Amazon Echo - Project

65 postsstarted by steckdev 67,546 viewsoriginal topic

New Member
#1
I have created an Amazon Alexa skill that I would like everyone to be use of and vote if you get a chance. I have wanted to expand it to use the new API available to read audio. It would be really beneficial if someone from LDS Tech could reach out to me with official API's that are available that I can reference. Currently I am using an older project that was still available that I use but isn't anywhere near official. If anyone has experience with Node.JS, Datatbase (DynamoDB) or Alexa and would like to contribute please PM me and we can get this with some momentum. However at the time I'm looking to move homes so this might the attention it needs right now. But once things get settled in I should get some more time. I live in Draper and i'm open to meeting at a church to work on a project like this on Sundays.
  • [X] Text to speech scriptures
  • [ ] Conference Talks
  • [ ] BYU Speeches
  • [ ] Gospel Library Material


http://www.alexaskillstore.com/educatio ... ader/38305

New Alexa API
https://developer.amazon.com/public/com ... exa-Skills

Amazon Echo Tap Dot Scriptures Text to Speech Blind
Member
#2
How many people actually use the Amazon Echo?
New Member
#3
I use it, & it's getting bigger & bigger all the time. They are selling out of them every month.
New Member
#4
I'm interested. Are you planning on streaming MP3s or using Alexa text-to-voice to generate the audio? I just put in a license request with the church to get permission to use their content and I've been pursuing getting access to the internal API over https for streaming audio. I'll let you know if I make any progress on it!
New Member
#5
Hi @steckdev and @thattolleyguy - have either of you made any progress on an Alexa skill that can stream from the church's audio library?

I am new to Alexa skill development, but I have a lot of development experience in general. I am interested in helping with the development, if you are looking for assistance. Either way, I am interested in hearing how it goes.
New Member
#6
I would love to hear how this goes. My father in law is visually impaired & we are wanting something that he can use to listen to his scriptures & conference etc, something that he can give voice commands to so that he doesn't have to rely on anyone to find things for him, Karen
New Member
#7
It turns out I just scheduled a meeting with church intellectual property department to get licensing permissions to continue with this app. If I can get permissions, I'll post updates here as I make progress on the skill. The visually impaired is actually exactly who I was thinking could benefit the most from this. I'm glad I know someone to try it out now! :) I'll keep in touch with any progress I make.
#8
I'd love to be able to ask Alexa, "Alexa, play 3 Nephi 3:4" and have it either read the text out loud or stream the audio. Is there any way to do this right now?
New Member
#9
You should be able to do that right now using the "Gospel Library Reader" in the alexa app store. Hopefully it's still there. I'm hoping to get a reasonable solution from them to access the audio files so that I can stream confrerence talks and scriptures. I'm not sure that we will implement reading a specific verse it would just allow you to start listening to the whole chapter. Unless they have that information available then it would be AWESOME! Feel free to reach out to me at steckdev@gmail.com if you have any question on how to use the app or if you run into issues.
New Member
#10
A quick update. I met with some church representatives on Friday to demo what a Gospel Library skill would look like. They seemed pretty excited, especially for how it could help visually impaired members. Going forward there is three possibilities for the project. Either the licensing request will be denied, the licensing request will be granted, or the church will acquire the project as a community project similar to the Gospel Library iOS/Android apps. There is still a question of if the church would be willing to host the servers running the skill but I'm hopeful they will. I should hear more back in the next couple weeks.

I plan on posting the code I wrote for the demo on github once I can get it cleaned up. It's currently written in nodejs and it's probably worth discussing what language makes the most sense. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer as best I can.
Community Administrator
#11
thattolleyguy wrote:I met with some church representatives on Friday to demo what a Gospel Library skill would look like.
Congratulations! That's a hurtle that many seem to be unable to figure out how to approach, much less get over. That's quite an accomplishment.

