Set one up running openHab. When I get home later I’ll pm you.
Glad to see progress in this.
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So everyone knows, this is being worked on and something should be available soon. Thank you for your patience.
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All,
I have stayed out of this thread out of respect for Jason as he appears to want to spotlight on himself. However, this is a community and I find his lack of sharing this often requested information very ‘odd’.
It is one thing to try to get folks to ‘learn to fish’, similarly to what I did with him when he first starting trying to code. But to dribble out information without trying to better the community, well, I see that as a failing and wanted to step in.
There is no magic to making the Echos talk without input. Right now, all you need is a Raspberry Pi…No need to install OpenHAB on it…simply have an install of the latest Rasputin OS on the device.
From there, you need to create a directory (/pi/home/alexa) and put a shell script into the directory (see here: https://github.com/walthowd/ha-alexa-tts/blob/master/alexa_remote_control.sh). I did not write this and I want to give complete credit to those listed in the GitHub. Simple remove the reference to the YAML file (lines 50, 159) , hard code your user name and password in the required lines (lines 160 and 161), then ensure that it is executable (see https://github.com/walthowd/ha-alexa-tts/blob/master/README.md for instructions)
Then, simply remotely (probably through SSH) send commands to the script. Easy enough.
./alexa_remote_control.sh -a will get you the device list
./alexa_remote_control.sh -d “My Dot Name” -e speak:This_is_a_test! to make it speak
If you run into issues with captcha (and you will), the readme file explains how to obtain the cookie file once you log in manually. The cookies DO expire, so you will need to refresh it every once in a while.
Obviously, this is not for the faint of heart, but it is not rocket science either…others have done this work to get it working and it took me only couple minutes to do load the files and test (plus a few minutes working with some folks to refresh my unix skills 
)
The next step is to make this more manageable and user friendly without the need for a Pi. I have known about this “Pi method” for quite some time and never brought it up as this functionality WILL come from Amazon at some point, and it is not what I would call ‘production friendly’ since cookies expire and setting it up does require a PI.
Anyone that knows me knows I want to create things that are well documented, manageable AND supportable. To be clear, this whole thing is a HACK. It works now, but may not in the future. Amazon has NOT published this API and may not as they have some unfounded fear that a self-talking device is bad. They will get over it, or they will deprecate this function. That is why I hesitated ever bring this up: people expect my stuff to work and if Amazon makes it stop working, it reflects badly on me. Some people don’t seem to care about how they come across, but I do. That being said, this is a neat little function and have been attempting to integrate it into the Ask Alexa Message Queue functionality. This is highly speculative and I am not going to make promises I can’t keep. This is a ‘simple’ web site call and as I mentioned above, it doesn’t take a team of 100 programmers or magicians to do this…just some time, which is limited these days for me. If someone comes up with it first, great…but it should be shared with the community, at which time I will integrate it into Ask Alexa.
Again, this is for the community and keeping information to one self is not in good for the betterment of the community.
Let’s all remember that….
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Thanks for stepping in Michael, I’m glad you decided to jump on here and put yourself in the spotlight.
As you said, what you just described above is a hack.
Which is exactly why I wasn’t putting the information out there. I saw no need to go through a lengthy process of describing a hack. I did say an actual method is in work and will be available fairly soon.
As you have also said, this is a community, and I’m here to share what I have.
So again, for the community, if you want to be able to use your echo devices in this manner, stay tuned. It’s a work in progress.
But, if you do not want to wait, contact me and I will show exactly how to make your system do it right now. I’m using an rpi and openHab. It’s actually very easy to set up.
edit Using openHab is a much easier process that what Michael described above. It’s just a matter of two systems talking to each other, kind of like how Smartthings and Hubitat have the ability to talk back and forth.
Basically, if you are able to install EchoSistant or Ask Alexa, you can do this.
Let me know if you’re interested.
Jimmy, your wish may come true sooner than expected. They made the official announcement
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wow! that’s huge!
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I just tried this and it works! Went into the Alexa app and created a routine that says Front Door Open whenever the door sensor is activated. You can even tell it which Echo you want to speak. I am currently doing this with Sonos. The contact and motion sensors are automatically populated in the Alexa app. You choose custom and type in what you want it to say. No lag either. Works as fast as the Sonos one which is immediate.
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Yeah, it’s really fast… well, I guess there isn’t much need for what was being worked on… lol
You can give the routine custom text to speak, the only drawback I’m seeing right this second is that you can only select on device to speak, so you have to have multiple routines for multiple devices.
You can do something like this…
Create a simple rule that turns on a virtual switch when a person arrives home. Alexa sees the switch turn on and announces that the person has arrived at home!
And it’s really nice to be able to simply ask if a window is open or closed.
Said switch will need to have motion or contact capability tied to it. Something like Mike Maxwell’s uDTH.
yep, very true… but still very doable…
can you ask “what’s the temperature of the front door” and get the temp of the contact sensor?
Yes, you can… as well as if it is open or closed.
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Do I have to be at home for Alexa to discover new devices? I’m at cross country practice and am too anxious to try this out!!!
no, just do it in the mobile app
No. You can tap add device in the app and it will run discovery
Wait wha!!! Now THAT is exciting!
I LOVE YOU Alexa!!!
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I know right… this is huge.
If you look at the devices in the Alexa app, they tell you when the contact was open/closed… it tells you when motion was detected and for how long motion has been active, and the same for no motion.
I foresee some big things happening with the Alexa Routines in the near future… like complex rule making
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Alexa is not discovering all my contact and motion sensors. Added them the same way I did switches and virtual switches.