Playing Sounds - Alternative Method (Using Notify)

[Benjamin-299]

Background

Since I have several echo devices (and lots of door/window sensors around the house) I wanted to play a tone when an exterior door was opened or closed. Following the wiki I setup some tests using the known sounds, but wasn't happy with the options.
I tried many other sounds from the Alexa sound library but nothing would work for me when trying to play the sounds with the media play service.

After looking more at the APLA and SSML documentation from Amazon (and lots of failed attempts) I found another way to play these sounds! Instead of using the media play service, the notify.alexa_media service can be used with the sounds found in the Alexa sound library as part of the message.

I had looked around but never found much discussion around playing the other media files. Hopefully someone else may be able to take advantage of what I've found. Unsure if this is something that should be documented in the wiki or not, so just starting here.

Details

This example was given on the Alexa developer documentation for playing a sound with a spoken message:

{
  "type": "APLA",
  "version": "0.91",
  "mainTemplate": {
    "parameters": [
      "payload"
    ],
    "item": {
      "type": "Speech",
      "contentType": "SSML",
      "content": "<speak>This is Bear Groan Roar 1 sound effect, embedded in the Speech component. <audio src='soundbank://soundlibrary/animals/amzn_sfx_bear_groan_roar_01'/></speak>"
    }
  }
}

With the alexa media player component, we can call these audio files as part of notifications!

• When calling the notify.alexa_media service, both text and the audio files seem to play as expected, even when combined together!
• This example will read out the text, then play the audio file of the bear groan.
  • Placing the sound before or after the text have both worked for me without issue.

service: notify.alexa_media
data:
  target: media_player.echo_device
  message: "This is Bear Groan Roar 1 sound effect, embedded in the Speech component. <audio src='soundbank://soundlibrary/animals/amzn_sfx_bear_groan_roar_01'/>"

Extras

• The source code copied from the Alexa sound library needs modified slightly to work in the service calls.
• Here is the direct source for a beep tone:
  • Note the double quotes used

<audio src="soundbank://soundlibrary/computers/beeps_tones/beeps_tones_06"/>

• The double quotes within the source need to be replaced with single quotes, then the whole string needs to be put in double quotes for the message:

message: "<audio src='soundbank://soundlibrary/computers/beeps_tones/beeps_tones_06'/>"

Node Red:

• Here is an example of a call service node doing the same function for those using Node Red:

[
    {
        "id": "9b655e38b6015b68",
        "type": "api-call-service",
        "version": 5,
        "domain": "notify",
        "service": "alexa_media",
        "data": "{\"data\":{\"type\":\"tts\"},\"target\":\"media_player.echo_device\",\"message\":\"This is Bear Groan Roar 1 sound effect, embedded in the Speech component. <audio src='soundbank://soundlibrary/animals/amzn_sfx_bear_groan_roar_01'/>\"}",
        "dataType": "json"
    }
]