[DEPRECATED] Echo Speaks

Oh... Check the volume of the device... I've heard reports of volume being set to 0 on new installs.

yes they all did go to zero but still nothing
when I try from the broadcast test page the logs give me this
"amazonCommandResp | Status: (200) | Response: null | (SequenceCommand (MultiSequence)) was Successfully Sent!!!"
So it should work

I've been waiting for a few folks to work out the kinks and to ask questions so I could understand how it works :slight_smile:

I'll start with a comparison between "Echo Speaks" and "Amazon Alexa Text to Speach" from @ogiewon. This is more for an understanding before I load everything in. If this isn't the place to put this, I'll be more than happy to remove it and start a separate thread. I don't want to diminish the work @tonesto7 has done. I think it's great that developers are creating more apps for the HE environment.

So far I think I have two differences:

  1. The cookie still has to be pulled from Amazon and ES does this by way of heroku and AAT does this by way of node.js.
  2. ES has volume controls per device and ATT doesn't.
  3. ES doesn't have the 3 device limit that AAT does (I was able to send a message to all 9 of my echos).

What else can be added to the list?

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The features...

There is also a companion app coming to take advantage of echo speaks feature using event triggers to perform advanced actions.

ok got them talking from the device settings it was the volume going to zero
but in the app the "broadcast test page" when I send the test the echo devices light up for a second but do not say anything (I have tried change the test phrase as well).

looks like the echo volume settings keep going lower with each test from "broadcast test page" when I send the test

Hold off on counting on the broadcast test in the app... I'm getting reports of it not working. (It was more of a debug tool. I never realized so many used it until recently)
I will work on it and push out updates.

Thank you for creating this, it looks to fill a gap that I have been waiting to implement.

When time is available, can install in instructions be created for HE like they were for ST? I’m not trying to be dull, but the ST instructions seem very well put together and straight forward.

Apologies if they exist like the ST ones, I couldn’t locate them quickly.

Eventually, I will attempt to create Hubitat examples... (It's very time consuming :frowning: )

For now, the flow should be exactly the same with the exception of the popup windows for Heroku deployment and the login button opening a new tab

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Completely understood, no worries at all, app functionality and stability come first. :slightly_smiling_face:

Hi @tonesto7 I'm the developer of NodeJS cookie renew to Amazon Alexa Text to Speech app,
I'd like to replace it with this new Echo app for all the extended commands, but I prefer to have cookie generated locally by my server instead of a cloud one: do you know if it's possible to deploy Heroku code (should still be NodeJS, isn't it?) on a local server?
It will be easier than adapt my NodeJS renewer that has different JSON format etc..

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The deployment originally supported either cloud or local.
At one time I preferred to have a local server for performance because it used to act as the bridge between ST and Amazon.

Now I guess I don't understand the need to add the complexity of running a local node service for this scenario. Especially when the Heroku service is zero touch and works great and is secured by SSL and is only needed to initially login and every 5 days to renew the cookie.

(I may not be the best judge on adding complexity :slight_smile: As i'm someone with a PowerEdge server running in the basement with vSphere running multiple windows/linux vm's)

If you are really interested in it I suppose I can add support for local again. It's mostly just changing the app logic some as the server just needs the app endpoint to callback to.

For security reasons I'd prefer to keep cookie and information to renew it locally instead of somewhere on Heroku.. BTW does Heroku keep informations for renewing cookie on the Node server or it's saved in Hubitat as string?

(I have 2 vSphere server as well :blush:)

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This is another reason Heroku shines. It stores zero data beyond environment variables which point it to the app...

So when it restarts or goes to sleep after 30 minutes of no activity all data is lost. On wakeup It queries the data from appEndpoint

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This is amazing! Great job. I am also adding a vote for locally stored cookie if possible.

On another note, I selected the "Create Multiroom Devices" and it saw my "everywhere" group with all of my echos in it. It will not send any messages to them. Is this associated with the broadcast comments you made above? As a side note, I have 9 devices and it will send a message to all of them.

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I join the others in thanking you for another great job (I also use your homebridge implementation)! Install was smooth, and after reading about the non-functioning test option I went straight to the devices and everything worked as expected.

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I just got Echo Speaks up and running on my Development Hubitat hub. Nice work! So far, so good. Thanks for your work on porting this Tony. It is great to have options!

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unfortunately amazon doesn’t support tts to groups.

It is really quiet in this thread. I thought there would have been a lot more excitement.

It works great nice to have volume control
If Heroku continues to auto grab cookies that is great a little concerned relying on Heroku if they shut down then that will stop. Getting cookies locally would never be an issue unless Amazon blocks us.
My goal is create a system at home that never needs maintenance. If I am here no problem but if anything happened to me my wife and kids would never fix the system. I am slowly even moving all my sensors off batteries even though I have alerts sent to their phones to say "change the front door sensor battery" they will never do it (well maybe if I have it sent everyday until changed they might finally get annoyed and change them).

The device page is a bit busy with multiple play text, speak, play track options
but I do like a lot of options.