I assume it was a outgrowth if your attempts at licensing the content?
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New Member
#12
Thanks! One of the things they mentioned is that it doesn't happen very often, though they are trying to make changes to allow more projects through. I think the biggest thing is that it was hard for them to figure out what Gospel Library on the Echo meant without seeing it. I guess we'll see if it goes any further. It wouldn't surprise me if they got a bunch of licensing requests from other people interested in doing something similar. Maybe I'm just the lucky one who got to present it. If so, I hope I did a good job!
Community Administrator
#13
thattolleyguy wrote:Gospel Library on the Echo
I would have loved to been there while it was demoed. :)

I think one thing going for it is that it sounds like it was billed as an existing program being extended to a new device. Much simpler administratively then a whole new concept.

The fact it doesn't use any PII makes it much easier to get approval. I think most things people are wanting to do involve church membership data - something which must give the security people the heebie-jeebies.
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New Member
#14
russellhltn wrote:I would have loved to been there while it was demoed. :)
It was pretty awesome. :D I hate to get my hopes up too high, but there was a general feeling of excitement when you heard the scriptures streaming out of the device. I guess we'll just wait and see...
New Member
#15
Please let us know what come of it. I would love to get involved and contribute to the success of the project. However we need a reliable HTTPS RestAPI that they can add content and we can access. Once we have that we can develop the code and they can oversee the Project Management and QA of the project. I hope that we can get some movement behind this. I have thought about creating my own content hosting service just to cast up their media because I can't access them through https. But because of the restrictions on media I haven't done this yet... :D

My list of what I want to get working
More reliable Rest API for text-speech scripture verse reader
Stream audio for listening to the chapters professionally recorded
General Conference talks searchable by Speaker and Topic
BYU Speeches searchable by Speaker and Topics.
Get Preach my Gospel, Howard W Hunter, ARP Guide, and several other books audio streaming
New Member
#16
steckdev wrote: More reliable Rest API for text-speech scripture verse reader
One thing I heard mentioned in the meeting is professionally recorded audio by verse. It was a pretty quick reference so I may have misunderstood, but that would mean not need to use text-to-speech. That would be great for long verses (D&C, JS-H) that might be longer than the length limit Alexa has for TTS.
steckdev wrote: General Conference talks searchable by Speaker and Topic
A concern I have is Alexa's ability to recognize names for searching for conference talks. If anyone wants to try to work on a proof of concept of mapping requests to speaker names, that might be really beneficial. That could be pretty tricky. For example when I was trying to get the Book of Mormon book names mapping correctly, Helaman would sometimes be passed in as "gila man".
Community Administrator
#17
I think how quickly it goes forth may depend on if the project needs access to the LDS Account. If you can do it initially without bookmarks and stuff, I think it would be much easier to get off the ground. I wouldn't want to hold up the whole project for the approvals needed for the account.
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New Member
#18
russellhltn wrote:I think how quickly it goes forth may depend on if the project needs access to the LDS Account. If you can do it initially without bookmarks and stuff, I think it would be much easier to get off the ground. I wouldn't want to hold up the whole project for the approvals needed for the account.
Good point. I hadn't talked about doing any of that off the bat so I don't think it will hold the project up. I'm not even sure it's a good feature given the voice interface. I think the biggest question is whether the church is willing to pay the costs of hosting the code to run the skill. If they do approach the project similar to the way the mobile apps are done, this would be a major difference and add to the cost. Another potential hinderance may be the niche market of the Echo and Alexa devices. They may instead try and use resources adding voice support to android and iOS apps.
Community Administrator
#19
thattolleyguy wrote:Another potential hinderance may be the niche market of the Echo and Alexa devices. They may instead try and use resources adding voice support to android and iOS apps.
And let's not forget Google Home. Echo/Dot/Alexa has a good head start, but there's an excellent chance that Home will be right up there with them. So the question is, does the church want to go down that alleyway?
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New Member
#20
The architecture that needs to be designed is an open source Rest API that would enable any developer to request scriptures, conference talks, or other pieces of information. With this designed as a defined Rest API then any other device that will/can come along can use this architecture without them having to evaluate and encourage the open-source community that thrives in this type of project. I want to contribute and make a difference but we just don't have an ability to access the information.
New Member
#21
steckdev wrote:The architecture that needs to be designed is an open source Rest API that would enable any developer to request scriptures, conference talks, or other pieces of information. With this designed as a defined Rest API then any other device that will/can come along can use this architecture without them having to evaluate and encourage the open-source community that thrives in this type of project. I want to contribute and make a difference but we just don't have an ability to access the information.
Sure. I guess I meant we need to come up with a project organization. I intend on starting the project in nodejs for the time being until the project becomes too complex or there's a demand to switch languages. Does the lds tech community have any language preferences? So far my alexa skills have been fairly small, so I'm not sure the best way to organize the project and I'm open to suggestions. Also, it would be good to have some documentation on what the vocal interactions are like so we don't have to redesign them later to support new features. I'd love to design something that could be used by other similar services. Perhaps there is a resource for each service that calls into a common library for finding the file. Just my 2 cents
New Member
#22
I've uploaded my (very very alpha) code to github if anyone else wants to take a look at it. Just remember that this was put together as a prototype. The project will need a lot more organization before it goes live. Also, I'm hosting all the content myself on S3 and dynamo (metadata), so if you want to try and get it running yourself, you'll have to do the same.

