I have read this post over about 12 times and I just can't seem to distill it down into something I can really understand.
If possible do you think you could rephrase it in a less "stream of consciousness" style?
Is there something in particular that you are trying to accomplish, but are unable to get working the way you want?
I was pretty flustered last night, sorry. I had ifttt fighting with me and Lemon (vc) chirping out and turning things on and off while the tv was on. Still trying to figure the mic location and sensitivity settings.
What i was trying to accomplish is simple. I receive an email (gmail) and it puts it in dropbox/watch folder, then read out.
I figure it could be a cool party trick. or even used if someone was home, but they were purposely ignoring the phone/email/text. I was trying to use email instead of sms, because i do not want to give out my phone number to everyone, and it is easier to create a new email account for these purposes.
What i figured out is it has to be as plain text. Not a big deal for me to set things to plain text, but playing tech support isn't ideal for something so trickish.
After all the back and forth with testing last night, i have come to the conclusion that ifttt is a cool novelty, but really shouldn't be used for something serious and timely.
I think for my party trick it will be easier to set up a rasp pi webserver and setup an interface to allow people locally connected to play around. at least i know it will be near instant and not 30 seconds - 1 hour.
I have a meeting to run to right now. I will look at the code after. Thank you and I promise to try not to do to many more stream of consciousness ramblings on here.