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.
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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 have a music application. I have built all the custom skill for my music application and it is working fine in amazon echo device. My question is how do i integrate it with alexa app. I can see spotify, pandora, saavn etc in the music section of alexa app and any song playing from this 3rd party application will appear in playqueue and now playing section in alexa app. So how to integrate? Any ideas or link regarding this will help me a lot.
Read and follow this: Submitting the Skill for Certification
When your skill is ready for publication, you can submit it to Amazon for review. The Submit for Certification button becomes available once all required fields are completed.
So make sure you meet all Certification Requirements.
When you submit your skill to the Alexa skills store, it must pass a certification process before it can be published live to Amazon customers. Before you submit your new skill for certification, you should perform your own quality assurance testing.
First, Policy Testing.
The following list shows specific examples that we look out for when evaluating whether a skill can be made available on Alexa.
Second, Security Testing.
To protect customer data, the cloud-based service for your skill must meet Amazon’s security requirements.
Third, Functional Testing.
The functional tests verify that: The skill’s basic functionality matches the information displayed on the skill’s detail card in the Amazon Alexa app. ...[And] the skill’s core functionality works and provides useful home cards to the Amazon Alexa app.
Fourth, Voice Interface and User Experience Testing.
Voice interface and user experience testing focuses on: Testing the user experience to ensure that the skill is aligned with several key features of Alexa that help create a great experience for customers. [And] reviewing the intent schema, the set of sample utterances, and the list of values for any custom slot types you have defined to ensure that they are correct, complete, and adhere to voice design best practices.
I try to implement devices control from Alexa.
I created smart home skill and successfully added user authorization.
I can turn on/off my devices. I understand, that I can add new commands (like stop, play last video, get status and etc.) only using custom skills. But on the basis of this knowledge, I still can not figure out. Can I control devices using additional commands?
For example "Alexa, ask manager to play bedroom TV last video" or "Alexa, ask manager get kitchen camera status".
Yes, you can control.. Refer this project with sample code and steps to interact with amazon alexa. This will help you to get start from the basics.
https://github.com/krvarma/particle-alexa-smart-home-skill
It's my first few hours today to use Alexa so please bear with me for now.
I followed a tutorial that I found and was able to configure Alexa skills upto the Lamdba function. I was able to use the Test section inside Lamdba service and it worked really well. It can pull data from the external api. I was able to click the Listen button too.
However, I can't figure out how I will deploy this so that I can call the utterances using my real physical Alexa device. Not sure what to do next. And is it possible that I'll be the only one to use it?
You don't have to publish it to use it on your physical alexa device. As long as the alexa device is configured with the same Amazon account that you use to configure your skill then you can use the skill 'live' on your device.
In the configuration, I believe you must have progressed to the 'test' tab, but you don't need to fill in the publishing info to test the skill both virtually and on the device.
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.