https://github.com/thattolleyguy/GospelLibraryAlexa
New Member
#23
So glad you are working on this! I was just listening to the news on Alexa and thought it would sure be nice if I could play a conference talk instead. I've done some app development as well as Rest API development and started doing some research as to what it would take to create this as a Skill and ran into this thread. It would be nice if it could connect to your bookmarks in the gospel library so you could say, "Alexa, start at my bookmark Personal Reading". Happy to help if needed.
New Member
#24
thattolleyguy wrote:I've uploaded my (very very alpha) code to github if anyone else wants to take a look at it. Just remember that this was put together as a prototype. The project will need a lot more organization before it goes live. Also, I'm hosting all the content myself on S3 and dynamo (metadata), so if you want to try and get it running yourself, you'll have to do the same.

https://github.com/thattolleyguy/GospelLibraryAlexa

Please let us know how we can jump in an help with this project. I feel like we are just sitting on the dock waiting or the LDS Church boat to come along and either drop the supplies or take the project and take it to their development teams.
New Member
#25
steckdev wrote: Please let us know how we can jump in an help with this project. I feel like we are just sitting on the dock waiting or the LDS Church boat to come along and either drop the supplies or take the project and take it to their development teams.
That's pretty much where I'm at too. If you want to jump in, I would recommend getting familiar with Alexa skills and capabilities if you aren't already. Also, I've made the mp3 content public so if you want to test the code out, you only need to host the dynamo metadata. The instructions in the repository have been updated but I could use a couple more people to try it out so we can iron out any remaining kinks.

I checked in with church reps but they said it would probably be another couple of weeks. I'm trying to come up with somethings that need to be done but at this point, I don't think there is a lot of work. If you get the skill running and see something you want done, feel free to put an issue in github or make a pull request and I'll pull it in.
New Member
#26
Good news and bad news: Good news - I just got an email saying we're continuing down the path of making this a community driven internal project. It's still in an investigation phase, so I'm not sure that's a guarantee it will happen, just that we're still proceeding down the path. Bad news - with the holidays and a new release of Gospel Library apps, we're not meeting to figure out next steps until January. I appreciate everyone's excitement and drive to make this happen. I'll keep sharing information as I receive it. Merry Christmas!
#27
Just set up Alexa for my Mother who has macular degeneration.

She would love to have the Conference talks, scriptures, Gospel Doctrine manuals, etc available through the Echo.

In FamilySearch we have an early Prototype using some APIs for family history on Echo. Just looking at the possibilities now.

