Step 3: Test Your Reference Video Skill on an Echo Show Device (VSK Echo Show)

Implement the Reference Video Skill onto Echo Show

STEP 1:
Configure Developer Account Settings

→

STEP 2:
Install, Build, and Deploy the Skill

→

For this final part of setting up the video skill, you must log into your Echo Show device with the same account as your Alexa Developer Account. You must also use your smartphone to log into the Alexa App, again by using that account.

Prerequisites
Step 1: Link Video Skill to Echo Show Device through Alexa App
- Troubleshooting
Step 2: Test Video Skill
Next Steps

Prerequisites

Set up and register your Echo Show device using the same developer account related to your video skill. Note the following:

If your device is already registered to another user, do a factory reset and register it with your developer account. (Or you can see Deregister a Device to deregister it through amazon.com.)
You need the Alexa smartphone app to complete the device setup. If you don't already have this app, download it and sign in with your developer account.
Set up your Echo Show with your developer account. See Set Up Your Echo Device with a Screen for details.
Make sure both your Alexa smartphone app and Echo Show are on the same Wi-Fi network.

Step 1: Link Video Skill to Echo Show Device through Alexa App

Follow these steps:

Open the Alexa smartphone app on your phone and sign in with the same developer account.
Tap Devices in the bottom navigation bar and then select All Devices. Confirm that your Echo Show device appears in your app.

Tip: You can find out your Echo's device name by asking it, "Alexa, what's the device name?"
From the app's home screen:
- Tap the menu button (upper-left corner) .
- Tap Settings and then tap TV & Video.
Scroll down the list and look for the video skill you created earlier. (It will appear at the bottom.)
Tap the plus button next to your video skill.

You should see your new skill's details.

New skill's details
Tap Link Your Alexa Device. This will guide you to an AWS Cognito OAuth workflow:
- Tap Sign up at the bottom.
  Important: Do not click Sign In as there are no accounts created by default.
- Create an account with a valid email address and password.
- When you receive an email with a verification code, use it to confirm your account.
When you are done, a new page opens up in your browser that indicates your skill has been successfully linked.

Your skill has been successfully linked
Select the Alexa Echo Show devices on which you want to enable this skill, and tap Save. (You can now close the Alexa app.)

Troubleshooting

If you have issues, you can log into the AWS console, and go to the AWS Cognito Section. Follow this process to resolve:

Click Manage User Pools.
Select your skill's user pool (it is named after your project name).
On the left under General Settings, click Users and Groups.
Manually confirm users, or create new users, if needed.

Step 2: Test Video Skill

Turn to your Echo Show device and say, "Alexa, go to Video Home."

The logo image asset for your video skill should appear:

Your video skill logo appears on Video Home
Tap on your video skill logo with your finger. (This initiates an Alexa directive to get browsable items from the sample catalog associated with your video skill.)

A thumbnail from your catalog

Note: When the users go to Video Home and tap on a specific video skill, their requests they look for media from within that skill (rather than looking at the catalogs for all the video skills on your device.) This is how you avoid having Alexa return results from other catalogs.
Say to your Echo Show device, "Alexa, play The Commuter" or "Alexa, watch The Commuter".

Important: The sample catalog's video titles do exist; however they point to a single video (Big Buck Bunny) which is stored in your S3 bucket. This short video should now play on your Echo Show device. See Lambda Customization when ready to use your own video content.
Try utterances such as "Search for The Commuter", "Search for movies by Jamie Foxx", "Search for Comedy movies", and "Search for Comedy TV Series by Jennifer Aniston" to ensure that the reference skill performs searching by video name, actor name, and genre.

Tip: This project uses the Gracenote catalog as a sample. When a video in the catalog is updated (By Gracenote), the videoID might change. If this happens, it might differ from the videoID already hardcoded in the in-memory database file included in the project and the user might encounter a "video not found" message while searching. In this case, simply try with another video in database.

Next Steps

You have successfully tested the reference video skill. Learn more about the mechanics of this project, starting with the Lambda Overview.

Last updated: Oct 29, 2020