ESP32 Forum

USE CASE: my senior citizen mother is a bedridden paraplegic. I am trying to give her voice-activated safety and security capability using Amazon Echo and ESP boards.

I have learned to control AC Mains outlets ON and OFF using Echo and ESP boards connected to AC power outlets. "Alexa, turn LAMP 1 ON or OFF." Issuing simple ON and OFF commands is very straightforward using the Echo.

HOWEVER, I would also like to be able to send a FLASH ALARM command to one or more outlets. This would rapidly cycle a lamp to ALERT my aged father when mom is needing his help. The light would strobe ON and OFF to get father's attention.

I am having difficulty implementing this use case. Perhaps someone can suggest a way. Ideally, the light could function normally until the ESP8266 or ESP32 is commanded to flash the warning.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

How exactly are you having difficulty with this? What have you already tried?

Thank you for the reply.

I understand how to turn the light ON/OFF using Echo voice commands. In other words, I've succeeded at getting the ESP to 'listen' for an Echo command which in turn signals a single given GPIO pin to go high or low.

What I cannot figure out is whether it's possible to create an Alexa voice command into an ESP script which RAPIDLY cycles the lamp ON/OFF. Using the same device (ESP and AC outlet) how might I get the lamp to cycle rapidly on command - via the Echo Alexa voice commands?

Put a different way: can the Echo device tell an ESP to do more than one thing (ON/OFF)? Is there a way to also say "Alexa, FLASH Lamp 1" rather than simply "Alexa, turn Lamp 1 ON/OFF."

VERY admittedly, I am a rookie. I rely upon cut/paste of code and tweak until I get something that works.

On esp32 side you could pretend to be 2 different devices for echo with different names and then "turn light on" and "turn flash on". Anything more complicated is a question for amazon developer forum.

Also I'm pretty sure you are using esp8266 not esp32 because i dont know any outlets shipping with esp32 inside so you might want to try the esp8266.com forum.

Thank you. That is an interesting option I will dig into.

You are correct. At the moment I'm experimenting with ESP8266 boards, but I've just begun to order a few ESP32 boards and will be transitioning to them soon.