How to make an Alexa routine to play an audio from the Sound Stream skill
Assuming that you’ve already enabled the Sound Stream skill and have at least one playlist with your audio files.
You can find a great tutorial here.
Create a routine for the Sound Stream Alexa skill:
Let say we want to create a “Sleep routine”. It should play a relaxation music or sleep sounds via the Sound Stream Alexa skill.
1. Go to the Alexa app (Android or iOS version) > Menu > More > Routines > YOUR ROUTINES tab
2. Add a new routine by touching the “+” button.
3. Enter routine name > “+” > e.g. “Sleep routine” > Next
4. When this happen > “+” > Voice > “Alexa, good night” > Next
5. Add action > Skills > Your Skills > Sound Stream > Next
6. FROM > Choose Device > e.g. ‘The device you speak to’ or “any other device’s name in your bedroom”
7. Save (it’s easy to forget, but it’s important to click this button to save your routine).
Setup the Sound Stream playlist for your routine:
1. Create a playlist, say call it ‘sleep sounds’. You can find a lot of free stuff for it like: https://www.spirittribeawakening.com/shop/ or https://www.purple-planet.com/ .
Or you can download some from here: https://www.calmsound.com/
I personally bought from them this one (high quality of sound)
2. Test your playlist on your Echo:
You: Alexa, good night
Alexa: Welcome to the Sound Stream,…
You: play sleep sounds.
Alexa: playing sleep sound.
You: Alexa, loop on
Alexa: loop turned on.
You: Alexa, set a sleep timer for 1 hour.
Alexa: Ok, I will stop playing in 1 hour.
3. Next time, it will be much easier because the Sound Stream can remember multiple playlists for each of your Echo. It will remember that last time you played the “sleep sounds” playlist on your Echo in your bedroom.
You: Alexa, good night.
Alexa: playing sleep sound.
You: Alexa, set a sleep timer for 1 hour.
Alexa: Ok, I will stop playing in 1 hour.
It looks like you cannot add a Skill Action followed by the Sleep Timer as another Action to your custom routine.
So, if you want to set a Sleep Timer for this routine, you will have to do it by yourself.
It seems that Alexa routines based on custom skills do not support parameters in skill invocations. For example it would be great if a routine would be able to not only launch the Sound Stream skill but actually pass a playlist in it.
I hope Amazon will change that in the future.
Btw, the ability to use a workaround with a playlist loop available for $0.99/month as a part of premium subscription available in US, UK, DE, FR, IT.
If you live somewhere else or don’t want to pay, a playlist loop may not work well for you. In that case you can still create a routine with the Sound Stream.
The only difference is that you will be asked each time what playlist you want to play.
No need to buy extra hardware. No need to install, update or patch any software. No need to expose your home network to the public Internet. Stay safe. Save your time and efforts.
