Yeah good question. Alexa skills don't want to be long-lived so you have to force them to stay open so you're not constantly saying "Alexa ask <app name> to <x>" which, by the way, hardly ever works.
With a video skill like this, I can submit APL documents and then long-running commands to make it keep "doing something" throughout the playback. There is a limit to how long you can command it to "delay" but I think it's more than 5 minutes or something.
I haven't tried it, but for non-video skills I've read that you can play silent audio for a period of time to keep the skill open.
The first is when the skill does a thing and then immediately starts listening again. The blue bar is already there and you don't need to say "Alexa".
The second is when the skill is still open but not currently listening. Takes a bit of hackery to keep the skill from constantly closing, namely, long-running APL commands.
The third is when the skill is closed and you're trying to get it to do something. I call this "deep launching" but it almost never works. Amazon has built an amazing system here, but the Alexa system needs work on recognizing skill names for deep launching.
Comments
This looks impressive, but I'm most curious about the Alexa integration. How do you do that without having to say "ask <app name> to <x>" every time?
Yeah good question. Alexa skills don't want to be long-lived so you have to force them to stay open so you're not constantly saying "Alexa ask <app name> to <x>" which, by the way, hardly ever works.
With a video skill like this, I can submit APL documents and then long-running commands to make it keep "doing something" throughout the playback. There is a limit to how long you can command it to "delay" but I think it's more than 5 minutes or something.
I haven't tried it, but for non-video skills I've read that you can play silent audio for a period of time to keep the skill open.
Janky, for sure.
In the video at the end of the page that is exactly how it works: 'Alexa, ask Nexus to open Back in Black by AC/DC'.
He's making a subtle point here. There's
"do x"
vs
"Alexa, do x"
vs
"Alexa, ask AppName to do x"
The first is when the skill does a thing and then immediately starts listening again. The blue bar is already there and you don't need to say "Alexa".
The second is when the skill is still open but not currently listening. Takes a bit of hackery to keep the skill from constantly closing, namely, long-running APL commands.
The third is when the skill is closed and you're trying to get it to do something. I call this "deep launching" but it almost never works. Amazon has built an amazing system here, but the Alexa system needs work on recognizing skill names for deep launching.
He does say "Alexa, give me some metal EQ" and similar things multiple times.