New feature: Talk to Faithlife on your Amazon Echo!
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Yes, It is working for me today. Thanks Dustin
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Jack said:
Yes, It is working for me today. Thanks Dustin
Where abouts are you based Jack. I am guessing not the UK ?
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Dave Thawley - No I think Dustin was working two issues. My issue was trying to get Alexa to read my reading plan. The UK issue remains unresolved, I would guess. I am in the US
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My reading plan started working this morning. I did not have to reinstall the skill. Thank you!
Now if we could just get Alexa to pronounce "Job" correctly . . .
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Thanks very much for getting back to me and explaining Jack. I thought I was in luck for a minute :-) Glad your issue is sorted now.
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Yeah, Lots of goofy pronunciations but that is not a FaithLife issue.
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Dustin,
When there are multiple reading plans, which one does it pick? Is there a way to control the plan which will be read?
Thanks.
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It picks the latest reading plan you have joined - use documents.logos.com to see all the reading plans you are in.
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Dave, I will reach out to Amazon and see what we can do to fix the UK distribution issue.
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Dustin Masters said:
Ok, I tracked down the issue. Alexa's API has a limitation to how many words it will read aloud. If you blow past that limit, the skill returns an error. I will ship a fix in a few minutes to automatically truncate readings. Looks like their limit is 8000 words.
So, my reading plan worked, but it truncated Job 1 - 5. Word reports that at 2,300 words. It looks like it got truncated a lot shorter than 8,000. I did a rough estimate and conclude that Word is close to correct.
I substituted a reading plan with shorter passages and it successfully read Gen 1. Word reports that at just over 1,000 words.
Tomorrow, when I at work with access to Linux, I'll recheck the word count using the 'wc' command.
8,000 would be great and should allow the largest readings required for traversing the Bible in one year. I could not get a word count for the ESV, but an online source suggested ~727,000 words in the NIV. The ESV and the NIV should be roughly equivalent. Dividing by 365 would result in readings of roughly 2,000 words per day. This result seems to match Word's assessment of Job 1 - 5 reported above, which came from the ESV Chronological Reading plan which should complete in a year.
So, the question would be why did Job 1-5 cut off and not complete?
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I have used 'wc' on linux and it agrees with the word count provided by Word for the ESV reading on Job 1 - 5. The linux count comes in at 2,159.
So it looks like a limit of 8,000 should not be a problem for reading plans which read through the Bible in a year. But the current implementation did truncate much earlier than 8,000.
I will put put back my plan back to one which reads the Bible in one year and see if truncates on other readings. I will also note the truncation points, if any, and try to come up with a maximum word count.
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BTW: I was pleased that after Alexa successfully completed a reading it was checked off in the plan! That's nice. I'm interested in finding out how "she" behaves when I am behind as well as if I can get her to read ahead.
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I had a typo...it is 8000 characters, not words.
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You can ask Alexa to read ahead by saying "What are my readings for tomorrow"
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Dustin Masters said:
I had a typo...it is 8000 characters, not words.
Well that makes sense. Thanks for responding.
Linux reports that the truncated passage, Job 1 - 5, is approximately 12,500 characters. I would estimate that 8,000 is at best half what is needed for a reading plan that expects to cover the Bible in one year. It would be much better to have a limit of 20,000 characters, or even more.
Assuming that there is no way to increase the Alexa limit, does anyone have any ideas on how to get around this limitation?
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I just created a plan to read through the ESV New Testament in a year. I took a single sample: Matthew 17:22–18:14. That reading resulted in 2,601 characters. That is well under the 8,000 character limit. As long as the readings don't vary wildly, then it looks like Alexa should be able to read through the NT in one year, nicely.
For myself, I may employ Alexa to read the NT while I am at home and listen to the OT on mobile devices while I commute.
Otherwise, a lot of reading systems choose different sections of the Bible. Is there any hope that we could get Alexa to switch between reading plans between readings.
Ex: Alexa, ask Faithlife to switch to reading plan B.
Alexa, ask Faithlife to read the next entry from my plan.
The whole Bible could be traversed with three non-overlapping reading plans.
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I don't see how Alexa can be used to "catch up". The "next" reading and the "current" reading both result in reading the passage scheduled for today. I set up a plan where I was several days behind, but I am unable to get Alexa to access where I left off.
