Announcement

**Fellhahn** · November 20, 2018, 07:09 PM

This is awesome, thank you!

**mterry63** · November 21, 2018, 04:52 PM

I just installed this and tested it and can confirm it works. There are a few cavaets -

1. The script assumes some of the files are in a homeassistant directory (like secrets.yaml). You'll need to edit the script with nano and give it the correct path, or create the path it expects and put the secrets.yaml in there.

2. I had to use the firefox and cookies.txt extension, wouldn't work in chrome.

3. This is not for the security-minded individual. Obviously your amazon.com account and password are stored clear text in a file. Pay attention to file permissions at the very least. Also, the cookies.txt file is effectively the same as your account and password as anyone who has this file has the ability to bypass login of your alexa.amazon.com account (at a minimum).

I do wish HomeSeer rjh would consider adding direct HS3 support of TTS with Alexa. Seems like it should be possible now with some of the new hooks Amazon has provided, especially since they added device push messages.

**mterry63** · November 21, 2018, 05:21 PM

FWIW, the speak command shows up in Alexa App History as "Simon Says' commands.

**logman** · November 21, 2018, 07:24 PM

I was going to give this a try, but unfortunately the Linux Subsystem feature is not available for Server 2016 (unless you're running a Windows Insider or a Cloud Customer version of Server 2016). It is however an available feature in Server 2019, which was recently released.

**Fellhahn** · November 21, 2018, 09:12 PM

Originally posted by logman View Post

I was going to give this a try, but unfortunately the Linux Subsystem feature is not available for Server 2016 (unless you're running a Windows Insider or a Cloud Customer version of Server 2016). It is however an available feature in Server 2019, which was recently released.

Server 2019 and Windows Server v1809 are still kind of a dumpster fire. I wouldn't recommend spinning one up just yet. Since the soft re-release on Nov 13 there's been more issues reported.

Windows Server v1803 I think has the Linux subsystem? But you'd need to be able to call this script remotely, which might be possible?

Edit:

Correction, it has been available since 1709: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...tall-on-server

**logman** · November 21, 2018, 10:32 PM

I'm running 1607. I think 1709 was was exclusive to or part of the Semi-Annual channel rollout where they push upgrades to you twice a year rather than the normal 3 year upgrade cycle. (I'd hate to fight that battle twice a year.)

What we really need is for HS to step up their Alexa API integration. And Zigbee.

**Fellhahn** · November 21, 2018, 11:05 PM

Originally posted by logman View Post

I'm running 1607. I think 1709 was was exclusive to or part of the Semi-Annual channel rollout where they push upgrades to you twice a year rather than the normal 3 year upgrade cycle. (I'd hate to fight that battle twice a year.)

What we really need is for HS to step up their Alexa API integration. And Zigbee.

Yes 1709 is Semi-Annual Channel, it is also "core" only, no GUI, because SAC is only available as core. For this reason you can't run HomeSeer on a SAC Windows Server, I've tried. My first attempt at installing HS3 I went straight for a core build as I wanted low resource consumption and less frequent maintenance. The installer threw an error very early on when inputting the license. I probably could have tried copying over the program files or program data directories from another install, but at that point my thought was "if this doesn't work, what else is going to not work?".

Hence my point that you'd need to call this script remotely.

HS3 running on Server 2016 -> Runs a local script -> That calls another remote script on a 1709 or later SAC server with Linux susbsytem -> Passes variables to be used in text string etc.

**Fellhahn** · November 22, 2018, 12:05 AM

I'm reading through the alexa_remote_control.sh at the moment, trying to get an idea of it. It's huge, no doubt, over 900 lines. But it's capable of a lot more than we're interested in, example:

Code:

usage()
{
    echo "$0 [-d <device>|ALL] -e <pause|play|next|prev|fwd|rwd|shuffle|vol:<0-100>> |"
    echo "          -b[list|<\"AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF\">] | -q | -r <\"station name\"|stationid> |"
    echo "          -s <trackID|'Artist' 'Album'> | -t <ASIN> | -u <seedID> | -v <queueID> | -w <playlistId> |"
    echo "          -i | -p | -P | -S | -a | -m <multiroom_device> [device_1 .. device_X] | -lastalexa | -l | -h"
    echo
    echo "   -e : run command, additional SEQUENCECMDs:"
    echo "        weather,traffic,flashbriefing,goodmorning,singasong,tellstory,speak:'<text>',automation:'<routine name>'"
    echo "   -b : connect/disconnect/list bluetooth device"
    echo "   -q : query queue"
    echo "   -r : play tunein radio"
    echo "   -s : play library track/library album"
    echo "   -t : play Prime playlist"
    echo "   -u : play Prime station"
    echo "   -v : play Prime historical queue"
    echo "   -w : play library playlist"
    echo "   -i : list imported library tracks"
    echo "   -p : list purchased library tracks"
    echo "   -P : list Prime playlists"
    echo "   -S : list Prime stations"
    echo "   -a : list available devices"
    echo "   -m : delete multiroom and/or create new multiroom containing devices"
    echo "   -lastalexa : print device that received the last voice command"
    echo "   -l : logoff"
    echo "   -h : help"
}

You can see the script can be used to play radio stations, playlists, create device groups. There's also some stuff in there for performing bluetooth pairing.

All we want to do is send a TTS to a particular echo device, so the parts of this that are relevant to our objective are considerably smaller than the whole script.

It seems to use CURL to issue the commands. CURL can be called just as easily from a powershell script or you could possibly use the powershell native commands Invoke-WebRequest / Invoke-RestMethod.

