Using Amazon Echo (Alexa) as microphone for Synthiam

Description

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 Then 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.

Create EZ-Builder project and add controls

Add an HTTP Server Control (NOT the HTTP Custom Server), set port number (8010 in my example) and START the server

Add a Movement Panel Control for your robot

Simple commands such as forward() can be added in IFTTT

Optional: If creating complex scripts, add Script Manager Control

Here is an example from @DJ of a more complex script


SayEZB("I have " +round( ( ( getvoltage() - 7 ) / 1.2 ) * 100, 1 ) + " percent battery remaining")


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