Home Assistant Talking to Alexa (The Script)

Goals

• install the script
• configure the script
• check the connection

Prerequisites

You have created a Custom Skill. Have the ID of the skill at hand. You can find this on the Alexa Developer Console by clicking "Copy Skill ID" on the skill you created.

You have the ID of your media player at hand (i.e. an Echo device) to set into media_player.<Your Media Player> for testing. In doubt go to Developer Tools > STATES and search for it.

Installing the script

The following steps and examples are using this script to connect to Alexa. Make sure to install it i.e. into /config/scripts.yaml. Replace <Your Skill ID> with your skills ID.

activate_alexa_actionable_notification:
  alias: activate_alexa_actionable_notification
  description: Activates an actionable notification on a specific echo device
  fields:
    text:
      description: The text you would like alexa to speak.
      example: 'What would you like the thermostat set to?'
    event_id:
      description: Correlation ID for event responses
      example: 'ask_for_temperature'
    alexa_device:
      description: Alexa device you want to trigger
      example: 'media_player.bedroom_echo'
    suppress_confirmation:
      description: Set true if you want to suppress 'okay' confirmation
      example: 'true'
  sequence:
    - action: input_text.set_value
      target:
        entity_id: input_text.alexa_actionable_notification
      data_template:
        value: '{"text": "{{ text }}", "event": "{{ event_id }}", "suppress_confirmation": "{{ suppress_confirmation }}"}'
    - action: media_player.play_media
      target:
        entity_id: "{{ alexa_device }}"
      data_template:
        media_content_type: skill
        media_content_id: <Your Skill ID>
  mode: single

Use the Developer Tools to reload SCRIPTS.

Checking success

Round-tripping

Open two windows of the Developer Tools side by side, one for the request, one for the response.

In Developer Tools > SERVICES > GO TO YAML MODE enter:

service: script.activate_alexa_actionable_notification
data:
  text: "Yes or no?"
  event_id: "alexa_actionable_notification_test"
  alexa_device: media_player.<Your Media Player>

• Do translations.
• Insert your media Player ID.

In Developer Tools > EVENTS listen to the event alexa_actionable_notification. Hit the CALL SERVICE button.

Your echo device should ask the given question and wait for your answer. You successfully reached skill and device and the answer successfully took the opposite direction.

Observe how the response contains the event_id of the request. As a takeaway notice, how this is the place to debug the structure of the data within the event.

Troubleshooting

If you hear nothing or you don't receive the expected response, check your setup.

• Is the skill listed within your Alexa App on your Smartphone?
• Is the volume up?
• Did you connect your device and not to a device of your wife's or husband's account?
• Did you provide the right ID of your skill?
• In the developer console check the Analytics of your skill. (Utterances count up with some latency.)

End-to-end testing

We already got close to end-to-end testing. To do real world end-to-end testing, we need a minimal application to run. This is covered by the hello world application in the next step.

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Head to the next step: Hello World

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