Voice words / parameters

[Strahan]

Hi! I just bought an Echo tonight, and the deciding factor was that I could control my PC when I Googled and saw your program. I've been playing with it, it's cool. However, I have one snag. I wanted to be able to launch videos from it, so I created a trigger "Die Hard", command was the path and filename of the video, voice was "die hard". I pronounced it as clearly as I could but it keeps saying "cannot find command die". Does it not support multiple word voice commands? I changed it to "die" and it worked.

Also I was trying to find documentation on parameters and failing. Can you direct me? I'm wondering if I can create a command that is generic then pass parameters that I assume I say after the trigger word to launch the appropriate title. I just can't find any docs on how parameters work.

I setup a trigger "video", with command "p:\utils\scripts\triggercmd.php video", voice "video" allow parameters true. My PHP script looks for parameter "diehard". I said "alexa, ask trigger c m d to run video diehard" and it said "could not find a command with voice word video hard on (pcname)". Am I misinterpreting how to use parameters?

[Russ]

@Strahan,
I haven't implemented a way to pass parameters with your voice yet. I'm willing to though, so please give me your ideas on how I should do it.

I could program it to have Alexa expect a movie at a particular point in your spoken sentence, so here's one idea for your use case. I could have Alexa expect a movie title as parameter if you say:

Alexa, ask TRIGGERcmd to play movie Z on Y
Alexa, ask TRIGGERcmd to play movie Z  (runs on your default computer)

It would run your command with voice word "movie" with a parameter that equals your spoken movie title.

If I do that I might as well add this option too:

Alexa, ask TRIGGERcmd to play song Z on Y
Alexa, ask TRIGGERcmd to play song Z  (runs on your default computer)

It would run your command with voice word "song" with a parameter that equals your spoken song title.

For general purpose non-movie, non-song scenarios, I'm thinking this would be the pattern:

Alexa, ask TRIGGERcmd to run X on Y with parameter Z
Alexa, ask TRIGGERcmd to run X with parameter Z  (runs on your default computer)

What do you think? If you can think of something better, let me know. My first idea is often not the best.

I'll wait until I get some feedback before making a change.

Also, about two-word voice commands - it's supposed to work, but Alexa seems to recognize single-word commands much better.

[Strahan]

Thanks. The generic usage method looks fine. I wouldn't think that a movie or whatever specific parameter would really be necessary; the people creating their commands will know what kind of input to expect and will handle it accordingly.

I guess for now I'll just make "codewords" that do specific functions, heh. That'll work for now. Thanks again!

[Russ]

@Strahan, thanks for the input. I'll add this to my todo list..

[A Former User]

@russ Any update on this?

[Russ]

@parker-reed, yes actually, I did that a while ago. Sorry I never updated this thread.

Here's the announcement:
https://www.triggercmd.com/forum/topic/111/now-you-can-pass-parameters-to-your-alexa-commands