Amazon Alexa

Has anyone yet created a Xojo web app that creates and Amazon Alexa (Echo, Dot etc) that creates a custom skill? This looks like it could be a lot of fun being able to ask your web app to do something just by talking to Alexa.

Amazon Alexa documentation

any update on this?

Alternative; https://www.mbsplugins.eu/component_SpeechRecognition.shtml

unfortunately, your link only uses to recognize voice while Alexa uses to reply too.

Xojo can use the OS built-in speech synthesizer to pronounce any string with speak

I believed ALEXA is design with built-in in AI to respond to your message.

Speak does not.

[quote=461639:@ronaldo florendo]I believed ALEXA is design with built-in in AI to respond to your message.

Speak does not.[/quote]
Yes, there is massive AI in the cloud behind Alexa. The appliance does a fairly simple speech-to-text and then passes the text to the back-end AI which interprets it. The appliance cannot do much without an internet connection.

As far as I know, it does less (or more, depending on your point of view) than that. It just streams the pure audio it got from the ambient including your voice and noises to the AI at Amazon, that does all the job there and “maybe”, even stores those samples of your voice and ambient noises and extract more info about you.

Then the Alexa AI streams the answer back. Not text in, text out. So Alexa can make ANY noise, even play music as answer, and records your dog, instead of receiving a string “bark, bark, bark”. :smiley:

Alexa also talks “Json” with your Alexa enabled appliances and Alexa services. These capabilities and protocols are called Skills.

Ah yes, you’re probably right about that, my bad. That’s why the speech recognition is so good - the only recognition the device does is its “wake word”.

Take a look at: https://aws.amazon.com/lex/

You can build your own dialogs… Google Cloud also has a similar tool.

I have been (wasting) spending a lot of time trying to figure this all out lately. The Amazon folks made a change recently that broke every single “smart home” app out there (and there are MANY of them) that emulated a phillips hue hub for alexa control locally on your network without having to have a cloud service for it to talk to. I have found the Alexa and Amazon’s smart home API documentation to be so frustrating that I’ve actually said bad words out loud while I was working on trying to understand it. I”ve been writing smart home applications for longer than amazon has existed so I’m not exactly unversed in how those things work either.
So many abbreviations for different amazon services, at least 3 required to make anything happen but potentially up to 5 different amazon service signons required to make anything happen at all. Their tutorials have not been updated to reflect the latest API or interface changes so when they say go to this page, there is no such page or such link because they have changed all the names of things.
At this particular moment I hate them so much if I had the power I’d make sure they left the market entirely. But I don’t so I’m just taking the weekend off and going to start it all over Monday. But given the Monday correlation, and how much frustration I devoted to it last week I think I’ll probably find something else to work on tomorrow and start up again on tuesday.
Honestly, anything with Xojo can’t talk to them without so many libraries added on some of which don’t exist that it’s not worth the effort unless you want to work with me on making the OAuth and other stuff appear. They are so wonderfully positive in their promotional materials about how easy it is, and maybe it is if you are a multi-national with an entire staff that you can just say “Hey! Make this thing that amazon wants which doesn’t exist and for which there are no instructions for configuring work!” but I don’t have that staff so they are so broken it would be hilarious if my users hadn’t been using it perfectly up until a few weeks ago when a software update broke all our plugins.

Amazon is champion a vague and unclear statements, I confirm. I tried to implement Amazon payments, and abandoned in similar circumstances. They are hopeless.

That said, echo as it stands is a nice device to play music. Any kind of music. The catalog available to Prime subscribers is nothing short of amazing. I asked for obscure singers from the 50’s, and sure enough Alexa played their music.

[quote=461729:@Michel Bujardet]
That said, echo as it stands is a nice device to play music. Any kind of music. The catalog available to Prime subscribers is nothing short of amazing. I asked for obscure singers from the 50’s, and sure enough Alexa played their music.[/quote]

I was feeling silly and asked Alexa to play “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy”… I don’t think I’ve heard that in over 40 years! :wink:

  • karen