Your work is encouraging. Thank you.
New Member
#28
Would love to be involved in any Amazon Echo projects: LDS Hymns, Scriptures, Conference talks, Mormon Channel. How can I get involved?

Any interested in Amazon Alexa development in the Phoenix, AZ area, join out meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Alexa-Developers ... st-Valley/
New Member
#29
I'm also interested in helping as a developer.

I developed the following certified Alexa skills.
- "Word of the Day" https://byu-oit-appdev.github.io/word-o ... ing-skill/
- "S Watch" https://github.com/byu-oit-appdev/s-watch-alexa-skill
New Member
#30
Thanks everyone for your interest in the project. Now that the holidays are over, I anticipate this project to start getting steam. I'm meeting with some devs from the gospel library team this week to discuss the next steps. Once we can figure out were the service will be hosted and how we're going to access the audio files, we can get started implementing it. Any help is welcome. Thanks!
New Member
#31
The Mormon Channel Web Services api allows you to get information about the scriptures, including lists of books in each scripture, with titles and descriptions. You can get a list of chapters in each book (chapters in 3 Nephi for example.) The chapter information (for the Book of Mormon at least) includes a URL for the MP3 audio.

http://tech.lds.org/wiki/Mormon_Channel_Web_Services

This works pretty well with Alexa, but here are a few gotchas:
- Alexa can't handle the lsquo character used in some of the book descriptions (left single quote -- used for apostrophe)
- API book titles are 1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, but for voice it seems better to use "First Nephi", "Second Nephi".
- As mentioned before, Alexa has problems recognising names from the Book of Mormon (gila man for Helaman?)
-- This means that you can't depend on Alexa finding the book by name, you would have better luck navigating from book to book.
- Alexa uses the Spanish pronunciation of Nephi (neffey) but you can get it to say "ˈniːfaɪ".
New Member
#32
rsbohn wrote:The Mormon Channel Web Services api allows you to get information about the scriptures, including lists of books in each scripture, with titles and descriptions. You can get a list of chapters in each book (chapters in 3 Nephi for example.) The chapter information (for the Book of Mormon at least) includes a URL for the MP3 audio.

http://tech.lds.org/wiki/Mormon_Channel_Web_Services

This works pretty well with Alexa, but here are a few gotchas:
- Alexa can't handle the lsquo character used in some of the book descriptions (left single quote -- used for apostrophe)
- API book titles are 1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, but for voice it seems better to use "First Nephi", "Second Nephi".
- As mentioned before, Alexa has problems recognising names from the Book of Mormon (gila man for Helaman?)
-- This means that you can't depend on Alexa finding the book by name, you would have better luck navigating from book to book.
- Alexa uses the Spanish pronunciation of Nephi (neffey) but you can get it to say "ˈniːfaɪ".
That's great information. Is this a community maintained service or maintained internally? It would be great if we could add in additional fields on the returned data to support Alexa and other voice oriented services. Do you have Alexa code that makes use of it? If so, feel free to pull it in to the project on github.
New Member
#33
It seems to be the official API for The Mormon Channel.

see https://github.com/rsbohn12/GospelLibra ... channel.js
New Member
#34
https://github.com/rsbohn12/GospelLibraryAlexa

I refactored index.js to dispatch intents and added a handler for unhandled intents.
I also added a test script -- it runs the various intents and prints the JSON output if it finds something unexpected.

Perhaps the next step would be to populate the DynamoDB table using information from the Mormon Channel API.
New Member
#35
rsbohn wrote:https://github.com/rsbohn12/GospelLibraryAlexa

I refactored index.js to dispatch intents and added a handler for unhandled intents.
I also added a test script -- it runs the various intents and prints the JSON output if it finds something unexpected.

