CODEWITHSUNDEEP
alexa-skills-kit
Nathan
Nathan

Reputation: 7709

Make alexa/amazon echo say, what I type

I have an echo dot (Alexa) and I would like to control what the alexa is saying from my computer (by typing it). I can synthesize speach using amazon polly, but can I also make Alexa say it and enable the blue glow while she is saying it as if she would respond to a voice command?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 8526

Answers (2)

Caleb Gates
Caleb Gates

Reputation: 1024

Yes, I did this using a node server and socket.io npm package. It basically called the web server with an api call (Socket.io request) each time you asked alexa a question and then you could type the response and that would be returned to alexa and spoken outloud. You need to initiate the conversation by talking to alexa because you cannot push notifications to alexa. But Alexa will wait a long time for an API call to complete before answering so you could wait minutes before sending your socket.io response. (Alexa only waits 6 seconds for a human to respond after a prompt but she'll wait until your lambda times out for an API to return)

here's a link to the video on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/calebgates_i-build-a-lot-of-amazon-alexa-skills-so-activity-6491027705448923136-EzPI

Upvotes: 1

Akhilesh Awasthi
Akhilesh Awasthi

Reputation: 2708

Yes. You can add capabilities to Alexa. These additional capabilities are called Alexa Skills. Please go through the following documentation for building Alexa skills using Alexa Skills Kit(ASK).

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/ask-overviews/build-skills-with-the-alexa-skills-kit.html

EDIT:

Alexa is basically based on the user-initiated conversation, hence it getting invoke without the user initiating a conversation defeats the whole purpose of it. However, Alexa Communications Announcements might be the very thing you are looking for. As it allows you to send announcements to you Alexa device using the companion app. It says,

Use the Alexa app on a mobile device to send recorded audio or TTS announcements.

From the Communicate tab of the app, select the Announce button. Then use either the microphone button to record an audio announcement (which will play in the user's voice) or the keyboard to write a text announcement (which will play in Alexa's voice).

This should do the trick for you.

Upvotes: 1

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