Reading plans are schedules with deadlines we sometimes miss. It is not helpful to not assume that catching up or reading ahead is not part of the usage case. When you ask for the next reading and it begins on the current date without any notification that you missed a day, it becomes much less useful as a tool.
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Thanks for the feedback..I agree it's unhelpful that it skips readings without warning , instead of just picking your next scheduled reading. I'll see if I can make a change to adjust the behavior so it's more helpful.
Dustin
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Dustin Masters said:
Thanks for the feedback..I agree it's unhelpful that it skips readings without warning , instead of just picking your next scheduled reading. I'll see if I can make a change to adjust the behavior so it's more helpful.
Dustin
Thank you! Actually, I see two ways which might accommodate reading through the Bible in one year while living within the 8,000 character limit.
The first would be a method for the user to manually swap between at least three reading plans. The readings for each plan could be well under 8,000 characters and still allow traversal of the Bile in a year.
I mention a second, so that you have this in mind when you consider how to make your "adjustment". A user could make a custom plan to read through the Bible in three years and then schedule the plan to begin three years ago. Thus, one is always behind. The user would simply ask to read the next reading three times a day. It would be a little difficult to determine if you were on schedule. I personally would build an Excel spreadsheet to map fake schedule dates to actual dates. On the other hand, dividing each day's reading schedule into three might make it easier to shoehorn into a busy schedule.
This isn't as preposterous as it sounds. I sometimes use a reading plan to keep track of progress as an alternative to a bookmark. I expect to be behind. But I can easily pick up where I left off. I am currently in that situation with Carson and Moo's Introduction to the New Testament and Groothuis's Apologetics.
If the "read next" mechanism allowed for being so far behind, then the user could also easily read ahead since there is no correspondence between current plan date and actual date.
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I was able to adjust the service so it doesn't skip any readings in your reading plan. Every time you ask for a reading, it will find the oldest session up until today's date that you haven't read. If you want to read ahead, you still have to say "what are my readings for tomorrow".
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Dustin Masters said:
I was able to adjust the service so it doesn't skip any readings in your reading plan. Every time you ask for a reading, it will find the oldest session up until today's date that you haven't read. If you want to read ahead, you still have to say "what are my readings for tomorrow".
Thank you, very much, Dustin! This may fit my second scenario quite well and allow me to set up a read through the entire Bible reading plan where Alexa actually reads everything.
After I wrote my last note, it occurred to me that having the shorter passages might be better. It would allow me to squeeze readings into periods where I am limited on time.
I will try this out tonight, at home.
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It worked!! Thank you!
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Google has approved our voice app! You can now try this on your Google Home. We are still working on getting account linking working, but you can say:
Talk to Faithlife (sometimes it has trouble recognizing our name so you have to say Faith Life)
What's the verse of the day for today (or yesterday or tomorrow, etc )
What's today's devotional?
What is James 3 verse 1?
More features coming soon...let us know what you think!
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Hi Dustin,
Still no Faithlife skill in the UK for the echo :-(
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Dustin, thank you working on this for us. I am using the 5-Day Reading program but Alexa is telling me I don't have readings for today. Any suggestions?
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I just found a very peculiar bug.
I recently switched my Alexa language settings from English (US) to English (UK). This caused the Faithlife skill to cease working. I switched back to English (US), and now it's working again. I do prefer English (UK), so fixing this would be great.
Not sure if it's relevant, but my device is the latest generation of Fire TV (Japanese model, connected to Amazon.com account).
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I would have hoped there would be some way to get this Skill to U.K users by now, some 4 months or more since release, and I still cannot find the skill in th UK.
What can be done to get the skill working in the UK?
Duncan
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Can someone tell me how to get Alexa to read in the kjv? I have it set as my preferred bible but it is using another translation.
Thankspreachertony.com — appletech.tips — facebook.com/tonywalker23 — twitter.com/tonywalker23 — youtube.com/tonywalker23
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Hi Dustin,
Can you tell me if there's a similar Logos service for Google Assistant?
Thanks,
Peter
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Duncan Campbell said:
What can be done to get the skill working in the UK?
Switch your device language to US English.
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PL said:
Can you tell me if there's a similar Logos service for Google Assistant?
