0V. Then execute irsend with SEND_START so that GPIO pin is continuously pulsed, check the voltage again to make sure not 0V.

Could be either Alexa Skill not communicating with the Lambda function or the Lambda function is sending back an incorrect response.In AWS, open a window to the Cloudwatch service. Go to the Logs sections and you should see a log group for your lambda function. Click on your Lambda's log group. I would clear all log streams to not get confused with old stuff for now. Perform the discovery and wait a minute or so and keep refreshing the log group. You should see a stream appear. If no stream appears after several minutes, then there is a configuration error connecting the Lambda with the Alexa Skill. If a stream appears, click on the stream to check what was sent by Alexa and what was sent back from the Lambda function. I just realized I forgot to stringify the response so the cloudwatch l…

Could be either Alexa Skill not communicating with the Lambda function or the Lambda function is sending back an incorrect response.In AWS, open a window to the Cloudwatch service. Go to the Logs sections and you should see a log group for your lambda function. Click on your Lambda's log group. I would clear all log streams to not get confused with old stuff for now. Perform the discovery and wait a minute or so and keep refreshing the log group. You should see a stream appear. If no stream appears after several minutes, then there is a configuration error connecting the Lambda with the Alexa Skill. If a stream appears, click on the stream to check what was sent by Alexa and what was sent back from the Lambda function. I just realized I forgot to stringify the response so the cloudwatch log doesn't show what was sent back to Alexa. You could either change line 42 of index.js for the Lambda function to console.log( JSON.stringify(response)); or setup the test events for an Alexa Discovery event (there is a sample in the AlexaLirc project's awsLambaSrc/testEvents folder that you can copy and paste into the test event then run the test and the response will be displayed in that green execution results at the top.Double check the response from the Lambda function is correct. The problem I came across while creating the project was sending back an incorrect response. https://developer.amazon.com/docs/device-apis/alexa-discovery.html#discoverresponse has an example of what a response could look like.Hope that helps.

Sorry for the late reply. You will have to add a new device for your A/V receiver in the MyDevices.js for the Lambda function. I did a quick outline in a comment above this one on how to do it. I'll get more detailed instructions in the project readme when I get the chance.The input part is the not so great part. Since our devices are not smart, we can't go directly to the input, we would have to utter the input command till the device changes to correct input, basically we are just mimicking pressing the input button. This is a pain to do. Well, assuming there is just that one input button you press to cycle through the inputs.If there are IR codes that could go direct to the input of choice, would need to update the Lambda code to publish the input name and update the AlexaLirc applicat…

Sorry for the late reply. You will have to add a new device for your A/V receiver in the MyDevices.js for the Lambda function. I did a quick outline in a comment above this one on how to do it. I'll get more detailed instructions in the project readme when I get the chance.The input part is the not so great part. Since our devices are not smart, we can't go directly to the input, we would have to utter the input command till the device changes to correct input, basically we are just mimicking pressing the input button. This is a pain to do. Well, assuming there is just that one input button you press to cycle through the inputs.If there are IR codes that could go direct to the input of choice, would need to update the Lambda code to publish the input name and update the AlexaLirc application to map that input name to the correct IR Code/key/button. This sounds like a feature that I should and will probably work on in the future.

Thank you. I totally forgot to add that in the project's readme. I will add it to the readme in more detail when I get the chance, but I can try to give a quick overview here.Create a new array that contains the AlexaInterfaces you want the device to have (eg. lines 13-18). The interfaces I coded for are in AlexaInterfacesUtil.js.Create a new Endpoint, for the capabilities parameter, choose from https://developer.amazon.com/docs/device-apis/alexa-discovery.html#display-categories (eg. lines 20-27)Then add the endpoint to DevicesUtil (eg. line 52)The friendlyName parameter is what you refer to when talking to alexa. So default setup is 'Television' and 'Cable'. I added a third one for my second tv and gave it a friendlyName of 'Samsung'. Just be aware on naming as Alexa doesn't always get …

Thank you. I totally forgot to add that in the project's readme. I will add it to the readme in more detail when I get the chance, but I can try to give a quick overview here.Create a new array that contains the AlexaInterfaces you want the device to have (eg. lines 13-18). The interfaces I coded for are in AlexaInterfacesUtil.js.Create a new Endpoint, for the capabilities parameter, choose from https://developer.amazon.com/docs/device-apis/alexa-discovery.html#display-categories (eg. lines 20-27)Then add the endpoint to DevicesUtil (eg. line 52)The friendlyName parameter is what you refer to when talking to alexa. So default setup is 'Television' and 'Cable'. I added a third one for my second tv and gave it a friendlyName of 'Samsung'. Just be aware on naming as Alexa doesn't always get it right. We have a Vizio television, I tried to use that as the friendlyName but Alexa kept thinking I said Video.

I thought about this for a long time and maybe the easiest solution is to create a header row that just links to all the different rooms. If you want a big monolithic page controlling everything, then that will require some change to accept GET requests in the web servers. Then on the clientside, you would need to update the javascript from POST to GET to the IP with the correct URL call. So instead of posting back /devices/tv/SEND_ONCE/KEY_POWER, would need to GET with the absolute URL http://room/devices/tv/SEND_ONCE/KEY_POWER.

I added the KiCad files used to make the schematic and pcb in a zip to the GitHub project. The zip is in the kicad directory. I only know just enough of KiCad to make simple schematics and pcb, so the pcb could be made better and with thicker traces. I just took whatever is default. So if you have any pointers or tips making them better, please let me know. Thank you.

The project now has macro capability. Now you can sequence button presses and put a delay between the presses if needed.

Thank you and thanks for catching the typo.

Thank you. Yes, I have a todo list and adding macros/activities are one of them. I'm currently trying to figure out how to get extra IR codes for devices that are not on the packaged remote that comes with a TV without requiring a Logitech remote. For example, I have a Logitech remote and you can specify which input to go directly to, the remote that came with TV doesn't have such button, you have to cycle through the inputs. So looks like TVs understand a larger set of commands than what is on the remote you get with the TV.

Thanks for the tip. I included the PSU and USB as part of the BOM.

Thank you. I will incorporate your suggestion as soon as possible as you could use a 1/4W resistor. To be honest, that is what I initially used during testing. My concern when I finalized the project was that someone would issue a send_start directive to irsend and forget to issue a timely send_stop. The send_start repeatedly sends the IR code and I feared that maybe, just maybe, average power might be too much for a 1/4W resistor if left repeating for too long, shouldn't, but I just wanted to be safe in the write up.

Thank you for the input. I forgot that IR codes are actually sets/lengths of ~38KHz pulses. I incorporated your suggestion into the Instructable. If anyone is wondering about IR remote signals, check out Adafruit's write up at https://learn.adafruit.com/ir-sensor/ir-remote-signals