question

I actually didn't change John's code much. Whereas the original generates a new multipart_body.txt for each request (which contains the text-2-speech), I use a static multipart_body.txt that contains a recording of me saying "push notifications".

The rest of the work is on my local server and locally hosted Alexa Skill (Jarvis). Which receives the "push notifications" alert from John's code, and then responds accordingly as described above.

If you wanted to replicate this you would need to create your own Alexa Skill on a server/platform/language of your choice, and have it respond to your prompt however you see fit (ultimately sending the audio.mp3 response from AVS to the physical Echo over bluetooth).

So in terms of John's code, I use the original tools to get/set the tokens, and then I cut down his alexa.sh to the last two commands:

# Auth token (replace with yours). 
TOKEN=`cat token.dat` 

# Boundary name, must be unique so it does not conflict with any data. 
BOUNDARY="BOUNDARY1234" # Compose cURL command and write to output file. echo "Making request..." curl -s -X POST \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" \ -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=${BOUNDARY}" \ --data-binary @multipart_body.txt \ https://access-alexa-na.amazon.com/v1/avs/speechrecognizer/recognize \ | perl -pe 'BEGIN{undef $/;} s/--.*Content-Type: audio\/mpeg.*(ID3.*)--.*--/$1/smg' \ | tee response.mp3 | play -t mp3 -q -

Here's a useful script I use to make sure the Pi stays connected via Bluetooth to the Echo. (sometimes the connection drops, or when the Pi or Echo reboot, it doesn't automatically reestablish)

SPEAKER_MAC = Echo's Bluetooth MAC

SPEAKER_NAME = the name the bluetooth adapter has assigned to the Echo

(works with the latest version of Raspbian Pi, Jessie)

#!/bin/bash

SPEAKER_MAC=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF
SPEAKER_NAME=bluez_sink.AA_BB_CC_DD_EE_FF

until pacmd list-sinks | grep bluez_sink > /dev/null
do
	pulseaudio -k
	pkill pulseaudio
	sleep 1
	
	pulseaudio --start &
	sleep 2
	
	echo -e "power on\nconnect $SPEAKER_MAC\n" | bluetoothctl
	sleep 4
done

pacmd set-default-sink $SPEAKER_NAME

Ok after carefully re-reading your post here, the post here on the forum and reading through the code of John and Miguel i think i have figured it out. Unfortunately English is not my native language so i had to read it twice. I have also never developed an Alexa skill and have to go by my limited knowledge and tutorials i've seen online.

The first step is that you recorded a WAV file with the content "tell <your-custom-developed-skill> push notification" in the correct format. You send this wave file in step 5 to AVS. Your custom Alexa skill (which is a lambda function?) does a REST call to your home server and that in return responds to AWS lambda with the contents of the txt file. (Hence the remark of Ian that he could also host the txt file somewhere else). AVS synthesises this into a MP3 which you play over bluetooth and presto, the loop is round.

Can you elaborate on the remark you made on the Amazon forum; ... then I won't have to use a different Amazon account in each room of the house ...

Would that mean that you have to register your custom skill for every account?

Gilles - Very close. I don't have a lambda skill, my Alexa skill is actually hosted on my home server (in PHP). So the Alexa skill on my home server reads the txt file directly. Otherwise, you're correct.

The statement about "a different Amazon account in each room" is pertaining to the fact that Amazon gives us no way to uniquely identify which Echo device is being spoken to. So I have two options:

1) Whenever I give a command, say out loud which room I'm referring to: "Alexa, tell Jarvis to turn off the lights **in the bedroom**"

or

2) Put the Echo in my bedroom on a different account, and in the URL to the Alexa skill have a querystring setting that specifies the room. e.g. http://myipaddress/skill/jarvis/?room=bedroom

I've actually implemented both options. So if you don't mention the room out loud, it detects the URL in the querystring Amazon uses to call the skill (set in the account settings).

---

FYI, hot off the presses, there's a newer alternate option: Amazon Polly. An AWS service that provides an .mp3 of spoken language when you give it text. The quality of the voice isn't quite as good as Alexa, but you have a few dozen accents/languages to choose from, and you don't need to host your own skill. On the other hand, they start charging you (pennies) after the first year:

https://aws.amazon.com/polly/

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/polly-text-to-speech-in-47-voices-and-24-languages/

https://alestic.com/2016/11/amazon-polly-text-to-speech/

Once you get your .mp3 from Polly, you'd play it on the Echo via bluetooth (or any other speaker, I have them coming out of our livingroom HTPC and master bedroom HTPC)

Could you not use Microsoft speech engine; text to speech and bluetooth to the echo dots?

Question: Does anyone have this running on Mac OSX? I was able to get everything installed on my mac but pico2wav I don't know which package in brew I can use to get the tool?

This is the kind of thing my wife and I have been looking for! The only problem, every post in here may as well be in a foreign language! Neither of us code or have any idea what we are looking at. Is there a skill we activate and type this into or something we we can simply activate and tell it to do it? How did you get it to display on your TV? Thank you!

Hang on - Am I reading this right that the approach is basically to 'trick' the Alexa AVS service (server side) into thinking Alexa has heard the wake-word and a request? And then the skill takes over?

Isn't this an almost worst-case scenario that a motivated hacker could make your Alexa START LISTENING at any time they wanted? (Assuming they had access to your Alexa login/device to activate the skill)

The only defence being that you might notice the blue lights.

Am I right that this is how this works? If so, I am a bit surprised the device security isn't better... If the physical Alexa device hasn't heard the wake-word I assumed she wouldn't respond to any sorts of Skill instructions.

I would not be surprised to see such loopholes closed down at any moment.

Other than that, this is a very neat solution! Nice work!

Alexa skills are crying out for a Permissions architecture in my opinion... Eg. Instead of deprecating the open vocabulary slot, they should just tell users and let them decide if they accept the (minor) risk, or not. Ditto for notifications. ... Please Amazon ...

Is it possible to have alexa ask you a question and expect a response this way instead of just informing you a statement? I don't see how, maybe sending the response to the amazon echo instead of back to the bash console.

I still can't make this work even when i'm using ubuntu on virtualbox

ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0' ALSA lib conf.c:4292:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings ALSA lib conf.c:4292:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name ALSA lib conf.c:4292:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib conf.c:4771:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory