Is there any provision to manage the light ring on echo device? For example, for certain events, I want to change echo device light ring to red. Can we do that using Alexa skills kit?
The light colours are used as a security style feature to highlight when the Echo is actively listening, not just waiting for its wake word.
The only other time that it changes colour is a lack of WiFi which again indicates that it cannot 'actively listen'.
They are not currently controllable from the SDK
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The alexa skill gets launched from echo device Kitchen and shall do a dialogue using echo device Bedroom as example.
Is it possible at all?
How to do it in node.js or python?
This should be done by a skill not by a routine because the actual target device is retrieved via a REST api.
This seems like a common task. Surprisingly I was not able to even figure out, if it is possible at all. Maybe it is too common.
I don't believe it's possible to achieve the CX you described with Alexa Skill Kits today.
As an end-user, you can use the announcement feature to broadcast a message to all of your supported Alexa devices, e.g. "Alexa, announce dinner is ready". You can exclude certain devices by turning on "Do Not Disturb" mode, or disabling the announcement feature in their device setting.
If you're an enterprise customer (e.g. business, healthcare, hospitality...etc.), you can use the Alexa Smart Properties API to send an announcement to a specific device you manage.
For ASK, the closest thing is the Notification API. But the CX is a bit different, like the user needs to say "Alexa, read my notifications", and you can't target a specific echo device.
I'm curious about your use case. As a skill developer, why do you want to send a dialogue to a different echo device?
I've written a win32 App in C++ (a game) and I want to be able to know if the application has lost focus due to the user pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and starting the task manager. How can I do this? What I want to do after detecting the event is to minimize the window of my game and pause its processing (animations, audio, etc.). However, if the user returns from the CTRL-ALT-DEL menu to the game then it should keep running as usual. I've thought that I could check for key presses on CTRL, ALT and DEL but that doesn't seem to work and just reacting to the lost the focus (WM_KILLFOCUS) is not what I want.
You can use WTSRegisterSessionNotification(), you'll get the WM_WTSSESSION_CHANGE message when the user presses Ctrl+Alt+Del and switches to the secure desktop.
Beware that you cannot tell that it was actually the secure desktop that he switched to, that would be rather nasty security leak. You'll also get the notification when he switches to another logon session. Also a case where you want to stop your game of course.
For that matter, a game ought to automatically pause whenever the game window loses the foreground. Nobody likes to be killed when they switch to their email reader :) Use the WM_ACTIVATEAPP message
I am working on an indoor vision based navigation in a GPS denied environment, and I'm using a 3DR Solo. I want to be able to send movement commands to the Solo through the DroneKit API. Are these mavlink commands supported for modes other than GUIDED and AUTO, or is channel overriding my only option?
It depends on how you want to control it. If you want to control the position of the copter, you will need to make hardware modifications to the solo, because it does not have the right sensors to be able to hold position indoors. If you want to control the raw angle of the copter, the cleanest way to do this is to send a SET_ATTITUDE_TARGET message. The problem is that this is only supported in guided mode, and guided mode won't arm without gps (even though low-level control like SET_ATTITUDE_TARGET doesn't rely on GPS). Guided-NoGPS mode is currently on the todo list for ArduCopter, so comment on the issue here to let the devs know that you are interested in this feature.
Is it possible to disable all communications on a mobile phone (on any brand, like blackberry, iphone or android phone, or even an mp3 player like an ipod) this includes incoming/outgoing calls and text messages, and internet use - for a period of time like an hour or two?
In some way that can't easily be bypassed - like closing the app.
If you take out a SIM card out of a phone that uses them and there is no WiFi network around that should just about do it. Or you can use a phone that doesn't have WiFi (certain older Blackberries I think).
Alternatively something like the iPod Touch in a room without a WiFi network would also do it.
This may be cumbersome, but on a BB device you can likely inject keyboard events in order to turn off the radio. I don't know of a way to use straightforward APIs to disable the radio.
Not sure if this is your goal but you can programatically manipulate the inbox. If a new message arrives while you're "disabled" you can delete it from the inbox.
I'd like to create an app that pulls multiple live video feeds, supplied either by coax, hdmi or some other standard, into WPF for manipulation (i.e. apply a few transforms or pixel shaders) which is then output to monitor. What would I look at to get started with this app - is there any hardware that would make things easier?
If you are pulling in standard broadcast via coax or over the air, a $100 ATSC HD TV tuner will do. I don't have any experience with HD capture cards (I think they run for about $1000), or more specifically, cards that take in a raw HD stream.
When you install a capture device (TV tuner, webcam, capture card) in Windows, it creates a DirectShow source filter wrapper for it. Based off what kind of hw you are targeting, determines how you create the DirectShow graph. I have no reason to expect HD capture cards to be different than any capture card or webcam (TV tuners are slightly different).
You can use my WPF MediaKit as a base. The web cam control may work out of the box or just require slight changes for an HD capture card. A TV tuner would require a lot more than just this.