Playing around with Amazon Echo (technical interface discussion)

I am just using the out of box echo to hue integration.

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One complaint is that Echo can’t announce something proactively - it can only respond to questions. Does anyone know how the Echo remote works?

I trick my 3 yr old all the time by going to another room and doing “Simon says” with the remote. Maybe you could emulate the remote and inject announcements that way?

Of course I’m sure there would be a way to push messages to be spoken over the network as well, it’s just not currently exposed for us.

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Echo has both an alarm and a timer, but only one of each:

I would think that since you can use your phone to start and stop music there is a command they have out there to play specific songs. This will be one of the first things I look into after I get my SDK access. (After connecting so ST of course)

Interesting observation.

But this is not intended to be initiated by third-party Apps at this time. Echo is not permitted to initiate playback without user request.

So I got voice output to my Echo working by using the generic media renderer RELEASE Generic Media Renderer (DLNA Speakers). Cheap Sonos Alternative (Update V2) with the foobar2000 app [RELEASE] Airplay and Bluetooth Speakers Working from PC server and connecting my PC to the Echo through bluetooth. There’s a bit of a delay but it works.

https://goo.gl/photos/bQ38jmCWWvJzu8Yg7

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Very clever!

I wish the Echo had native DLNA and AirPlay support too. :neutral_face:

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It was pretty easy. You just need a PC to be running all the time, which I have. I thought one of those super cheap PC-on-a-stick things by Intel http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-compute-stick.html would be a good option also.

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Trying to use the generic media renderer but I can’t got the remote speaker output plugin to install.

I get. Failed to load DLL: foo_apx.dll
Reason: This component is missing a required dependency, or was made for different version of foobar2000.

Any clue what might be up?

Thanks

@celblazer For Echo you don’t need that part, just pair your PC to it and in the output settings select the Echo.

Thanks. Now I just have to figure out why the media renderer is giving me a bad state erro after selecting the echo or any renderer.

Yeah, hopefully @ule gets that addressed. Apparently it started happening when the ST Android app was updated. Lucky for me I had another phone laying around which hadn’t been updated. I think if you use an iphone it works but I don’t have an ianything.

Btw - there was a link to one of the old apk files on the media renderer thread if you want to install that add a workaround.

I got it kinda working. Depends on the app I use it with. Works on Bigtalker 2, not on bigtalker 1.1 or smart alarm. The renderer speaker device kicks up errors in the logs. different error depending on the app. LOL Well one is working so I will tinker.

I got some unsupported file errors set the first couple setup attempts when I was playing around with it but changed the name of the renderer and set it up again. Since then it’s been working great. I have a suspicion that running the voice test in big talker was causing it. After I did the last new setup I never tried to test the voice and it’s been working great. I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing I did different.

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I am speechless at the glorious Rube Goldbergness of this guy’s hack for Echo with IFTTT.

He creates a custom .mpg that contains Android launch task instructions.

Then he uses Echo to “play” that “song” to start a huge chain of events that end up with the package being delivered and executed.

I can’t imagine anyone using this in real life, but…wow. This guy gets props for creativity, for sure. :slight_smile:

Do the Devices still respond to Voice Commands?

Device discovery and usage is handled entirely by the Echo, no App required. Echo firmware updates are independent of App updates.

In other words, as far as I know, you can’t accidentally break the Echo with an Echo App update.

That was my understanding as well, that’s why I was a bit confused when it broke the connections unless the app update also triggered an Echo firmware update (current Echo software version = 2350)

I will have to try when I get home, currently doing all the troubleshooting remotely

I have Client V: 1.12.71 (Android)
Bridge V: 1.4-10-g58d50d9
Echo SW: 2350

And everything still works

False alarm, my Echo must’ve just been having a derp moment. Without doing a re-scan or anything, all of the emulated devices just magically showed back up in my list of connected devices and all are listed as online…

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Interesting I discovered about 5 devices in my list the other day that I never added. They had peoples names in them and I don’t even know anyone with those names so I know they were not mine. I did a forget and rediscovered and they went away.