Regarding the storage of plain text passwords, Powershell allows for storing passwords and other text as a secure string, then storing that secure string as a file so that it can be imported again for future use. Secure string uses reversible encryption, but only the principal that performed the encryption can decrypt. I believe "principal" refers to the user, service or computer account.

What this means is if someone had access to the server and files where you run this script from, and was able to authenticate as the account that runs the script, they could theoretically decrypt your password from the stored object. It's still a significant improvement over a plain text file.

You might also be able to use the secure string method to store the cookie.

What I'm leading to here is that with a little reading and powershell translation, it should be possible to take the TTS segments of this to produce a script that can be called by HS3 running on a Win10 / Server 2016 platform.

**Fellhahn** · November 23, 2018, 12:49 AM

Below is what I've extracted, believing it to be the components relevant for text-to-speech:

Code:

# Set Amazon/Alexa regional options, US vs UK.


AMAZON='amazon.com'
#      'amazon.co.uk'
ALEXA='pitangui.amazon.com'
#     'layla.amazon.co.uk'
LANGUAGE='en-US'
#        'en-GB'


# Cookie for authentication.


COOKIE='YOUR COOKIE DATA HERE'
# I have nfi what awk is, below line seems to concatenate and sanitize data
CSRF="csrf: $(awk "\$0 ~/.${AMAZON}.*csrf[ \\s\\t]+/ {print \$7}" ${COOKIE})"


# Specify which device to execute command against.


DEVICESERIALNUMBER=''
DEVICETYPE=''
MEDIAOWNERCUSTOMERID=''


# Specify CURL installation location


CURL='C:\Program Files\cURL\curl.exe'


# Set text-to-speech string from passed in argument.


TEXT='YOUR TEXT HERE'
TTS=",\\\"textToSpeak\\\":\\\"${TEXT}\\\""


# Concatenate the actual command that will be sent as HTTP POST data


COMMAND="{\"behaviorId\":\"PREVIEW\",\"sequenceJson\":\"{\\\"@type\\\":\\\"com.amazon.alexa.behaviors.model.Sequence\\\",\\\"startNode\\\":{\\\"@type\\\":\\\"com.amazon.alexa.behaviors.model.OpaquePayloadOperationNode\\\",\\\"type\\\":\\\"Alexa.Speak\\\",\\\"operationPayload\\\":{\\\"deviceType\\\":\\\"${DEVICETYPE}\\\",\\\"deviceSerialNumber\\\":\\\"${DEVICESERIALNUMBER}\\\",\\\"locale\\\":\\\"${LANGUAGE}\\\",\\\"customerId\\\":\\\"${MEDIAOWNERCUSTOMERID}\\\"${TTS}}}}\",\"status\":\"ENABLED\"}"


# Execute the actual HTTP request


     ${CURL}
#     --insecure
     --compressed
     --http1.1
     --silent
     --cookie ${COOKIE}
     --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103 Safari/537.36"
     --header "DNT: 1"
     --header "Connection: keep-alive"
     --location
     --header "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8"
     --header "Referer: https://alexa.${AMAZON}/spa/index.html"
     --header "Origin: https://alexa.${AMAZON}"
     --header "${CSRF}"
     --request POST
     --data ${COMMAND}
     "https://${ALEXA}/api/behaviors/preview"

Hopefully looking at the above, you can all begin to see how there isn't really a need for the Linux subsystem. Curl binaries are available for windows, it's a matter of collecting and combining some variables, then firing them off via CURL.

I've replaced the BROWSER variable with just the static string recommended by fuzzy in the original post.

DEVICESERIALNUMBER , I suspect you could probably find this on the bottom/sticker of an Echo device
DEVICETYPE , I've seen references to ECHO , KNIGHT and ROOK , suspect these probably relate to Echo, Echo Plus and Echo dot in no particular order. Again you could probably determine them with some research and write them in statically.
MEDIAOWNERCUSTOMERID , don't really understand what this is, your user reference I guess? Which would indicate it's not implied by the cookie/session.

CSRF , someone care to explain this and 'awk' to me?

This isn't usable script and isn't meant to be. It's just extracting and highlighting that sending the TTS probably isn't very hard once you know a few variables. Ie your device serial numbers and user ID.

I've been going over this at work (employee of the year...) and thought I'd throw it up here. I'm about to head home, someone else might be able to pick it back up before I do and produce something directly usable on Windows.

**rjh** · November 26, 2018, 10:35 AM

Very interesting, I will see how hard it will be to add this to HS3 in some way so you don't have to go through all this configuration. We already have access to the API.

**basshook** · November 26, 2018, 11:35 AM

Originally posted by rjh View Post

Very interesting, I will see how hard it will be to add this to HS3 in some way so you don't have to go through all this configuration. We already have access to the API.

That would be an awesome add to HS!

**MFULLER** · November 28, 2018, 07:59 AM

Originally posted by rjh View Post

Very interesting, I will see how hard it will be to add this to HS3 in some way so you don't have to go through all this configuration. We already have access to the API.

This excites me more way more than it really should. This would be the ideal way for me to get whole house speech from Homeseer.

**rjh** · November 28, 2018, 09:12 AM

We seeing if we can create a plugin for this. The open issue is the login as right now that script uses cookie info to connect. We think we can use a token and just have the user login with a dialog we will present. Will keep you updated.

**Fellhahn** · November 28, 2018, 05:45 PM

Wow that is awesome to read. I am also unduly excited, thanks

Announcement

Alexa TTS that works well, same solution as for Home Assistant.

Alexa TTS that works well, same solution as for Home Assistant.

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment