Echo & Alexa Forums

General Category => Alexa Software Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: pn2865 on June 17, 2015, 06:40:57 pm

Title: Need app for general interfacing to replace the To-Do list hack
Post by: pn2865 on June 17, 2015, 06:40:57 pm
The only way to currently interface with unsupported hardware is with the To-Do List hack/kludge. Could somebody please make an app that would simply send an HTTP GET or POST message to a (local?) IP address configured by the user? It would contain the words that Echo heard and maybe the date and time. Each one would be a separate parameter in the message.  Then all the techies out there could write a simple (Rasp Pi?) program to receive the message, parse it, and then programmatically interface with whatever device is accessible to the Rasp Pi (or whatever). That might be X10, ZeeBee, a hub, or ANYTHING else. Comments?

Title: Re: Need app for general interfacing to replace the To-Do list hack
Post by: jonjanisch on June 18, 2015, 12:42:36 am
I don't have access to the beta SDK, but here's another hacky (but neat!) solution if you haven't seen it:

http://www.aftvnews.com/controlling-the-amazon-fire-tv-with-the-amazon-echo
Title: Re: Need app for general interfacing to replace the To-Do list hack
Post by: pn2865 on June 18, 2015, 10:09:31 am
Thanks for the info. It's a clever hack!
Hopefully there will be a simple way to interface "things" in the future.
Title: Re: Need app for general interfacing to replace the To-Do list hack
Post by: gssincla on June 22, 2015, 10:08:24 am
I'm still waiting for my sdk invite, so I'm hoping to see if I can reverse engineer the communication protocols and do something similar. has anyone managed to get a network capture of the messages that are sent between Echo->Amazon->Echo? That last leg of the conversation would be interesting to me. This would be easier if Echo had a wired connection, then it would be a simple matter of sniffing (and possible some form of SSL MitM), but right now I have to set up a wireless system just for this which I haven't had time to do yet.
Title: Re: Need app for general interfacing to replace the To-Do list hack
Post by: luma on June 22, 2015, 09:26:27 pm
Could somebody please make an app that would simply send an HTTP GET or POST message to a (local?) IP address configured by the user?

Take a look at the amazon-echo-ha-bridge (https://github.com/armzilla/amazon-echo-ha-bridge).  I explain how I'm using it here (http://www.echotalk.org/index.php/topic,47.0.html).  You can say "Alexa turn on <name>" or "Alexa set <name> to 30 percent", and send those commands via HTTP to an a specified IP address.