Belgian news

[rubbens16]

The most recent Belgian news can be heard on http://download.streampower.be/vrt/radio1/11_11niws-snip_hi.mp3

Is there a way to ask something like "Alexa give me the Belgian headlines" (or something similar) and Alexa would play the mentioned URL?

I've read somewhere that a user was able to play a specific song from an URL by using IFTTT and Belvedere. But I can't find any reference to this. Can you point me in a direction to accomplish this?

Tx - Ivan

[rubbens16]

Anybody willing to help me to solve this issue?

I was thinking of creating a crontab job on my server that downloads the mp3 every hour and to upload it to Amazon Music (and replacing the previous mp3). Unfortunately, I don't find any cli interface to Amazon music to integrate into a script. So this idea should be abandoned.

Any other ideas I can work out?

-- Ivan

[DParker]

The most direct method would be to develop an Alexa skill that accomplishes what you want.  Do you have any software development experience?

[rubbens16]

Do you have any software development experience?

I can ask advice to my co-workers who are Java developers. But are you aware of another project who tried to do something similar so I can have a starting point?

Ivan

[DParker]

I can ask advice to my co-workers who are Java developers. But are you aware of another project who tried to do something similar so I can have a starting point?

Ivan

Amazon itself is the best source of information that I've seen so far (there may be other sites with better tutorials and/or examples, I just haven't seen them).  They've really gone out of their way to make information on creating skills readily accessible:

https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit

What you're looking for is a "Custom Skill", as opposed to a "Home Automation Skill".

I did find the following 3rd party tutorial, but I haven't gone over it to any length, so I can't vouch for its quality:

http://tobuildsomething.com/2015/08/14/Amazon-Echo-Alexa-Tutorial-The-Definitive-Guide-to-Coding-an-Alexa-Skill/

[rubbens16]

Tx - I'll try it out.

Do you know if it would be possible to play an mp3 stream? It might be possible that Amazon blocked this feature to protect their Amazon Music service.

-- Ivan

[rubbens16]

Apparently it's not possible to play long audio clips.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36640600/how-do-you-play-a-long-audio-clip-on-alexa-amazon-echo

[jwlv]

It is possible to create a skill that can play an MP3 file using SSML.
The MP3 file must be hosted on a trusted SSL location, 48Khz, and cannot be longer than 90 seconds.
Conceivably you could chop up a long audio file into multiple 90-second MP3 files (i.e. news01.mp3, news02.mp3, news03.mp3...)
On the server end of things, you will need to download the source MP3 of your Belgian news (I assume you should do this once each day), then do some processing to chop it into multiple 90-second files.
Your skill would play the first file, ask if you want to continue, then play the 2nd file, and so on.
The reason why the skill must ask if you want to continue is because the audio limit is 90 seconds in a single response. If you were to program your skill to play multiple 90 second clips one after another, it will stop after the first 90 seconds. In other words, each additional 90 second clip must be a separate response.


See this page for info on how to use SSML.
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference