Would anyone have any interest in a duplication of the media controls in the alexa.amazon.com web interface into an alexa media player component? My goal would be to use it as a way to trigger media playback based on an HA event. (Specifically an alarm clock)
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I would like to use my Echo speakers as a TTS destination for all kinds of Home Assistant scripts and automations. For now, I am using Android TV for it - but that requires that I leave both the Android TV and the connected TV or speaker on all the time so that it is ready to play any “text to speech” “ALERTS” or Information that my automations generate.
I’ve got 4 Echo devices spread across 3 floors in my house and ideally, I’d like to be able to address a specific one of them - or the “Everywhere” group to play the audio message throughout the whole home.
Is this something that is already possible to do in Home Assistant?
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TTS is not really possible as the echo devices do not have any way of being prompted to speak via any remote script. With the exception of notifications (which it seems are exclusive to only some apps) and reminders (which could be made to work in the way you described but it would always say "here’s your reminders…)
Thanks for your reply. So I guess we’re at the mercy of Amazon.
I’ll enter a feature request that lets us use them as a streaming destination.
I’d actually like to do the same thing with my Ring doorbell… when HA receives the motion detected event from Ring - I wanted to send some audio through the doorbell speaker. Already sent a feature request into Ring - but not holding my breath on them actually providing the feature.
Here is a shell script for the control (site in german):
which could be a starting point for a component.
Me too, i thought about TTS. Maybe some “fake DNS redirecting” for one (unneeded) tunein station to the local file.
e.g.
http://194.110.182.131:8000/stream.mp3 -> http://hassio:8123/tmp/tts/file.mp3
Or replace the georestricted message: https://cdn-cms.tunein.com/service/Audio/georestricted.enUS.mp3
I wonder if there is a way to use the “Drop in” functionality, create the TTS announcement then send it and close the “drop in”.
Drop in is an amazon to amazon intercom skill.
Mike
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Any updates regarding the component? Discovered this shell yesterday and i am very interested in getting volume control, volume reporting & alarm reporting into Home Assistant.
Seems possible with the shell, but no idea how to make it into a component…
This would be awesome and give me another reason to keep the Echo and dot device around.
Im still trying to figure out how to get notifications to go to a speaker using a aux jack directly attached to my pi. (Hassio)
I’d be VERY interested in this component. Would love to be able to play arbitrary audio to Amazon Echo speakers via HASS.
No way for arbitrary audio, only that from currently supported media sources.
Woohoo, this looks like it now supports what I’m after 
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Also promising/getting my hopes up!
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rolling out now in US and Canada only 
Bit of a frustrating wait for Europeans.
as always. we have to be patient 
it can always be worse. think of all the countries that are not supported at all at the moment
I would love it when i finally can speak dutch to her.
Goedemiddag! Hoe gaat het met je?
very good, thanks.
can you please take the place from alexa? 
FYI with the latest release of the shell command, TTS is now possible 
And if your interested in volume control of the Alexas (specifically multiroom) i implemented this in the meantime:
Better Alexa Multiroom Volume Control & Alarm Scraping
Since my original post I’ve been working on getting this up and running. Mostly dissecting the bash script posted by @AlmostSerious.
I know that many have had issues getting the bash/shell script to work (myself included) so I went with the route of creating a node.js application using nightmare to ensure that logging in is seamless and doesn’t get you stuck against endless captchas.
I plan to make a dedicated post showing what I have, how to set it up (as an hassio plugin with auto discovery ) so keep on the lookout.
Essentially my component code creates a media player device in HA for each device associated with your Alexa account (including whole home audio). Play/Pause/Next/Previous/Volume all work
Obligatory Screenshot:
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Awesome can’t wait to try this out, great work on what you have so far.
You gotta give us some code that we can test as a custom componet … this is too cool Great Work 