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Is this still a thing? I was going to try and set up the original (non native) echo integration and see if I could do something simple, like have CQC send a text to voice announcement via Alexa. I was following the Dean's guide in advanced topics documentation, but hit a roadblock when trying to download the code needed to set up the needed Lamba function.
Are the files mentioned at being at this link still available?
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/Downloa...QCEcho.Zip
That link doesn't do anything for me. Has Amazon changed something that tanked this integration?
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(04-25-2021, 06:03 PM)rhosch Wrote: Is this still a thing? I was going to try and set up the original (non native) echo integration and see if I could do something simple, like have CQC send a text to voice announcement via Alexa. I was following the Dean's guide in advanced topics documentation, but hit a roadblock when trying to download the code needed to set up the needed Lamba function.
Are the files mentioned at being at this link still available?
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/Downloa...QCEcho.Zip
That link doesn't do anything for me. Has Amazon changed something that tanked this integration?
Apparently Amazon ditched that method and to my knowledge the only way now is to use the Native Echo method -
>
https://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forums/showthread.php?tid=10835
What is odd is that the old method works if you had set it up before they closed it, so I still have access to it since I had it initially.
I also implemented the Native Echo integration, and it is much easier to use once set up, but more of a pain to set up than the other.
The advantage of the old system was the ability to query things -> ie "Alexa ask Control what is the outside temperature" and she responds back to whatever you programmed in your response. I use this some, but not as much as the Native part.
The native implementation allows you to easily control devices (on, off, volume up/down, set values, etc.) but it doesn't give you the voice confirmation other than a "ding" or "okay". I use this part every day to turn on speakers, set volume, change channels on TV's, change input on TV's, turn lights on and off. This method is worth it if your willing to put in the work.
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Oh, interesting. I had read through that thread on native echo implemtation and my impression was that Amazon had removed a literal input type that was needed and only the old non-native method worked. Maybe I got that mixed up.
Yeah, sounds like I might want to give the native setup a shot. Sounds... fun!
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You may want to reach out to lapointe.sc@gmail.com, I helped him get it set up last year and he said he was putting together a "how-to" but never saw it posted.
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(04-26-2021, 08:56 PM)kblagron Wrote: You may want to reach out to lapointe.sc@gmail.com, I helped him get it set up last year and he said he was putting together a "how-to" but never saw it posted.
Thanks. Sounds like that will be helpful.
In the meantime, I've realized that one of the primary things I wanted to play with, simple text to speech, may not even be supported on the alexa platform in a way that is useful, and is probably handled better by the cqc speech driver and microsoft tts implementation. So I'm going to see if I can get that working first before looping back to see if I can get speech input working.
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Dang. Everything is always more complicated than it should be. Looks like Microsoft recently changed their tts platform? The Microsoft Speech Platform 11 runtime and language files are no longer available from MS. They have a Speech Server Runtime available. Tried that, but CQC is not finding any installed TTS voices it can use.
Any suggestions?
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(04-27-2021, 06:10 PM)rhosch Wrote: Dang. Everything is always more complicated than it should be. Looks like Microsoft recently changed their tts platform? The Microsoft Speech Platform 11 runtime and language files are no longer available from MS. They have a Speech Server Runtime available. Tried that, but CQC is not finding any installed TTS voices it can use.
Any suggestions?
Check out this recent thread. Not sure where Goerge M was able to get V11 runtime, but if you PM me your email address, I have 2017 versions that work fine now with Win10. If you check at the end of the thread, his issue was because WMP was not the default player, and something wasn't installed.
https://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forums/s...?tid=11176
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The demise of our own Echo integration was indeed the literal type that they removed. It probably allowed folks to be too competitive with something that Amazon could charge for or some such. But when that went away, it got rid of any ability to accept arbitrary words as part of a command, and that makes it pretty useless for something like what we had done.
Dean Roddey
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Most of my actions I really used I moved to Ifttt integration via Alexa. You can only do 3 free ones I think, but will accept unlimited email accounts to cover any others.
