I launch the audible clock skill on one of my echos every day at 11 am but it asks “would you like ___ clock to chime every quarter hour, half hour, or hour?” every time.
Is there a way I could send a response via home assistant so I don’t have answer out loud every time? Half the time she can’t understand me when I say “hour” out loud anyway and says “I’m sorry I couldn’t understand that” and then goes through the entire skill help menu again until me or my husband gets pissed off enough to yell “ALEXA STOP”.
I feel like there should be a way to do this with Alexa media player and custom skills maybe but I can’t figure it out. I tried asking her to launch the skill and when she asked how often I wanted it to chime I ran this script:
No. HA has no idea she said anything. Yes you sent the initial request but Amazon doesn’t send info to HA that says I just did X and am waiting for you which is what you would need.
You could create your own clock automation and send the chime at the appropriate time instead.
I’ve tried but there aren’t any good mp3s (it’s a very specific chime I want) and I don’t want to make my own - though its looking like I may have to now.
It seemed like it should be possible, if actionable notifications is possible this seems like it should be too. Home assistant is able to get data from what I say back to Alexa with actionable notifications but I need it to work the other around essentially. The issue isn’t really HA not knowing that Alexa spoke - I could take care of that pretty easily with virtual switch. I just need Alexa to know HA said something but the hang-up is that she doesn’t recognize that it’s meant to mimic human speech.
My hope was that someone figured out how to do this with a custom skill or something and could point to a tutorial.
Sorry no. Remember Amazon wants you to bring everything Into Amazon - they don’t have much incentive to let you automate Amazon from outside thier ecosystem.
What if you specify your command?
I’m using the Home Connect Dishwasher Skill which has multiple „pre-settings“. If I don’t specify the wanted setting, Alexa iterates through the whole thing. To avoid this, I tell the skill exactly what I want:
service: media_player.play_media
data:
media_content_type: custom
media_content_id: 'sage Geschirrspüler: Intensiv 70 Grad mit Intensivzonen-Option'
target:
entity_id: media_player.echo_dotchen
where ‘sage Geschirrspüler: Intensiv 70 Grad mit Intensivzonen-Option’ means something like 'tell dishwasher: <one of the pre-settings provided by the skill>
I’ve tried making the command different variations of “ask audible clock for a Westminster clock to chime every hour” and Alexa just says “I’m sorry I didn’t understand what you just said”.
Is that what you mean?
It seems like it can handle being given one option, the clock type. Adding a second option confuses it unfortunately.