Controlling alexa from ST?

Hey Guys-

I’d really like to be able to control alexa/echo from ST by passing it a text phrase. Is this possible? There are certain alexa options I’d like to control from sensor input.

For example, play “Eye of the Tiger” every time I open the front door. There must be a way to do this no?

So far all of the integrations I’ve looked at go the other way-- control ST from alexa via voice command.

Play on Alexa? Not possible, Alexa is asleep, it needs a verbal wake up call to start playing your Eye of the tigger. But if you have another connected speaker you can do it easily…

https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/custom-audioplayer-interface-reference

Perhaps I will look at writing a skill to programatically send a directive
directly to the AudioPlayer interface without first passing through the
SpeechRecognizer.

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There is ONE caveat…you cannot do anything BUT play audio

“If your skill is currently playing audio, or was the skill most recently playing audio, these intents are automatically sent to your skill. Your code needs to expect them and not return an error.”

So the skill has to stay active…

With that being said, I might venture to put this one in the future release of Echosistant. @bamarayne and I are wrapping up v3. But this sounds like a good addition for v4…

Isn’t this basically like have Pandora playing, telling it to pause, then come back later and telling it to play? The skool remained active, it did not reinstate.

I’m not seeing where there is any way to push anything to a not active echo.

Even when we run the test scenario in the AWS developer web site, the echo does not respond in any way, and that is testing the skill with the lambda and the ST side.

Did you enable the audio play feature for the skill you tested?

No, I didn’t… Hmmmmmm

It’s pretty self explanatory what you need to make it work, but the moment you do something else non player related or if you close the session, Alexa no longer listens for the audio commands

That’s what I figured

It’s still a nice feature though, we should explore more. Put a toggle in Echosistant for those who want to keep session open for further audio player commands. I think @wgmcg had a good idea.

@wgmcg if you make it work, please share…

yeah… you could always dedicate a dot to a single purpose… at 50 bucks that’s not a bad investment.

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Ok, I’m at my desk and ready to work.

IGNORE ALL OF THIS IS IS NOTHING… JUST MOVE ON… NOTHING TO SEE HERE!!!

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