Has anyone figured out how to get Alexa to wake up and make announcements for things like, the garage door opening or when someone arrives at home?
And not by using apps that talk through speakers or by connecting another device to the Alexa device via Bluetooth… I mean by sending a command directly to the Alexa device.
That is completely controlled by Amazon, and they have chosen not to make Alexa capable of that (highly requested) feature at the present time.
Track any of the Ask Alexa threads. The developer @MichaelS is VERY up to date with Alexa features, and if Amazon ever chooses to allow it… I’m sure he will let everyone know…
You are not alone as I’m sure everyone wants to be able to do this.
Just in case I saw this in another forum, one guy had an interesting workaround. Do the output via the approach of speaking through a speaker but have that speaker duct-taped to an Echo Dot. So have automation say “Alexa, announce the garage door is open”. The end result is the desired outcome, although the latency is an issue.
Yes, @MichaelS is very up to date on this and I know he’d let everyone know how to do it, if he know about it.
It’s being done right now without crazy hacks or having Alexa wear headphones… And without using the announce feature.
I’m sorry … I’m so confused. You asked if anyone had figured out a way to do this, and then you proclaimed you know how to do it, but didn’t share how.
Nothing to be confused about… That’s exactly what I said. I’m curious is there is still interest in this matter.
this must be why that other guy has “NEVER TRUST BAMARAYNE” in his tagline
Yeah, never trust that bamarayne guy!
Yes, very interested!
Well I’m glad someone is
I am not sure what to make of this thread. Ask Alexa already does this through Sonos speakers and its message queue, which I understand is not the point, but that is how I use it. There are various ways to make your Alexa give you notifications in real time but most are not ‘user friendly’ to set up so I let folks explore those themselves and don’t have those integrated into Ask Alexa.
Unless I am missing something, Amazon does not have an easy way to make this happen on a large scale. However, with summer I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to check on this except with the NotifyMe skill that I have integrated into Ask Alexa. I have asked folks about this, and there is little interest which is why I haven’t made a big push to get the update out there.
Well, I’m definitely not talking about message queues and Sonos speakers.
I’m talking about real time responses from the echo device of your choosing.
Stay tuned…
this is me tuning
All eyes and ears…
I believe that the original poster is very close to having this capability in something he is developing, and intends this as a tease. I would have preferred he just say that instead of pretending to be someone asking a legitimate question.
That said, let me reiterate that I think there would be much interest in this. I am currently wrestling with BigTalker, VLC, VLC Thing, smart apps, installing additional speakers, etc. when what I really want is simply an API to call to have all Alexa devices in the house say something with no prompting. So far, the closest thing is to raise a notification which must be asked for. If the house is burning down, I’d like Alexa to just scream at the top of her lungs “Get the f out of the house!!!” rather than turning on a message indicator.
I agree: the functionality is of interest. Tease marketing is not.
JMO 
Aww gee, where your sense of adventure?
Second drawer from the top, under my socks. 
Yeah, yeah, … Make Alexa great again! Sounds familiar but cannot remember…