Will we ever have native phone widgets?

[aporzio1]

Do you think there will ever be native phone app widgets or Siri Shortcuts? I have used Home Assistant but Ford keeps making changes that break it, I just want a button to start my car without going through the app.

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[markboris]

Do you think there will ever be native phone app widgets or Siri Shortcuts? I have used Home Assistant but Ford keeps making changes that break it, I just want a button to start my car without going through the app.

I have been using Siri shortcuts for over 3 years for both my cars. Problem is, Ford changes their API every few months so it breaks communication then there are a few people that fix it and we are back in business. All my shortcuts were working up until yesterday then Ford updated again and now waiting for Brandon or one of the other guys to fix it. Usually only takes a day or two then we are good for a few months normally. Brandon is actually working on a native app for shortcuts.

As far as Home Assistant, I would never use that app as I know people have been locked out of their Ford Pass account because of it. It tends to ping Ford's servers often which is not good. There are several threads that I and others have posted on about this over the past 3 years.

 

[aporzio1]

I changed it to only ping every 15 minutes and it’s been fine. At the default setting, I was definitely getting my account locked.

 

[Snakebitten]

"Alexa, ask FordPass Pass what my range is"

The Echo on the kitchen counter responded "Your vehicle's electric range is 194 miles"

Which is a little odd considering

 

[rhfritz]

I'm sure the car is reporting a decimal value. Likely, one app is rounding up and the other is truncating. There are 10 kinds of people in this world — those who understand binary and those who don’t.

 

[kennelh]

I'm sure the car is reporting a decimal value. Likely, one app is rounding up and the other is truncating. There are 10 kinds of people in this world — those who understand binary and those who don’t.

I can confirm this (at least the last time I checked). It's ironic because the JSON value is actually a float or double, but I've never seen anything other than a whole number. Moreover, the units are in kilometers so there's also that conversion.

 

[aporzio1]

So my current solution is a dummy button in Home Assistant that triggers an API call that presses a virtual button in Alexa that triggers a routine that tells the Ford pass skill to start the car. Seems kinda ridiculous when Ford could just add widgets with probably minimal effort.

 

[Snakebitten]

I was just pointing out that I can either start the car hitting a button in FordPass, or ask Alexa to do pretty much the same thing.
Alexa with the added "skill" of FordPass can do various FordPass functions.

My only disappointment is that the FordPass skill is limited to a single vehicle. I can switch between them with some effort, but that kills the fun.

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