Could you explain what you are hoping to do with Alexa as that would help with my response.
I've used the Q&A feature of Blueprints to get a response from Alexa that I can trap and use.
Although the Q&A feature was intended for someone to ask a question and get a known answer, you can adapt it so you can make a 'statement' and get a known response. For example, "Alexa, open garage door" or "Alexa, tell me about the garage". You can get Blueprints to return a pre-defined answer that you can use.
Prior to using Blueprints, Alexa would offer me all sorts of information about local garages, where they are located, opening times, etc. All totally irrelevant to the needs for my particular application.
A couple of months ago I dropped the remote control key-fob for my electric garage door. Although it still worked, the plastic casing was damaged. I ordered a new one and ended-up with a perfectly usable remote controller but not very practicable as the casing kept failing apart. That was the starting point for making a Voice Operated Garage Door Controller. It started-off as just a "fun" project.
The only involvement Alexa has is providing a pre-defined text response when I utter the above statements. The responses are trapped and used to trigger different parts of a Node-RED flow. I'm actually using a finite state machine (FSM) to track the state of my garage door. For example... closed, opening, open, closing, closed. Here's part of the front-end of the flow.
I fitted a couple of microswitches, one at the top and bottom of the door's travel so I can detect the position of the door. This information is sent from a Wemos D1 Mini, via MQTT, to Node-RED.
Here's part of the back-end of the flow.
The flow has two main outputs. One to get Alexa to "speak" a response when the door reaches the fully-open or fully-closed position. The other to send a trigger or event, via MQTT, to an ESP01s microcontroller that operates a relay. Connected to the relay contacts are two wires that I soldered onto the contacts of the button on the damaged remote key-fob. When the relay toggles it simulates someone pressing the key-fob.
As you can see from the above, the only active part that Alexa takes in this system is providing the pre-defined text response to the statements... "Alexa, open/close garage door".
Here's a photo of a printed circuit board I made for the project.
The orange box, situated to the left of the ESP01s, is the relay. The four LEDs indicate the door's status. Red=door is fully open, top yellow=door is closing, bottom yellow=door is opening, green=door is closed.
I recently extended the system so I can say... "Alexa, tell me about the garage" and she responds by telling me if the door is open/closed, locked/unlocked and what the temperature and humidity is in the garage.
Hope this helps.
