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Voice Monkey Docs
Heads up — these docs cover Voice Monkey API v3, the current version. If you signed up before the v3 launch, your account is still on API v2 for a limited transition period and the examples below will not work against your account.

Devices

A Voice Monkey device is the bridge between Voice Monkey and your physical Echo speakers and Alexa Routines. Triggering a device — from the console, API, a Flow, a webhook or a schedule — is what causes something to happen on your Alexa account.

Device types

Section titled “Device types”

There are two device types. Pick the one that matches what you need to do.

TypeWhat it doesUse it forConsole
SpeakerLets Voice Monkey talk on a specific physical Echo — TTS, audio, video, images, on-screen text.Announcements, media playback, Echo Show visuals.app.voicemonkey.io/speakers
Routine TriggerLets Voice Monkey fire an Alexa Routine remotely. Voice Monkey doesn’t speak — Alexa does whatever the Routine says (lights, music, scenes, etc.).Remote triggers from IFTTT, hardware buttons, schedules, webhooks.app.voicemonkey.io/routines

A simple rule of thumb: if Voice Monkey needs to push something back to your Echo (speech / media / display), create a Speaker. Otherwise create a Routine Trigger.

You can mix and match — most accounts have a few of each.

How devices appear in your Alexa account

Section titled “How devices appear in your Alexa account”

Voice Monkey registers a single smart-home device with Alexa called Alexa Voice Monkey v3. Every Speaker and Routine Trigger you create is added as a named event inside that one device, grouped under two event sources:

  • VM Speakers — every Speaker device shows up here.
  • VM Routines — every Routine Trigger shows up here.

This means you’ll only ever see one Voice Monkey “device” in the Alexa app — not one per Speaker / Trigger. When you build an Alexa Routine you pick the Alexa Voice Monkey v3 device first, then choose the event matching the name you gave the device in the Voice Monkey console.

There’s nothing to “discover” or sync manually. The moment you click Create in the Voice Monkey console, the new event is pushed to Alexa.

Speakers vs physical Echos

Section titled “Speakers vs physical Echos”

A Speaker is not a physical Echo — it’s a slot you wire up to one (or more) physical Echos via Alexa Routines.

  • Single-Echo Speaker — one Voice Monkey Speaker → one Alexa Routine → one physical Echo. Voice Monkey announces on that Echo.
  • Multi-room Speaker — one Voice Monkey Speaker → multiple Alexa Routines (same trigger, different From Echos) → all picked Echos announce in sync.

Routine Triggers don’t have a “From” — they just fire the Alexa Routine you’ve wired them into, and the Routine’s actions take it from there.

Device IDs

Section titled “Device IDs”

Every device has a stable, human-readable ID generated from its name when you create it (e.g. naming a Speaker Living Room Echo produces an ID like living-room-echo-3f7k2). This ID:

  • Is what you pass as the device parameter to the API, Flow nodes and webhook actions.
  • Stays the same when you rename the device — so renames don’t break anything.
  • Is shown in the console next to each device with a one-click copy button.

Renaming, editing and deleting

Section titled “Renaming, editing and deleting”

Open any device in the console (click its tile on the Speakers or Routine Triggers page) to:

  • Rename it. The display name is updated everywhere automatically — including the event name shown in the Alexa app — but the device ID stays stable.
  • Test it. The Test button on the edit page (and on each tile in the list) sends a sample announcement / fires the trigger end-to-end so you can confirm wiring without leaving the browser.
  • Delete it. Removes the event from Alexa as well as from Voice Monkey. Any Flows, schedules or webhooks that reference the deleted device will stop firing — clean those up first if you want them to keep working against a different device.

Plan limits

Section titled “Plan limits”

Devices count against your plan separately for each capability:

PlanSpeakersRoutine Triggers
Free53
Hobby1525
UltimateUnlimitedUnlimited

Hitting the cap disables the Add button in the console; the existing devices keep working. Delete one or upgrade your plan to add more.

Listing devices over the API

Section titled “Listing devices over the API”

Need to look up device IDs at runtime — for example to populate a dropdown in your own tool, or to share a Flow template across multiple Voice Monkey accounts? Call GET /devices. It returns every device on the account with its id, name and capability (speakers or routines), so you can filter to whichever type you need.

Where next

Section titled “Where next”