How to play audio books from your Dropbox with Amazon Echo
Initially I developed the Sound Drive Alexa skill that could transform your Google Drive to a media locker. But after a while Google introduced breaking changes in Google Drive API that made impossible to play media files from Amazon Echo devices. That is why I developed a new Alexa skill — Sound Stream that uses Dropbox as a media locker. It is available for AU, NZ, CA, UK, US(EN, ES), IN, ES, DE, FR, IT (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NDD6TWZ).
I’m a big fan of audio books. At home I use Alexa (Amazon Echo) to play my Kindle books. The Alexa voice is a bit of robotic but not that bad. But it is much nicer when you listen narrated books.
So, what are the options when you want to listen narrated audio books with a convenience of a voice assistant (e.g. Amazon Echo or Google Home Nest)? Not too much. In fact there is only one I can think of right now — using Amazon Audible connected with Alexa-enabled devices.
The Audible is a pretty decent option but:
1) The monthly subscription starts from $14.95 per month — a bit of expensive
2) Audible does not offer family plans at this time (although you can create Household that can contain up to ten members: two adults (ages 18 and over), each with their own Amazon account + up to four teen profiles (available for ages 13–17) + up to four child profiles (suggested for ages <12)) — two adults only, to add kids you must use the Amazon FreeTime ($2.99 per month extra)
3) You are limited with the titles from Audible only — I cannot use my personal audio books collection on CDs or in mp3
One day my wife asked me that she would like to listen her favorite music on Amazon Echo. We have accumulated a large collection of CDs and she wanted me to put it somewhere that she could later ask Alexa to play it.
Happened that I’m a software engineer by trade, so I thought why not.
It took me ~4 months (of my free time) trying to figure out where to put our whole music collection and how to make Amazon Echo to play it. Finally, we came up with the idea using the Google Drive as a storage (15 GB for free) and also create the Alexa skill that will be able to stream that music collection from our personal Google Drive.
When I started this project I quickly realized that it could be used for streaming audio books from my personal collection!
So, we made it. We developed the Sound Drive Alexa skill. So, we could listen our own music and books using Amazon Echo devices. How exacting that was!
Unfortunately, after about 6 months of our ecstatic experience, Google introduced some breaking changes in the Google Drive API. Because of that the Alexa Sound Drive skill been broken. I mean, completely broken. People who used the skill including all my family were upset.
I tried frantically to find a way around the issue. But all in vain. I realized that I have to forget about Google Drive and have to find another cloud storage provider that could be accessible for as many people as possible.
So, now here it is, the Sound Stream — Alexa skill capable of streaming any audio content you can think of from your Dropbox.
You can watch a quick start guide here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gfLWlKQmwM&t=5s
I hope that you will find this bit of software useful :-)
