Macros?

[DavBro]

I was hopping the IFTTT trigger announcement would make this possibly, but unfortunately not.  I would like to see the Echo have some sort of macro capability, where I could say a phrase and it would carry out several commands in a sequence.  For example:  "Alexa, macro bedtime" would do this:

Volume 2
Play ocean waves
Sleep timer 1 hour

or this:  "Alexa, macro morning" would do this:

Volume 5
What's the weather?
What's the traffic?
Play 80's mix

Seems like IFTTT would be the perfect way to implement it, but it would require a lot more actions to be available.

[bukzin]

So a macro is the same as a robot?

[churchbear]

I was just talking about this and would LOVE to see the ability to build up a set of commands - macro style

[pjanthony15]

What would be helpful for older individuals is to have someone else set up the macros, then the older person could have a series of information with a simple command:
Day of the week, Month and year
Outside weather
Any appointments/visits that day (coming off Google calendar)
Reminders:  e.g. don't forget your pills at morning, noon and night. 

In other words, this could be an orientation board for older individuals.  Certainly would be a plum in Amazon's hat or whatever that cliche is.....

[ScottinPollock]

This won't work as there is no way to push actions to Alexa; everything it does has to be in response to being spoken to.

A ugly hack would be to record speech commands or use TTS on another device (computer, phone, tablet) and play them back via timer within earshot of the Echo.

[additude]

This won't work as there is no way to push actions to Alexa; everything it does has to be in response to being spoken to.

A ugly hack would be to record speech commands or use TTS on another device (computer, phone, tablet) and play them back via timer within earshot of the Echo.

Maybe it could be setup in the Echo account and act as a "Playlist" of sorts... only a "Playlist" of commands....

[ScottinPollock]

Maybe it could be setup in the Echo account and act as a "Playlist" of sorts... only a "Playlist" of commands....

What I did was to find a way to have Alexa send commands to a Mac on my LAN. Using an app called HAM Bridge, those commands execute scripts on the Mac to tell a variety of apps and devices what to do. These scripts can accomplish quite a number of things, including sending TTS back to the Echo via Bluetooth.

Unfortunately, Alexa can not talk directly to devices on your LAN; everything that Alexa responds to originates in the cloud. My workaround for this was to create a skill that directs requests to SmartThings, and a Smartapp that pass them on to the Mac (as well as other SmartApp handlers), which then issues responses back to Alexa.

It all works quite well, and I am thankful for Amazon providing free hosting for my skills function, but it would be much nicer for the do it yourself'r to be able to directly pass Alexa's output to a local device.