In searching for a noise tolerant microphone for my EZ-Robot AdventureBot I checked out the Amazon Echo product which has a great feature in its always-on array microphones. You can even place several low-cost Echo Dots ($50) around your home to enable multi room use. The problem was how to get it to talk to EZB.
The answer is, as pointed out by @Mickey666Maus in a previous post, the free web service called IFTTT (If This This Than That). IFTTT has a built-in interface (Channel) that supports Amazon Echo and includes a user defined Channel called Maker that offers a means to send http commands to devices.
Add an HTTP server control and start it in ARC. In my case I used port 8010.
Add port forwarding in your router to direct this port to your PC that is running ARC
Create scripts in Script Manager to perform tasks; e.g. forward, stop, reverse, battery level
Create Applets in IFTTT to trigger (the IF part) from Amazon Alexa Channel to invoke actions (the THEN part) in the Maker Webhooks Channel to launch the scripts in ARC.
Test the applets by speaking to the Amazon Echo and watch the EZB robot respond
In practice, this gives a neat way to have a walk around remote microphone to control your EZB robot or even just perform a simple verbal battery level check.
If desired, you could even add the $30 Amazon Voice Remote for Amazon Echo and Echo Dot to have a handheld microphone
If there’s enough interest in this, I could write up a tutorial with detailed instructions
Awesome first tutorial!
In the tutorial, you create scripts for movements (i.e. Forward, left, stop, etc)
That step can be skipped because the http server can execute ezscript commands directly, rather than controlCommand()
For example: forward() or stop()
Whooooooooaaaaaaaa that was fast! So good to have this setup as a tutorial, also good that it is pointed out that you should have a fixed IP...most Routers restart at least once a day!
Great work!
@DJ Thanks for the tip. That works great!
I'll update the tutorial and only use script manager for complex scripts
Frank
Fantastic well done!
Nice, Love it! Thanks for sharing!
Wow! This is fantastic!. Would this work with Google Home units? Thanx:)~
@RB333 It should work on Google Home because IFTTT supports Google Assistant
I don't have a Google Home unit, so I can't test it
Regards, Frank
Funny, I did not really research the google assistant yet...but it seems to be interesting, it can be installed on any phone I guess...will try later!