Perhaps the next step would be to populate the DynamoDB table using information from the Mormon Channel API.
I pulled those changes in. My meeting with gospel library devs got postponed to this week so right now I'm focusing on trying to add a few things for a demo. I'm adding in the ability to parse conference talk requests and I'm going to add a few sessions to my S3 repo. After that, I'm planning on re-working the utils I've added to pull from the Mormon Channel API instead of scraping lds.org. I'd like to have a single util that pulls from the API to populate the DynamoDB and generate the custom slot values (SCRIPTURE_BOOK, CONFERENCE_SPEAKER, CONFERENCE_TOPIC, etc).
#36
Great idea. Any news?
New Member
#37
Met with the gospel library team. Everyone seemed excited about the idea. They were going to look into hosting options and the certificate issue but I haven't heard anything since.
New Member
#38
@thattolleyguy I was just wondering if you have made any progress on the project. Did the church approve the licensing?
New Member
#39
I wish I had something to share but so far I haven't gotten a response. I'll try and email them again tomorrow
Community Moderators
#40
thattolleyguy wrote:I wish I had something to share but so far I haven't gotten a response. I'll try and email them again tomorrow
I'd definitely recommend following up – the development team is kept pretty busy, so it's possible it was set aside and forgotten. Gospel Library 4 is becoming more stable as patch updates are slowing down (i.e. things are less frantic on the development team), so now is probably a good time to follow up.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
New Member
#41
Since there's no indication that the certificate issue is going to be resolved, I was able to set up an AWS API Gateway to proxy the CDN content and get it playing. For development work that (with a URL re-write to redirect the media2 content to the gateway) was enough for me to be able to experiment on my side.
New Member
#42
Any updates here? I've hacked together a very alpha version for Google Home using API.AI. From my experience, it was pretty intuitive to define interaction flows, and it seems very straight-forward (as in, click a button) to export the project for Google, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Slack, Skype, etc etc.

Anybody who wants to poke around with my code, here's my API.AI project you can import: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bysqb ... XYtWW1mMU0
You should be able to import it into an API.AI project of your own then run it on the Google Home simulator (https://developers.google.com/actions/t ... -simulator). While the test is active on the simulator, you can also use it on your physical device logged in with the same Google account. Currently, this is the only supported interaction:

"OK Google, let me talk to gospel library"
"OK, here's gospel library. 'Hi!'"
"Play a talk"
Wait for a random talk from the most recent conference to load and start playing

Here's the exported Alexa version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bysqb ... WtucnNpWkk
(I don't have a device to test on, and don't know what's involved to install. Would be interested to hear if it works.)

Very excited to see/contribute to a more polished app!
New Member
#43
In the mean time (for any other Google Home users primarily interested in playing conference talks), you can play a conference talk (and tons of other Church music, Mormon Messages, etc) from YouTube on a Chromecast from Google Home: "OK Google, play <content> on my TV"
New Member
#44
I'm extremely interested in something that does this. I would love for it to be championed by the church but whatever works. I couldn't find any discussions open on this topic so I made my own. I'll have to try out your skill. https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... ead#unread and I'd be interested in contributing. I have dynamodb exp and node.js though I'm no expert.
New Member
#45
Here are some ideas from my thread that might be worth bringing up here.

Since Alexa is only tied to one person's account however, it would be nice if we could somehow enhance the experience to allow for multiple people to be able to use alexa for their scripture studies. I guess I could always use bookmarks for that. "Alexa open Gospel Library", "Alexa go to Dan's Book Of Mormon bookmark" "Alexa update bookmark.... ok which bookmark would you like to update?.... Dan's Book Of Mormon bookmark. Ok Updated Dan's Book of Mormon Bookmark..... continues reading..." "Alexa read Book of Mormon, Book of Moroni, chapter 10. .... alexa create bookmark. ok,..what would you like to call your bookmark? .... Dan's Book of Mormon ... ok. created Dan's Book of Mormon Bookmark .... continues reading... "

Another thing I'd like to see happen is being able to play songs from the childrens songbook or hymn book as well. It would be nice if it could randomly pick which ones to play but I'm sure the underlying api is limited at the moment.

