Location based Echo announcement with Echo Speaks

#1

1) Give a description of the problem
Forgive me if this is more of an Echo Speaks question. I’m trying to have a little fun with my daughter and attempting to fire off an echo speaks announcement when arriving at her school. The Echo device would be an Echo Auto. I’ve configured the webcore mobile app for location awareness. I’ve included a Push notification to confirm that the location is working as expected, and it is. But the announcement is never made on the Echo.

2) What is the expected behaviour?
Make an echo speaks announcement at a specific location.

3) What is happening/not happening?
I’ve confirmed the piston is firing at a specific location, but the rest of the piston doesn’t seem to work. I get a push notification as expected. But no echo announcement. Is there something about my piston that is inaccurate? Pistons fire in a sequence, correct?

4) Post a Green Snapshot of the piston!

Unknown
Unknown.png1178×536 59.6 KB

#2

Adding… I’ve also confirmed the Echo Auto is on, with volume turned up at the time when its expected to make the announcement.

#3

I’m trying to do something similar. I’ll follow along here :blush:

#4

As I test, I could create a simple piston to test if there’s an issue with Echo Speaks and Echo Auto. But kind of just wondering if I’ve set this piston up incorrectly.

#5

I’ve not used webCoRE presence but I would be tempted to set the Task Cancellation Policy for the ‘wait’ to ‘never cancel’, if you haven’t already.

I suggest this because ‘arrivingAtPlace’ sounds like it might only be set when you first cross a geofence, and so if you linger in a location it might be cleared. If that happens the piston will trigger again and the TCP will prevent the announcement happening. Same thing will happen if it doesn’t change but gets sent as an event anyway.

#6

Thanks @orangebucket. I’ll give that a shot.

#7

I believe you will get better results if you only trigger on the arriving and then check the time. Should be something like this

if sensors arriving place changes to school.     <--trigger
then
  if time is between 7:35-7:55 AM.       <--condition
  then
     send message 
     play music
  end if
end if
#8

I am very curious if Echo Auto will respond to Echo Speaks when the car is 15 miles away from your home network…

#9

Just to make sure - because I spent hours to get echo auto to play music - and realized alexa App MUST BE OPEN on your phone…
is it?

#10

Open or in the background? I use it all the time. I don’t have the Alexa app open on the phone.

#11

Curious why this might be better? Just so I can understand it.

Remember, I’m having success triggering when arriving at the location during that time period as it’s currently written. The piston just craps out after sending the Push notification.

#12

In general practice, it is always better to start with the trigger that gets the piston going and then narrow logic down from there. As logic gets more complicated, this is a basic safe principle shared here that often avoids conflicts.

#13

in the background.

#14

Just following up on this. I tried a simple piston with a sim switch and couldn’t get the echo auto to speak. Seems like an issue between echo auto and echo speaks.

#15

In speaking with the developer of Echo Speaks. It seems like this is an Amazon restriction (unsure if deliberate) on the Echo Auto itself. Until Amazon fixes this, we’re SOL with the Echo Auto.

#16

I can confirm that the Echo Auto does not speak text from a simple piston.