Alexa Integration - Blue Iris 4

[Mike A.]

I use the sub stream were I can, still cannot get my Ezviz bell to show, even though works in vlc , have to go through BI for that one, the buffer thing could be useful regards only showing for a brief time on trigger, a useful flaw maybe. Think just alter some settings in Monocle to see if will fire up.

Looks like Voice Monkey's server(s) are down.

Mine worked fine for a while but started noticing that the cam was not displaying when it should have. Going into BI and running a test for the "When triggered" event, I get "Error requesting page: 500" (which means unavailable). Trying to access the host at

https://api-use.voicemonkey.io

shows it down.

Scratch that. I have some other problem that I'm still trying to resolve. Not sure what it is. Get a variety of errors.

 

[Mike A.]

Think I give up on the Voice Monkey thing. It will work very well for a day or more and then stops. When that happens I get "Error requesting page:500" error when I run the test from BI. I can send the link in a browser and it works fine. If I re-copy the link into BI it will work again (sometimes). Not sure exactly what makes it stop or start to work again. Can't rely on it and can't be doing that all the time in any case.

 

[andycots]

Myn seems to be ok still, but don't use it often, but when i do it does, i use all cam feeds, just use 1 BI feed because it does not last long on screen, it buffers then stream stops, which make it good for a brief alert view, in Monocle i use all the sub-streams from the cams, Echo show only has very limited processing power, that's why i can take a few seconds to show, Amazon say usually around 6 seconds at best, unlike desktops which show instantly, the better the Echo gets with processors the faster it will be in future. If you could open a browser page on the Echo with a routine then that would help and be faster, but i am not aware of that yet. I think sometimes the technology needs to catch up to our ideas and requirements.

 

[lucky13]

I use Voice Monkey, you can create a virtual button there that shows up in Alexa, for eg, setup voice monkey account, add skill to Alexa, then one you read the setup docs which is fairly straightforward, even for me, the you generate a url, copy that into the BI alerts-web request, then when your camera is triggered providing you've set it up correctly, it will fire, then create an Alexa routine to, when (whatever you have called it) button is pressed then use a customised skill to open the camera you have setup via Monocle.

See how that goes, let me know how it goes.

This only shows a live feed, it would be good if could get BI to show like the phone gifs or whatever triggered it, if you know what i mean.

Cheers

Thanks i've managed to get this far

setup voice monkey account, add skill to Alexa, then one you read the setup docs which is fairly straightforward, even for me...but i'm not really sure what to do next.

What I want to do is when the camera picks up movement is display this onto my FireTV Stick which is normally displaying to a TV, ideally the stream would play for 10 seconds and then go back to whatever I was viewing

Is that possible and how would i do it ?

 

[andycots]

Thanks i've managed to get this far

setup voice monkey account, add skill to Alexa, then one you read the setup docs which is fairly straightforward, even for me...but i'm not really sure what to do next.

What I want to do is when the camera picks up movement is display this onto my FireTV Stick which is normally displaying to a TV, ideally the stream would play for 10 seconds and then go back to whatever I was viewing

Is that possible and how would i do it ?

So now you should have a virtual button in Alexa via Voice Monkey, go back into VM and generate a url, then copy that into the trigger alert page in BI, i think it's on alert send web request, then in Alexa app create a routine tell Alexa that when the VM button is pressed then show camera on whichever device you choose, you have to choose a custom action for eg "Alexa show XXXX camera".

Hopefully this will get you in the general direction, everything seems to work for me, can be a bit slow but thats down to Alexa.

Have you got Monocle setup?

 

[Mike A.]

It is kind of confusing and not real clear in their instructions.

The part that stumped me for a while was where in the Alexa app to put in the string that you want passed to whatever Echo device. It's under the "Add action" when you create the new routine. All the way at the bottom of the list that comes up you'll see "Custom." You enter what you'd say to Alexa to do whatever you named the device you created.

 

[guppstir]

I use Voice Monkey, you can create a virtual button there that shows up in Alexa, for eg, setup voice monkey account, add skill to Alexa, then one you read the setup docs which is fairly straightforward, even for me, the you generate a url, copy that into the BI alerts-web request, then when your camera is triggered providing you've set it up correctly, it will fire, then create an Alexa routine to, when (whatever you have called it) button is pressed then use a customised skill to open the camera you have setup via Monocle.

See how that goes, let me know how it goes.

This only shows a live feed, it would be good if could get BI to show like the phone gifs or whatever triggered it, if you know what i mean.

Cheers

I got Voice Monkey working from a web browser but when I copy the URL into a web request in Blue Iris I get a Error 403 No stream from Blue Iris. Any idea what could be going on or what I missed. Otherwise Voice Monkey works on my Echo except when triggered from Blue Iris.

 

[DLONG2]

I have Voice Monkey/Alexa working well within HomeSeer automation. Wanting to leverage BI to speak to Alexa, I tried using a camera trigger's On Alert with a Web Request, and pasted in the Voice Monkey's API address, and it works, too.