Skill interaction via HE or Echo Speaks, or?

[rrands1]

Is there a way to "start" a skill via an HE routine of some sort? For instance, (not my real use case, but should be close enough), the CNBC Alexa Skill allows me to say: “Alexa, ask CNBC what Amazon is trading at”, and the Alexa device will answer. I want to start a skill with options that would normally be spoken to the device, but without me having to speak (so triggered by some other means).

I have EchoSpeaks set up, so can control which device gets spoken from, but is there a way to do this programmatically via a routine or piston, or some other way?

Thanks for any help or suggestions!

-randy

[stephen_nutt]

Check this out. Alexa added Custom option to Routines that might work for you.

Amazon Alexa adds custom actions

Amazon has finally added custom actions to their routines. For anyone with an Alexa account, this will allow us to trigger a virtual switch that turns on a virtual motion sensor with this code, and then have Alexa silently do anything we would verbally ask it to do. This is like Google Assistant Relay without the need for a node.js server, the relatively involved setup or any specific drivers beyond this simple Virtual motion with Switch code that @ogiewon provided to the community (in addition…

[rrands1]

I don't think this will work in this instance - happy to be wrong...

So I don't know that I can tell an Alexa routine to do what I want (in my example mimic me saying "Alexa, ask CNBC what Amazon is trading at" - at least not in what I am seeing for options there - it would let me start the Skill, but I don't see where I can pass options to it?

Thank you!

[stephen_nutt]

If you only interested in 3-5 stocks, you could create a routine for each using method described in other thread. But if you want to be able to potentially ask for any company's stock price your are probably right. @tonesto7 has mentioned that he is going to try and incorporate the Custom Command in Echo Speaks I believe but I have no idea if that is a big ask. There is hope!

[neonturbo]

You may want to cross-post this in the Echo Speaks main thread so Tonesto can possibly give advice.

[cwwilson08]

@rrands1

it would let me start the Skill, but I don't see where I can pass options to it?

I'm hoping @tonesto7 is able to parse the alexa responses so we can then trigger more routines based on her replies. No reason to think its possible though other than the guys a badass with this stuff. Echo speaks open up sooo many paths.