Send Commands to Alexa

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18

its nice to use TTS in that way. i used something simular.
but it has 1 disadvantage, its on 1 place only.

i already got 7(and it will grow up to 16) times alexa around the house. so with alexa TTS i get to use TTS on 7 different locations.

@ha_steve yeah it is a hack, so its always the question how long it holds. but i got it working without a problem for a long time now.

you can do the TTS with bespoken too. its actually nothing more then the simon says functionality.
even if you cant do it directly you could do it by creating a routine and start the routine with bespoken.

but this is way more direct. and indeed without a middleman (and i have a hard time trusting someone, when i cant find name, place, location, etc. etc. and they use an io website)

19

Its one sentence yeas but I have 3 BLT speakers paired so I hear the same speech in 3 different places in the house. And as I said I have no interest in Alexa or GA, I need the exercise as retired.Just had a look at the script and because each speaker has an entity ID it would probably be possible to control where the speech is sent out. But it is the wrong day to day to investigate

20

Hey, i am all new at this home assistant , so my question , with the above would i be able to create a switch button on hadassboard to be enable to control a switch wich works with alexa , but not yet with hassio?
I have these livolo switches wich are connected with their on zigbee gateway and their own app , but i would like to build a dashboard with all my stuff in it , so i don’t need to switch between apps. Now livolo isn’t supported by hassio yet but it is by Alexa… So maybe this could be my solution?

22

yeah it is possible to create a routine in the alexa app for a switch, and then you can create a switch that triggers the routine. and that switch can be put on the dashboard.

its possible, but not easy.

23

I have an echo plus and since getting this I am no longer able to use HA to turn my lights on and off as they are ZigBee connected to the echo. Would this allow me to configure it somehow to enable it so use my lights again? I’m not looking for status of the lights just a way to turn them on or off through HA

24

why cant you connect your zigbee to HA directly?

but like i said everything you can control with alexa you also can control with HA by creating routines and starting these routines from HA.

i would advise the local script to do this though.

25

Thats what i tought… I am new at this so i think it will still take me a while…and some numbers off trying… I cant connect the zigbee switches directly with hassio because zigbee isn’t compatibel for now… And i also would like to kerp using their app so i have to use their gateway… Now i have been trying to set up this bespoken.io connection with Alexa , and in the bespoken app i can switch the light on , but in hassio i didnt manage yet… I tried with the example of setting a timer but didnt work… I guess you mean another way off connecting with Alexa in stead of bespoken.io?

26

i did a quick look and didnt find any api for bespoken, besides for tts.

the link i gave is to a topic where there is a script that can be used.
it has a downside, you need to refresh a cookie file once in a while.

and most people with hassio seem to have trouble with it.
to know if it is something you want to use, you need to read through that long (and mostly boring) topic.

27

I’m using a raspberry pi running home assistant and there is no way to my knowledge that you can connect the ZigBee lights to HA without a usb ZigBee adaptor which I don’t have.

I will give this a try I have loads of routines set up at the moment so would be nice for HA to control them as well

28

Excellent, does exactly what i want. i set it up as above and ran the service with the follow json: {
“message”: “turn my room off”} and a few seconds later my room light went off. Exactly what i need thanks for this!

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29

@ha_steve had a brief read of this and looks good, however I am confused as to how you would send this to a specific echo device or all.

for example if you trigger music to play how do you get it to play in the bedroom rather than the living room ???

Sorry for the newbie questions but I’m just confused as to how a virtual alexa will do this ?

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30

@ReneTode is it possible to use alexa with intents? I have ha cloud but I cannot use intents anymore. The closest thing I have come across is scenes. HA scripts are of course seen as scenes by alexa but its a little tedious saying to alexa to turn on clean my room as an example. I would normally say alexa ask home assistant to clean my room. This would then start the vacuum to clean the room.

Any ideas?

31

those 2 things should be able to work side by side.

the easiest way to correct that is to use alexa routines.
create a routine that turns on the script when you say something like: alexa, clean my room

you dont even need to say “ask home assistant to” in that case.

32

Intents do not work due to the new HA authorization method i.e. tokens. If you have done it can you please show me how to?

Thank you for pointing out. However I need to be careful and say the exact phrase i.e. alexa, clean my room. Whereas with intents I could say more. clean my room or hoover my room etc.

33

if you want intents to work you need to have api pasword (old style) set.
i havent read that they took it out (its deprecated though)

http: 
  api_password: !secret http_password

i dont have intents with HA directly though, i got my intents through appdaemon.

34

This is what i said they dont work using the new token method.

Anyway your intents intents using appdaemon works using tokens ? If yes can you please share it?

35

they dont work with tokens, but you can have tokens and http api key both!

i have appdaemon setup with appdaemon api, my intents communicate with an appdaemon app, not with home assistant, and then in the app i can read things from HA and send things to HA.

i have my appdaemon alexa app on github, but its only usefull if you are able to read python code and know how to change it to your wishes.

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36

@ha_steve, how would I set this up for when alexa expects a response.

I tested the mychevy app skill from the web site and it worked but Im not sure how I would write the automation.

normally I would say: “Alexa, ask chevy to start my car” then she would ask for my pin: " 1 2 3 4 " and then she would send the request.
Do you know if this is correct? probably not since it doesn’t work lol.

- id: start_my_car
  alias: Start My Car
  initial_state: 'off'
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_boolean.car
      to: 'on'
  action:
    - service: rest_command.ask_alexa
      data:
        message: "Ask chevy to start my car"
    - service: rest_command.ask_alexa
      data:
        message: "1 2 3 4"
    - delay: '00:00:20'
    - service: homeassistant.turn_off
      entity_id: input_boolean.car
    
- id: start_my_car_off
  alias: Start My Car Off
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_boolean.car
      to: 'off'
  action:
    - service: homeassistant.turn_off
      entity_id: automation.start_my_car
37

Just created a bespoken-account. Just wondering, since i haven’t read anything about that on this thread: it says " Current plan: Standard - Only 30 days left. Subscribe now!" … and the cheapest plan seems a $29/month plan?

38

This is awesome @ha_steve , though, what happens after the 30 day trial ends?