Alexa TTS (Text-To-Speech) [and more] plug-in for Vera

BradIHT · February 11, 2020, 2:51am

This. Made. My. Day.

I just saw Midge Ure in concert a few weeks ago in Denver.

Catman · February 11, 2020, 7:55am

Happy to have helped

Ultravox is a band I’ve not managed to see (despite being an un-reconstructed 80s throwback) but I still play Quartet every so often

C

Catman · February 11, 2020, 7:57am

I may have to nick this bit about creating strings and passing them to the TTS. Would cut down a couple of lines in my creepy script (which works perfectly thanks to everyone’s help)!

C

dJOS · February 11, 2020, 10:31am

Argh, Looks like my cookie expired tonight and now I’m getting OTP texts every time Vera tries to speak through Alexa.

Is there anyway to prevent this?

Catman · February 11, 2020, 10:45am

How long has it been active?

C

ElCid · February 11, 2020, 11:53am

Not unless you turn off 2 stage verification.

attach the otp to your password in alex tts variables. (passwordotp)
start a tts scene.
Once working remove the otp from alaxa tts variables

@therealdb May be in future code you could add an otp variable that gets automatically added to the password variable, then deleted once the cookie is received. We could the use automate/tasker to update the otp variable in vera once received. Just a thought on a work around.

therealdb · February 11, 2020, 5:06pm

I’m on vacation, but if you can elaborate more, I can add it for sure.

ElCid · February 11, 2020, 5:41pm

Enjoy your vacation.

Ok when your amazon account uses 2 stage verification, amazon send a onetime passcode (otp) to your registered device, normally a text to a phone or an email.
You can refresh your cookie by adding the otp to the end of your password variable in AlexaTTS ( [your password][otp usually 6 numbers] ). Then execute a TTS via Luup. Once you have executed A TTS the cookie gets renewed. You can then remove this otp from the password variable.

Now if there was a variable say, OnetimePassCode in the alexaTTS variables, and AlexaTTS appended that to the end of the password and after next execution deleted the OneTimePassCode and removed the appended OTP from the password. ( may be, if contains(password, OneTimePassCode) then delete OneTimePassCode and remove its value from the password. else if OneTimePassCode var !null append OneTimePassCode to password.)
It would be possible to use automate/tasker or similar to update the OneTimePassCode, when we receive a otp text.

Hope thats clear.

dJOS · February 11, 2020, 9:01pm

It lasted for 2 weeks.

Catman · February 11, 2020, 9:16pm

Hmm, pretty sure mine’s been longer than that !

C

therealdb · February 12, 2020, 2:00am

Ok, it seems doable. I will add this feature after my break.

ElCid · February 12, 2020, 9:22am

Ok i have had a go at adding this my self
heres what i changed.

local function buildCommand(settings)
	local args = "export EMAIL=%q && export PASSWORD=%q && export SPEAKVOL=%s && export TTS_LOCALE=%s && export LANGUAGE=%s && export AMAZON=%s && export ALEXA=%s && export TMP=%q && %s/" .. SCRIPT_NAME .. " "
	local username = getVar("Username", "", masterID, MYSID)
	local password = getVar("Password", "", masterID, MYSID)  ..  getVar("OneTimePassCode", "", masterID, MYSID) --my edit
	local volume = getVarNumeric("DefaultVolume", "", masterID, MYSID)
	local defaultDevice = getVar("DefaultEcho", "", masterID, MYSID)
	local alexaHost = getVar("AlexaHost", "", masterID, MYSID)
	local amazonHost = getVar("AmazonHost", "", masterID, MYSID)
	local language = getVar("Language", "", masterID, MYSID)
 setVar(MYSID, "OneTimePassCode", "", masterID) -- my edit

	local command = string.format(args, username, password,
										(settings.Volume or volume),
										(settings.Language or language), (settings.Language or language),
										amazonHost, alexaHost,
										BIN_PATH, BIN_PATH,
										(settings.Text or "Test"),
										(settings.GroupZones or defaultDevice))
	return command
end

and

	-- init default vars
    initVar(MYSID, "DebugMode", 0, devNum)
	initVar(MYSID, "Username", "******@gmail.com", devNum)
    initVar(MYSID, "Password", "******", devNum)
	initVar(MYSID, "DefaultEcho", "Lounge", devNum)
	initVar(MYSID, "DefaultVolume", 50, devNum)
	initVar(MYSID, "OneTimePassCode", "", devNum) -- my edit

	-- init default values for US
	initVar(MYSID, "Language", "en-uk", devNum)
	initVar(MYSID, "AlexaHost", "layla.amazon.com", devNum)
	initVar(MYSID, "AmazonHost", "amazon.co.uk", devNum)

The plugin still runs and has added the variable OnetimePassCode. Just waiting for otp to confirm that what i have done will work.

Let me know if i could have done it better

therealdb · February 12, 2020, 7:52pm

Yep, it seems correct. If you want, submit a pull request, or I will add it after my return.

ElCid · February 12, 2020, 8:35pm

Ok Pull request done. I popped my cherry!

I will fully test when my cookie expires, not wanting to delete cookie as its a pain. Will report back If it works as expected.

dJOS · February 12, 2020, 9:31pm

That works great, thank you.

cw-kid · February 19, 2020, 12:45pm

I am not using two step authentication on my Amazon account, however the TTS stops working after a while this is the second time its stopped working for me today.

Looking in the Storage\Alexa folder I only have two files:

.alexa.login
alexa_remote_control_plain.sh.

Last time it stopped working I manually did the cookie thing in Firefox browser again and added my cookie file.

Why is it not automatically renewing the cookie file ?

Thanks

cw-kid · February 19, 2020, 12:51pm

I still had the .alexa.cookie file on my laptop’s desktop that I generated last time a few weeks ago.

I just uploaded it in to the Storage/Alexa folder using WinSCP and now the TTS is working again.

I did not edit or update that .alexa.cookie file in anyway.

I now have these files showing up.

So should my question of been why does the .alexa.cookie file and the other files seem to vanish from the Vera unit ?

After copying up the .alexa.cookie file again these are the files that reappeared.

.alexa.devicelist.all
.alexa.devicelist.json
.alexa.devicelist.txt

And the .alexa.login file I could see initially has now gone.

Looking at the .alexa.cookie file that I had just hanging about on my desktop, it was modified on 21st January, so presumably that was the date I used the Firefox browser and plugin to generate it.

So the TTS has worked for nearly a month.

Catman · February 19, 2020, 1:06pm

I’ve had this happen once only. And I have a copy of the cookie file in the alexa folder in case it happens again.

Probably should have looked in the login file to see what it said. May have been a one time captcha type thing if you’ve been behaving oddly.

C

cw-kid · February 19, 2020, 1:30pm

I was browsing the Internet earlier on my laptop / Chrome browser, looking at shopping sites and I think I clicked on something in Google Search results to go to an Amazon webpage and it did ask me to enter a captcha to proceed.

therealdb · February 19, 2020, 1:33pm

Yep, you can get a captcha from time to time. Let me think about a backup feature of the cookie.