I've just released an initial version of an Alexa Skill / OctoPrint Plugin that allows users to get information about their printer(s) from Alexa devices (and hopefully Google Home in the near future).
Some of the key features:
Get printer information (Status, Temperatures, Current and Previous job status)
No need to open ports or expose your OctoPrint Server IP Address
No need to provide your OctoPrint API key
This skill/plugin combination improves on some of the issues with other implementations, specifically around security since it doesn't require you to open any ports or provide your API keys to any external service. Simply install and configure the plugin, enable the Alexa Skill, and link Alexa to your OctoVox account.
I would love for anyone interested to try it out, offer suggestions for additional features and functionality, and really just let me know if this is something you would find useful in your 3D printing adventures.
I'm waiting on a merge of a pull-request to get into the official OctoPrint Plugin Repository, but in the meantime here are some relevant links:
You should watch your usage on Amazon AWS. If this becomes a super-popular skill then you're the one paying the bill at the end of each month for the Lambda function. This is the biggest reason why I never published my own J.A.R.V.I.S. skill.
Yeah I'm definitely monitoring usage and cost on the service side. I'm actually using Azure Functions as the back-end for the Alexa Skill rather than AWS Lambda functions, but the same considerations apply for usage and billing.
This looks awesome! I've been using Octoprint for ages and thought it'd be great to get some info linked to Alexa. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get past the registration step. A verification email just never arrives, despite scouring all spam folders etc. Any idea what might be going on, or can it take hours for an email to arrive? Many thanks
I'm looking into the reports of the skill not being available in certain regions. I've published it with the option to be available in all regions where Alexa Distributes skills but looks like there may be some requirements that because the skill uses account linking you need a version specific to certain locales. Hoping to have this resolved soon!
Looks like I may have bumped up against a daily email threshold limit on the authentication piece. I'm working to increase this limit so users don't hit this issue in the future.
I would encourage you to find a product specialist on the marketing/management side of things at AWS, state your frustration at the thresholds and arbitrary regionalization of your skill so that they can build a better experience for everyone including the developer.
Thanks @OutsourcedGuru, I have found some information (albeit not very well documented!) that they will perform auto-migration of English skills to other regions automatically unless the skill uses Account Linking in which case they assume that you want to present a customized authorization flow for each region. That may be the case but likely a poor assumption when I have specifically selected the option to distribute in all regions. I'll definitely push to get this worked out!
In the meantime, the Google Action version of OctoVox was just approved and is now in Production, so if anyone uses Google Home devices or the Google Assistant app you should be able to launch the Action by saying "Hey Google, Open My 3D Print Server" or find it HERE.
I would be interested in any feedback from users in other regions of whether or not that works in other regions.
I found them to be a little confused there at Amazon. They would put a new product on the shelves like the Echo Spot and it would then take six months for things in the development API to eventually start to realize that they had a new product to support. I never did revisit that to get the Spot to work; I found that I invested way too much time begging them to upgrade their documentation. It's like the Spot people never talked with the Dot people there and vice versa.
Skill Availability
The Alexa Skill should now be available in all English Speaking regions: English (IN), English (AU), English (US), English (CA), English (UK).
I would appreciate if anyone that was previously unable to find Octovox in the search results can confirm if they can now see it. I will still work on getting it into some of the non-English speaking regions soon. If for some reason you can't find it in the Skill Store on the phone, you should be able to enable it for your account via the following links:
E-mail Verification
The e-mail verification process was hitting the daily outbound email limit for the authorization service. I have corrected this so now there should be plenty of headroom to successfully complete the verification.
Later tonight I'm going to remove all accounts that are in an "Unconfirmed" status so that those users can just re-register and complete the process successfully.
Other regions than english still don't work? Will it soon? In the meantime I'll uninstall the plugin again. Too bad.
You should state those limitations, so people could see it before installing and registering. Thanks.
Apologies for the delay in getting this ported to other languages. I've had amazing help from the community creating translations for the requests/responses from Google and Alexa voice assistants and I'm working through the Google/Amazon submission and review processes now to get the alternate language versions into the stores.
German will go first since it was the first translation I received and has been the most requested, followed quickly by Italian and French as I've also gotten great help to get those translations completed. Is there a specific language you are looking for?
Hi.
Thanks for you quick reply. Great, I didn't know that there's any progress. I'm looking forward to the release.
I need german too, so not more work.
Tell me if you need additional help.
