23

I have integrated my amazon echo device with the amazon portal associated to my account. I was able to create my own custom question with the Alexa Skills Kit and process with an AWS Lambda function to generate a response.

My question is: is it possible to programatically "push" a message to the echo device? For example, I would like for it to speak without having to ask it a question. I'd like it to do something at a specific moment.

If it is possible, could you please share any sample code to achieve this?

thetaiko
  • 7,642
  • 2
  • 29
  • 46
code
  • 4,604
  • 13
  • 52
  • 94

6 Answers6

16

It is not currently possible, but it is an oft requested feature on the AWS forums.

http://forums.developer.amazon.com/forums/thread.jspa;jsessionid=EC0D457A400B594DD0F0561EEB43A8FA?messageID=17713&#17713

E.J. Brennan
  • 42,120
  • 6
  • 74
  • 108
2

I've not done this myself but it seems using the Alexa Voice Service could do the trick. It allows processing of voice from any type of audio capture and sends it to the Alexa Service. It seems possible you could record the proper phrase into a sound file and send that to AVS, thus triggering the Alexa service.

Brad Irby
  • 1,861
  • 1
  • 13
  • 21
1

I know it's capable but Amazon hasn't offered it as a feature yet. If you go to the Echo web site http://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#cards, Settings, Connected Home and select Discover devices, the echo will perform a command triggered from the web site and will speak when completed. I didn't have to say a word.

user5838592
  • 11
  • 1
1

From what I read on an article about notifications here, they were going to do something that meant you still had to ask Alexa to tell you your notifications, which would build up throughout the day and cause your device to light up and chime to let you know you had a notification to listen to.

Rather than allowing Alexa to randomly blurt stuff out any time she feels like it.

Which kinda seems pointless if you don't get the notification at the exact time it was sent, for example a smart home connected device triggering an alert to let you know you left your door open too long or the app automatically reading you the weather when you get up and turn on the coffee pot in a morning, things like that. If you have to ask for the notifications you may as well just do the speaking and request stuff from the beginning.

Maybe I'm wrong but that's how it reads to me.

Surely we want, with opt-in permission per skill, to allow Alexa to just say whatever she likes whenever she likes from the skills we have set up receiving such commands, without us having to say oh I see I have notifications let me ask what those are.

Mad Man with a Blue Box
  • 11
  • 1
0

Wuhu! Sounds like Amazon may enable push notifications this Fall.

Digital Trends Article

Amazon is expected to establish guidelines for developers and manufacturers so that Alexa remains classy and doesn’t become an interrupting nag.

Gilbert Flamino
  • 91
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1
    Looks like this is coming about a year late: https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/8cc45487-d5fb-413b-b6c7-eeea4794d10c/amazon-announces-notifications-for-alexa-feature-is-coming-soon-sign-up-to-stay-tuned – Josep Valls May 16 '17 at 19:08
0

Just for people who stumble across this question in 2021:

The solution is to use Amazon Proactive Events

Your Skill has to request for the notification permission, subscribe for a specific event and then you can generate a access token and POST events to the amazon API.

Took me some hours to find out because Amazon offers different things which all sound quite similar but some are deprecated (ASK CLI v1) and others are just for Alexa device manufacturers.

xoned
  • 2,400
  • 2
  • 26
  • 41