If there's anything we as a community can do to help improve the APIs for the changes that are needed to work with these home automation devices they should let us know. I'm sure that there are plenty of us that could help crowd source on the rest api as well not just the Alexa or other home automation device sides. I want to work on anything that's going to help facilitate this because I really want it like yesterday.
New Member
#46
is it up in the air at the moment how you might tie your alexa account to your ldsaccount? Another app that I use called YNAB did something very similar to this and their founder also happens to be lds (he was my brother's home teacher at one point Jesse Mecham.) I wonder if we could learn from what they had to do to link their YNAB accounts to alexa.... https://www.youneedabudget.com/landing/alexa/
Community Moderators
#47
Edited 1 time, last by sbradshaw on
I would love to see this become a full-fledged volunteer project, but I think we need official support from the Church for it to reach its full potential. I think that ultimately it should be hosted on a Church-managed server, and it should be under the Gospel Library umbrella, pulling content from the same source.

thattolleyguy has interacted some with the Gospel Library developers. I've interacted with them as well. From what I can tell, there is casual interest in the project. I think the Android developers would be interested in a service that would work with Google Home, too. The biggest roadblock, as I understand it, is that the managers who make decisions about what to focus on haven't had the project on their radar, because of other priorities.

In my interactions with the Gospel Library developers, it seems there's not a lot of interest in working with Node.js (I'm not sure all the reasons – I'm not much of a programmer myself). I think we need to figure out what the preferred language and structure is and build in that direction. If we start there, I think we will see more support and involvement from the Church.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
New Member
#48
Maybe I can reach out to some of my contacts and figure out what the roadblocks are.... I'll see if I can feel around what's holding it up. is Tom still heading up the LDSTech community from the church side or is someone else in charge of it now?
Community Moderators
#49
LDSTech is no longer being maintained and as far as I know there are no employees officially assigned to it. The only active LDSTech projects I know of are Gospel Library for Windows, LDS Music for iOS, LDS Music Content, and Mobile Translation. A few other projects are being used for beta testing.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
New Member
#50
I guarantee you there's still a contact who's the liason for coordinating LDSTech efforts. it used to be Tom. I'll reach out to a couple of my buddies and find out who I need to talk to.
New Member
#51
You're right. One of my buddies confirmed that LDSTech isn't a thing anymore. I'm reaching out to some old collegues anyway. We'll see what they say.
Community Administrator
#52
sbradshaw wrote:I would love to see this become a full-fledged volunteer project, but I think we need official support from the Church for it to reach its full potential.
Getting access to LDS Account information is likely to be an issue. I'd suggest implementing bookmarks some other way for now.

I'd think getting access to scripture content would be much easier as the security concerns is far less. There may already be a process in place to do that.

My sense is that development in the church is handled by a very small group. They work on projects as directed by the Brethren and have very little to no time to work on side projects. Because of security concerns, control over what apps have access to LDS Account is very limited. As such, unless a GA gets interested, or there's another already authorized project that this could piggyback on, I doubt if you'll see much progress.

If you do develop with the idea of turning it over to the church, I'd suggest finding out what the church uses for development and use that. Otherwise, the code would probably be about as welcome as a bunch of Apple accessories for a Android user. The developers who would have to maintain it don't have time to learn a new environment.

I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer here, but I've seen a number of good enthusiastic ideas die in disappointment. The best chance for a good outcome is to proceed with a realistic understanding of the issues.
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New Member
#53
that's exactly right. I wouldn't call it a very small group but it is certainly smaller than you might think. It's a team somewhere in ICS that's over the Gospel Library app. I suspect the support you get will depend a lot on how willing that team is to work with the community. As far as getting access to the LDS Account information I don't see how you'd have any more barriers to doing that than you already have getting the Gospel Library android app to work. Its very similar. If the church isn't willing to help us get this working I agree that it's probably not going to happen.

