I have an Echo Spot and I'm using Alexa Presentation Language (APL) to implement the user interface. I want to have user input by using the built-in keyboard. Is it possible to invoke the built-in keyboard in Node.js SDK?
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I have set up an Echo Dot device for my account. My intent is to call an Alexa skill on this device externally.
I have seen a lot of tutorials, but I could only see that these skills were started by voice.
Is there any way to trigger an Alexa skill by using an API, and not using voice at all? If not, what would be the market available alternatives for such a workflow?
It's not possible yet to trigger Alexa directly without Alexa wasn't asked. You could use notifications. Alexa will have a yellow ring and user has to ask for messages.
See https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smapi/proactive-events-api.html for details.
I've found a way of achieving this.
By using IFTTT, there is a skill called IFTTTriger that you can install in your Alexa device, and later on, install the https://mkzense.com/iftttrigger . In that way, I was able to create an IFTTT applet that could trigger Alexa using a virtual device.
That is the only way available as of now. Worked perfectly well.
I would like to know on whether there is any possibility to call a phone number using cortana skill through code.
I am using microsoft web bot. I want to write code in c# for calling a person from my contacts.
I am using a luis framework, If user invokes a specific intent, i should directly call a specific phone number in my android mobile.
Is there any way i can make this call through code.?
First of all - if you want to add call functionality you have to implement it on your own because there is no ad-hoc way to invoke contacts book or make calls from Cortana.
This is also not possible currently because there is no Cortana SDK released for Android or iOS platforms to make integration. If it was there are development steps you could probably do in your mobile app source code (dedicated app because Cortana is also not integrated with mobile Android and iOS system):
Integrate Cortana with mobile app source code (in your case Java because of Android) which enables talking to Cortana and getting responses.
Implement code which handles response from the user about specific person to search in contacts book.
Implement code to search contacts book basing on the name of user told to Cortana.
Invoke platform-specific code to make call with selected number.
To sum there is no way to implement call functionality with C# and Cortana on Android (iOS neither). You can fin more information here.
I have been checking around on this topic, but have not seen a concrete solution on how to get it working. I am building a Custom Skill for Alexa, which currently supports speech. Now I would like to extend the skill with video streaming to a TV.
The only thing the Custom Skill seems to support for this is streaming to Echo Show with the VideoApp directives?
I have seen answers that say it is possible, just return a list of devices, but these devices and their appliance id's seem to be hardcoded, I would need to get an actual list of devices linked to the users account.
So the question is: is it actually possible to incorporate Video Skill functionality (and device discovery) in a custom skill, or would it need to be a separate skill?
Since the SmartTV is not an Alexa-enabled device, streaming to it will be a separate API from the Alexa APIs.
An Alexa skill is similar to a web API, where the front end, user interface, is Alexa.
Imagine if you were building a website that had a couple of buttons on it and a text box. Users would enter some info in the text box and press one of the buttons to start streaming on the TV. The code behind the website would have to communicate with the smart TV somehow to stream the content.
The same way, your skill code would have to figure out a way to communicate with the Smart TV.
This is not something that Alexa would support directly, so it become necessary to identify the API for your SmartTV and a way to communicate to it from the internet which won’t be trivial.
I want to use amazon alexa api for my website/ mobile application. I would like to know if it is possible to use and how to integrate alexa, given that I develop my custom skill.
You can use the Alexa Voice Service. You will need to collect the user's audio and then submit it to Amazon. The voice snippet does not need to contain the hotword (e.g. Alexa). You should be able to use most features that don't involve the device and aren't asynchronous. For example, you can utilize the alarm or timer features nor the music streams.
It sounds like you are asking how to allow the user to talk to your website or mobile app.
An Alexa custom skill is something you create to extend Alexa's vocabulary, so to speak. It isn't an alternative to using a mouse or keyboard with an existing app.
A website and a mobile app are, or can be, two different ways for a user to access the functionality you provide. Think of an Alexa skill as a 3rd way to access that functionality. A user could ask the Alexa device (Echo, Dot, iPhone Lexi app, etc) to get or perform the same things that your website does.
So for example, if your website explains how your widgets work, then you could create a widget Alexa skill that would allow Alexa user's to ask about your widgets.
The Alexa Voice Service is something entirely different. It is an API to enable adding Alexa voice to a different piece of hardware. For example, my friend Thaddeus created an Alexa Voice Service app called Lexi that runs on an iPhone. This allows a user to talk to Alexa using their iPhone. However, it doesn't add any new capability to Alexa. It only allows me to do things on my iPhone that I can already do on my Echo.
When developing a mobile website, I want to display features based upon device capabilities. Specifically, I want to have a "Call us" button that uses the "tel:" protocol (e.g. tel:5551234) to initiate a phone call.
However, not all mobile devices support phone calls, such as the iPad.
How can I programmatically (either server or client side) determine whether a mobile user agent supports voice calling? I'm trying to avoid blacklisting based on user agent for maintainability reasons.