Alexa binding without beep

Add-ons Bindings
1

Hi all,

after the last upgrade to 2.5.10 of the Alexa Binding the texttospeech item has now a beep before any tts message. In the past it works without the beep. What I understood is that the beep is only for an announcement but not for texttospeech function. Any idea how I can disable the beep ?

many thanks and regards,
Christian

2

I am on OH 2.5.10-1 and use e.g.

Echo_Living_Room_TTS.sendCommand( '<speak><amazon:effect name="whispered">hallo</amazon:effect></speak>' )

in a rule and there is no beep. I did not change anything after the upgrade to 2.5.10.

3

Thanks Wolfgang,

I use

Item
Alexa_Sprachausgabe : String

Rule
Alexa_Sprachausgabe.postUpdate("Door is open")
EchoArbeitszimmer_Sprich.sendCommand(Alexa_Sprachausgabe.state.toString)

With OH 2.5.10 it works, I will make a try with your syntax.

4

Now I’m checked it, with “wispered” the beep isn’t there but the delay always.

If I remove the effect-parameter I have the same result that the beep is there.

5

I also tried

Echo_Living_Room_TTS.sendCommand( 'Door is open' )

no beep here.

How did you define Echo Arbeitszimmer_Sprich ?

6

I defined it by paper UI. Only standard - this is type String.

Here the rest interface definition

{
  "link": "http://192.168.xxx.xxx:8080/rest/items/ShowWohnzimmer_Sprich",
  "state": "",
  "stateDescription": {
    "pattern": "%s",
    "readOnly": false,
    "options": []
  },
  "editable": true,
  "type": "String",
  "name": "ShowWohnzimmer_Sprich",
  "label": "Sprich",
  "tags": [],
  "groupNames": []
}

Thats all.

7

That seems to be the item that you use as input to be sent to Alexa. What I meant is the TTS channel.
Just in case it could be defined in a different way.

Mine is defined as:

String Echo_Living_Room_TTS                   "Text to Speech"                        (Alexa_Living_Room) {channel="amazonechocontrol:echo:xxxxxxxx:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:textToSpeech"}
8

ShowWohnzimmer_Sprich is the item which is created by Paper UI for texttospeech. The channel info will be only displayed in Paper UI

amazonechocontrol:echoshow:xxxxxxxx:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:textToSpeech

All thinks and items are defined by Paper UI. Only things which are not supported directly I add manually.

In the REST interface it looks :

"linkedItems": [
  "ShowWohnzimmer_Sprich"
],
"uid": "amazonechocontrol:echoshow:xxxxxxxx:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:textToSpeech",
"id": "textToSpeech",
"channelTypeUID": "amazonechocontrol:textToSpeech",
"itemType": "String",
"kind": "STATE",
"label": "Sprich",
"description": "Spricht den Text (Nur schreiben). Es kann reiner Text oder SSML verwendet werden: e.g. <speak>Ich will dir ein Geheimnis erzählen.<amazon:effect name=\"whispered\">Ich bin nicht wirklich ein Mensch.</amazon:effect></speak>",
"defaultTags": [],
"properties": {},
"configuration": {}

looks from my end fine…

one remark before you ask, Beep is diabled on Amazon Echo Settings.

9

Nothing new from my end, beep always there.

Wolfgang_S What kind of Echo are you using (Dot, Show, …) ?

10

My tests were done on an Echo Plus. But also own a Dot and a Echo Show 5.

11

Thanks Wolfgang, now I changed to OH3 and will check again if I have solved the open issues.

12

I will give a response becaue it’s solved.

The reason was that I set the volume to a standard value before I send the message. The beep comes from the setting command and in result the message delay was to long for me. Now I remove the setvolume for the Alexa devices and it works without beep. Thanks again
best, Christian

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