Doesn't hurt to ask though and I am sure that I will find the right person to talk to. Whether or not they will be willing/able to help me change anything might be a different matter but I guess we can go from there.
New Member
#54
Tom Welch is the guy that initially was spear heading a lot of the LDSTech efforts and IIRC there was a fair amount of effort that went into that with a whole TON of additional problems that resulted that the development side was trying to cope with. I suspect when he moved on, the support for community dev efforts didn't really have a champion anymore and was allowed to drop back to minimal. anyway...
Senior Member
#55
The problem is the number of committees that need to approve what you're trying to do and the nature of our passive-aggressive culture that just doesn't like to say no, we'd rather drag it out until it's just dropped. There was a very active developer in the area that attempted to lias with the church security on using LDS Access in app development, they were very amenable to his queries for months until it was just shut down. Don't go through the hassle you'll just waste months you could use developing the tool. You can't use LDS Account (though you might try the FamilySearch side of the house, they have api stuff that might be a 'work around'.

Don't develop it for the church to adopt, just do it.
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense
New Member
#56
This thread has died out, but heads up for anyone who's interested that I've gone ahead and launched a couple of music skills on Alexa... one each for playing Primary songs and hymns on demand.

Primary songs: https://skills-store.amazon.com/deeplin ... ix=ss_copy

Hymns: https://skills-store.amazon.com/deeplin ... ix=ss_copy

Would love to sync with anybody else doing work along these lines.
New Member
#57
I'm working on creating an Alexa skill that reads out daily scriptures. I'll look into developing one that can play a General Conference talk.
New Member
#58
Hey everyone. After a year of waiting I emailed my contacts at the church again. They said they thought they had resolved anything and told me to go forward with the project. They're going to look into fixing the certificate issue. I've lost a bit of steam on working on this but if they fix the certificate issue, I may pick it up again. I'll post here if I hear anything more.
New Member
#59
Thank you so much for working on this. I am super excited to be able to put on the scriptures while I am doing dishes and sharing them with my younger kids who cannot read them for themselves. Thank you again, Mandi
Community Moderators
#60
chrisost wrote:Since there's no indication that the certificate issue is going to be resolved, I was able to set up an AWS API Gateway to proxy the CDN content and get it playing. For development work that (with a URL re-write to redirect the media2 content to the gateway) was enough for me to be able to experiment on my side.
Good news, media2.ldscdn.org now supports https:// !
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
New Member
#61
Great! That's been a long time in the coming!

Code:

* SSL connection using TLSv1.2 / ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
* Server certificate:
*        subject: C=US; ST=Utah; L=Salt Lake City; O=Intellectual Reserve Inc.; CN=media2.ldscdn.org
*        start date: 2018-07-13 00:00:00 GMT
*        expire date: 2019-07-13 12:00:00 GMT
*        subjectAltName: media2.ldscdn.org matched
*        issuer: C=US; O=DigiCert Inc; CN=DigiCert ECC Secure Server CA
*        SSL certificate verify ok.
New Member
#62
Hi, is this project still active? It's somewhat baffling to me that I can listen to my scriptures on my phone, but not on Alexa. I would love to see this project bear fruit and would be happy to contribute to it's progress if need be. What is the current status and/or holdups?
New Member
#63
Does anyone know the developer of the LDS General Conference Alexa Skill or how to contact him? I would like to know if I can contribute to it and update the skill.

Link to skill https://smile.amazon.com/Chris-Ostler-L ... B0716GDL2K

Is the Mormon Channel API still a thing? http://tech.lds.org/wiki/Mormon_Channel_Web_Services_V3
New Member
#64
In case anyone else ends up here from googling and just jumps to the end of the thread, here is the official Alexa Skill for it, circa July 2020: https://skills-store.amazon.com/deeplin ... ix=ss_copy
New Member
#65
Skill replaced by five different options, General Conference, Scripture Study, Sacred Music, The Liahona, The Friend. Unfortunately, Scripture Study will only read out chapters in Spanish despite your Alexa device language settings. Waiting for a fix.