Add the Shortcut
Create a voice token, download My Spotting.shortcut, and open it on your iPhone. If iOS blocks it, turn on Allow Untrusted Shortcuts in Settings → Shortcuts. Then just say “Hey Siri, log a train.”
Voice logging · Siri & Alexa
Say what you saw. It logs itself.
Call out a number and a station and My Spotting adds it to your collection — from your phone, your watch, your car, or the Echo in the kitchen.
Example
You
Log 66789 at York.
Siri
Did you spot 66789, Class 66, at York? Say yes to log it.
You
Yes.
Siri
Logged 66789, Class 66, at York. You can undo that in My Spotting.
Three ways in
One collection, whichever assistant is with you.
Siri
Download the ready-made Shortcut and say “Hey Siri, log a train.” Runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, CarPlay and HomePod.
Alexa
Link your Amazon account once, then say “Alexa, ask My Spotting to log 66789 at York.” Every Echo on your account, home or pocket.
Webhook
One POST with a Bearer token, so IFTTT, Zapier or your own tools can log a sighting from anything that speaks JSON.
Where you can use it
The assistant is the interface. There is no app to install.
My Spotting is a web app you add to your home screen, and voice is the shortest way into it. The same spoken command lands in the same collection whether you are at the lineside or on the sofa — home Echo and phone are not two products.
- At the lineside. Phone in hand, or Apple Watch on your wrist — “Hey Siri, log a train.” Works with the screen off and your hands full.
- On the move. CarPlay reads the read-back aloud and takes your yes, so you never touch the dash.
- At home. A HomePod or an Echo logs to the same collection while you review the day’s haul.
- In your pocket. The Alexa app puts “ask My Spotting” on any phone, so the home skill travels with you.
| You are on | Assistant |
|---|---|
| iPhone · iPad | Siri Shortcut |
| Apple Watch | Siri, wrist raise |
| CarPlay | Siri, hands-free |
| HomePod | Siri |
| Echo at home | Alexa skill |
| Android · iPhone | Alexa app |
How it works
It hears a sentence, not a form.
No fields, no menus. Say it however you like — My Spotting parses the utterance and resolves it against the same live inventory the app uses.
- You speak. A number, a class, a station, a time, an activity — in any order, with filler words in between.
- It resolves. Number becomes class, operator and livery; a station name becomes its CRS code; “this morning” becomes a timestamp.
- It checks with you. Ambiguous or low-confidence reads are spoken back for a yes before anything is written.
- It saves, once. The write is idempotent, so a retried turn or a flaky signal can never log the same train twice.
| You say | It resolves to |
|---|---|
| “66789” | Class 66, with operator and livery |
| “class 66” | British Rail Class 66 |
| “at York” | York (YRK) |
| “in the depot” | activity: depot |
| “this morning” | 09:00 today |
Set up
About two minutes each. Do only the one you own.
Link your account
Choose Link Alexa account and sign in — you never share a password. Enable the My Spotting skill in the Alexa app and point it at the webhook; the interaction model (invocation “my spotting”) is downloadable from your settings.
Wire up IFTTT, Zapier or your own tools
POST JSON to the voice endpoint with an Authorization: Bearer header. You get back a spoken confirmation and the saved sighting.
https://loporail.com/wp-json/lwrail/v1/spotting/voice
Safe by default
Add-only tokens
An assistant authenticates with a scoped lwrs_ token carrying only voice:write. It can add sightings — never read, export or delete your collection.
Read back before it saves
Digits are the top speech-recognition error, so an ambiguous log is spoken back for a yes first. Set the check to always, low-confidence only, or never.
Revoke any time
Tokens live in your account and stop working the moment you revoke them. Rate-limited to forty voice writes per ten minutes, per token.
Voice needs a connection — logging by hand does not.
A spoken number is matched against the live train inventory, so Siri and Alexa log while you are online. When there is no signal, tap it in anyway: those entries are queued on your phone and sync the moment you reconnect.
Hands free at the lineside.
Turn on voice logging and add your first assistant in a couple of minutes. Free with a My Spotting account.
Turn on voice logging My account