I don't have Google Home, so I can't verify, but these instructions are looking helpful. https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/googlehome/64p7vApuzKA/InMkG2d8CQAJ
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How do I make it read my top bible? It reads the ESV even though my top bible is the NRSV.
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Also, when I ask it to read my readings for today or for a specific date it says, "Sorry, something went wrong." But when I look in Logos, the reading has been marked as read.
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Tony Walker said:
Can someone tell me how to get Alexa to read in the kjv? I have it set as my preferred bible but it is using another translation. Thanks
It is driven from a reading plan. The reading plan will specify the Bible version to employ.
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When I ask Alexa to read a Bible verse it reads the KJV. How do I change that to esv?
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This is GREAT! I will use this every day. If it can read books the way it does Kindle books, I would be tickled. This actually would make me by many, many more books as I listen to them rather than read (beside sermon prep). Thanks, FL!
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Ha! There;s a big enough learning curve for Logos, now I have to learn Alexa?
Check out this hilarious SNL skit, works for old preachers like me:
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Dustin Masters said:
Here are some of the things you can ask:
1. Is there somewhere a list of ALL the things we can ask.
2. Can we ask Alexa to read a book in our library? If yes, how?
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Mark said:
1. Is there somewhere a list of ALL the things we can ask.
None that I know of. Maybe that'd be a project for a new Wiki page.
Mark said:2. Can we ask Alexa to read a book in our library? If yes, how?
You can ask to read from a reading plan (which could contain a book from your library).
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I wonder if there has been any further development of this?
l regularly use several reading plans simultaneously and it would be wonderful to be able to access them all. Likewise, to be able to read books from my library without having lo create a reading plan, especially as I can't switch between plans.
Another major limitation is the inability to pause and resume reading. I'm sure I' m not the only one who doesn't manage to get through in one entirely uninterrupted sitting.
Otherwise, I think this is a great little alexa skill worth working on.
s.
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Stephen Harper said:
Another major limitation is the inability to pause and resume reading. I'm sure I' m not the only one who doesn't manage to get through in one entirely uninterrupted sitting.
I know "Alexa, pause" and "Alexa, resume" works when using text to Speech of a Kindle book. Is the inability to pause and resume unique to the Faithlife skill?
Making Disciples! Logos Ecosystem = LogosMax on Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (Win11), Android app on tablet, FSB on iPhone & iPad mini, Proclaim (Proclaim Remote on Fire Tablet).
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Does this help from page one?Mark said:1. Is there somewhere a list of ALL the things we can ask.
2. Can we ask Alexa to read a book in our library? If yes, how?
Bob Pritchett said:"Alexa, ask Faithlife for Help" to get some ideas on what you can ask.
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Resurrecting this old thread to remind people of the feature ... which some of us were only vaguely aware of, were uninterested at the time, missed because it wasn't part of a major release . . . And if FL is releasing family packages, kids expect this feature and can speak questions before they can spell them correctly.
Current link: Amazon.com: Faithlife: Alexa Skills
There is also a facebook discussion of its use on an alternative Logos training/discussion/tips site.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Just tried the link in the original post on this thread on my iPhine and I get the following response from Alexa app:
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I can still do this. "Alexa, ask FaithLife to read Hebrews, Chapter 11. I like it; I wish it could read all my Logos books. Based on the last post it seems like you can't sign up for this anymore. If anyone who wants to is able. let people know. I know a lot of people don't like these types of devices.
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I put the current link in my post above for Alexa ... I don't know it for Google
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Chip Northup said:
I can still do this. "Alexa, ask FaithLife to read Hebrews, Chapter 11.
That's about all I use the skill for. It's very handy. I assume she'll only read one chapter at a time. (?)
I have never been able to make it work for a reading plan. It will read a (very) few words and stops.
macOS (Logos Pro - Beta) | Android 13 (Logos Stable)
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It maybe that the skill is not available in my localised Amazon store for my country and maybe it’s still available in US store.
Chip Northup said:I can still do this. "Alexa, ask FaithLife to read Hebrews, Chapter 11. I like it; I wish it could read all my Logos books. Based on the last post it seems like you can't sign up for this anymore. If anyone who wants to is able. let people know. I know a lot of people don't like these types of devices.
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