Amazon Echo

[JDRoberts]

@Lojack

Does anyone know if there is a Device Handler that can be installed in the IDE that allows the Amazon Echo to be treated as a SmartThings TTS capable speaker?

It seems like a reasonable concept to use the Amazon Echo as a Sonos connected SmartThings device.

It can’t be done just with a device type handler because at the present time Alexa devices do not support TTS themselves. There was a news article this week that that feature may be coming in the future, but it’s not here yet.

There are community members using other devices to create TTS files and then just use echo as a Bluetooth speaker to play them. Lots of discussion of this in the forums. Here’s one recent one:

Cheap, Simple Connected Speaker?

The echo can definitely be used as a Bluetooth speaker. The issue is that it doesn’t support TTS ("text to speech), all it can do is act as a realtime streaming speaker for another device. So you have to set up some other device to decide what sound file to send to the echo and when to send it. You can also just use any cheap android device for voice notifications, Among other things, that’s how LANnouncer works. For other devices see the following list. It has both very cheap and very expensive speakers. And this for just the cheap ones, but it hasn’t been kept as up-to-date as the master topic.