So... what's required to listen to all this good stuff on your Alexa device?

1) You need to know the direct stream URL of the station you want to listen to

If you already have your favourite stream URLs to hand, all well and good, but if not, there's always a way to find them. With respect to ham radio gateways, there's a handy service called Broadcastify which hosts a few of them (Here's the Link), or just Google something like 'hubnet on broadcastify' or 'freestar on broadcastify' and you'll probably find what you're looking for much quicker

Something to note here is that once you find a station on Broadcastify that you want Alexa to play, grabbing the URL from the address bar won't work. The number at the end of the URL is important though and needs to be noted. The stream URL is actually https://broadcastify.cdnstream1.com/ with the previously noted number added at the end. To save time, I've listed three popular ham radio streams below. Just for reference, when clicked, the first part of each line takes you to the Broadcastify source page and the second part (in bold) opens the stream in your browser:

HUBNet AllStar Link - https://broadcastify.cdnstream1.com/27462
FreeSTAR International - https://broadcastify.cdnstream1.com/40121
East Coast Reflector IRLP 9050 - https://broadcastify.cdnstream1.com/12560

Please be aware that Broadcastify will sometimes throw in an advert before playing a stream

Finding the URL of a 'non broadcastify' radio stream can sometimes require a little detective work, and the best place to start is by searching within the souce code of a webpage. Right clicking a webpage and selecting 'View page source' (or words to that effect) will bring up the hidden secrets of that page. Although it may take some time, searching through all the text will usually reveal the true identity of the radio stream. If your not sure that you've found the correct URL, copy and paste it into the address bar of a web browser and see if it plays

Note: Some audio formats may not be supported, for instance, my echo dot wouldn't play a .ogg stream but common formats like .mp3 work fine

2) You need to enable an Alexa skill called 'Radio Browser'

Alexa needs to be able to play direct radio URL streams, and this is made possible by enabling the 'Radio Browser' skill. To enable it, go to your Alexa phone app, select 'More' (bottom right) and then 'Skills & Games'. In the search box, type 'radio browser' and a list of items will appear. Select 'Radio Browser' (it should be top of the list) and then 'LAUNCH'. It will probably ask you to select the device you want to add the skill to (In my case Echo Dot). Alternatively, you can log into your Amazon account and enable it from there (Here's the Link for Amazon UK. Other parts of the world will differ)

Once enabled, the Radio Browser skill starts off with a default station playlist which may or may not be to your liking, but you can create your own custom playlist by going to the Radio Browser webpage (Here's the Link). There, you will need to ask Alexa for a password before you can create or edit your playlist, then it's just a matter of copying and pasting your stream URLs in the order you want them, as shown in the example below (Note that my playlist shows an alternative URL for HUBNet)




Radio Browser requires an exact voice command to invoke an action. Below are the ones I use most

"alexa, ask radio browser for password" This command allows you to create or edit your own playlist
"alexa, ask radio browser to play number 1" (or number 2 or whatever) This command makes Alexa jump to a specific station on your playlist
"alexa, next" This command makes Alexa skip to the next station on your playlist
"alexa, previous" This command makes Alexa jump back to the previous station on your playlist

Alexa will announce the station name as it appears in your playlist

To summarise...

Link to Broadcastify Click Here
Link to a good source of radio streams Click Here
Link to the Radio Browser skill on Amazon UK Click Here
Link to the Radio Browser skill home page Click here

As I said earlier, I take no credit for any of this, but my thanks must go to Michael Dworkin for developing the Radio Browser skill and for helping me to get it up and running again after I had a problem. About that... at the time of writing when I disabled the skill and then re-enabled it, it stopped working, but I think this issue has now been fixed. Thanks also to all the good folk who run and maintain the digital networks for us radio hams to enjoy

Tip: If you don't have or want any Alexa devices, you can still listen to the digital gateways mentioned above using just your web browser. Alternatively, they can be listened to in a media player such as VLC by creating a .m3u file. Simply paste the URL into a text editor (eg. Notepad) and save it with the station name followed by the suffix .m3u. Now when the file is double clicked, the stream will play