Alexa compatibility

[dp247]

I haven't used Amazon's Alexa platform in years, but could probably maybe build a skill that feeds off this.

[robbrad]

@dp247 - I have started looking into this

[robbrad]

Still on my radar - just sorting some of the repo hygiene

[robbrad]

@dp247 / @OliverCullimore

Started looking at this and I think we are going to need some compute like an AWS Lambda (this acts as an endpoint to serve the content). Now I know some of the councils take a long time to run so I think we need a new Github action to run all councils daily and store the data in an S3 bucket. The Lambda would then use the Alexa invocation to get the "next bin data" from the s3 bucket

[dp247]

Not to get ahead of myself, but could the S3 bucket also help some of the other ideas (like #446 and #458)?

[robbrad]

It's a difficult one to implement in an efficient manner - as each household is going to need a its own data, which from the experience of the councils can take anywhere from 2 to 60 seconds per pull - this will drive up infrastructure costs.

[robbrad]

Been thinking about this one and im just not sure its going to work as a live intergration.

What if you used our custom component to add Bin Data and then used Alexa with a Text-To-Speach approach from Home Assistant ?

eg:

lounge_temp:
  alias: Lounge temp
  sequence:
  - service: notify.lounge_dot
    data_template:
      message: "The temperature is {{states('sensor.broadlink_sensor_temperature')|replace('.', ' point ') }} degrees"

[raldred]

I currently do this with to broadcast to google home speakers. using the google assistant SDK and a couple of custom helper entities, an automation triggers the evening before the next bin day, and announces the bins being collected tomorrow.

I don't think there's any need to host any data. Maybe a simple blueprint where people can configure the entities to trigger on?

That being said, I don't know if a similar broadcast system exists for Alexa in home assistant.