Yes, it’s correct. Right now, myself, @dbrunt, and a few others are keeping the integration alive with minor PRs. But in order to fully correct many of the issues, the entire integration and it’s upstream lib need to be rewritten from the ground up.
@dbrunt is putting in most of the recent efforts and is learning the library as he goes. So the fixes pace will be slow for a while.
Ok, at least those minor PRs fixed the issue for me and some others following the 2024.8 update.
Thanks.
I know the problems and I’m reading the problems there, but mine after 2024.8.2 upgrade is not related to that. It is related to the most recent issues reported over there.
With 2024.6 I still don’t have any single problem with the integration. And yes, still there, because of the AMP problems read the last two months). And don’t need restart automation or something else. I think the new library versions of the HA updates are causing this or are then not in line with amazon anymore. So (at least) here only the HA update is breaking the integration. All versions of the integration are working with 2024.6.
My gut feeling is no. If only cookie handling changes coming from HA library updates are now the problem, why should the whole integration not be rewritten from ground up.
But anyways, it is as it is and I didn’t want to discuss this. I only hoped to get help how to restore the backup, which is automatically stored during HA update. Or is this really only a config backup? If yes, why that? I always thought that it is a complete backup, that one can restore if an update fails or is not working as expected.
If you remember during beta none of the new badges worked for most of the beta on any device using Android app. I didn’t even look at the badges as my eyes were ignoring it due to this issue.
The httpx upstream library has made changes that make connections to ipv6 devices more robust. In this process, they also fixed a number of issues related to all http connections. alexapy uses httpx to connect to echo devices. alexapy does many things it should not do with the httpx API, which is what’s leading to most of the recent issues. This has been confirmed by bdraco, a well respected developer who has his hand in many different python libraries (including home assistant itself). It could be avoided if the developer of alexapy would relinquish control over the library and allow major PRs to it. I don’t believe they are fully against large PRs, but this developer (who is not the same developer as alexa media player) is not testing PRs and just pushing things like Alan is.
Outside that, I’m sure you’ve ran into auth issues with alexa media player? The auth process in alexapy is extremely odd, and is a reason auth issues arise in Home Assistant. This is why Chemelli has taken it upon himself to write a new upstream library in hopes to replace alexapy.
Long story short, alexapy does things it shouldn’t and it requires extensive rewrites to remedy the situation. I do not expect any of these issues to go away over the coming months, and just remember that anything below 2024.8 is just hiding the issues in alexapy.
The cookie issues come from the update to 3.12. In September/October, this should silently go away.
Lastly, home assistant has been making a large push in the backend to let custom integration creators know when they are making unsafe use of the API. The Alexa Media Player integration has hit every single thread safety catch, meaning that Alexa Media Player is most likely a source for Home Assistant Instability. The most recent version of Alexa Media Player has most of these thread safety issues corrected.
Indeed and please don’t let evasive corporate double-speak block us from communicating with each other effectively.
FWIW, adding “no icon” to the new badge effectively minimizes the need for creating a separate custom badge (which requires development time and maintenance that you said was in short supply).
I like the new badge’s many features except for the simple fact it’s necessarily wider than the old one due to the obligatory inclusion of an icon. Icons aren’t needed for every application.
When I first pointed this out, you said the new badge is “shorter, so it will occupy about the same amount of space, if not less.”.
That prediction fell short of the fact the new badge’s design makes it significantly wider (because of a mandatory icon).
Personally, this is all I’m asking too, and I was one of the very first to have illustrated this.
Just this, @madelena, then I can move on — and I’m sure it’s the same for many others, having read all the feedback on this matter.
Just to add a different opinion: Personally I really like the new badges. The old badges were incredibly hideous. I tried using them in the past and I just couldn’t get around how ugly and useless they felt.
Now, I do get that some people found use for them and got used to how they looked. Seems like a lot of people had precisely the exact amount of badges that would be displayed nicely in full line(s) on their device. So this change is breaking it due to different widths and the need to redesign might be frustrating. I get it. But seriously, the new design is so much better looking, you can’t tell me you don’t see it.
What I’m now doing as a user is rethinking how exactly I want to be using the badges. I think it’s really not that intuitive or obvious, what they are best used for. I wouldn’t want to have more than a few max. Right now I’m using one for weather and just a couple more for the most important values from that view. That works well. On another view I’m trying listing icons of turned on lights (only shown when turned on, only icons), it looks great, but it’s rather useless. Would be great if people shared their designs and explain what they are accomplishing with the badges.
I’m going to use the new badges to replace my back button, all lights on button, all lights off button, temperature, and humidity for each room & floor. I was using custom button card, but no need for that now (in that area). It’s nice being able to customize badges too, meaning you can put any custom card in that container.
My only suggestion is that we are given a way to have force badges to be “centered”, “right adjusted”, or “left adjusted” inside their container.
The difference is that you’re talking about the visual side and I’m talking about features. As I’ve said numerous times: I prefer progress and a new look, but the functionality wasn’t fully considered.
One more post?
To conclude the thread:
New badge: beautiful but useless,
Old badge: awful but useful.
Well, we are talking about the interface. How it looks is a huge part of its functionality.
I disagree. If HA launched a “Mona Lisa card” next month, which effectively does nothing at all except show that single painting, would you be so enthusiastic?
Are you trying to say that the graphical design of the UI doesn’t matter? It’s beyond ridiculous. If your point was different, you need to be not clear what it was.
“The new sofa is gorgeous … and is too big to fit in the room.”
Yeah, let’s stick to the 50 folding chairs we had in the living room instead.
I’m saying there’s a reason why “form over function” has a negative connotation.
I hope that now my post is more:
If the requirement is to seat 50 in a limited space, it would be counterproductive to furnish it with 10 overstuffed armchairs, regardless of their appearance.
In this situation, the fix is simple. Provide the option to display the badge without an icon.
The space savings would allow long-time badge users like myself to preserve their dashboards. I’m not pining for a return of the old badge, merely for a means of minimizing the width of the new badge.
Well, sure, I don’t see any reason to not add that option.
Because we now can add any custom card in the redesigned badges section, I was experimenting with my ‘round’ custom: button-card buttons with live streaming cameras,
I just discovered we can’t use the aspect_ratio option in the cards options.
currently these are in the cards section of the view:
and adding those to the badges section didnt show anything at first.
they use a button_card_template
round_button:
show_entity_picture: true
aspect_ratio: 1
size: 100%
show_name: false
tooltip: >
[[[ return entity.attributes.friendly_name; ]]]
styles:
card:
- border-radius: 100%
- padding: 0
and taking out the aspect_ratio there makes them re-appear…
the 3 badges on the left are the new core badges with config:
type: entity
show_entity_picture: true
display_type: minimal
and obviously a bit too small for this functionality 
if anyone has experimented with the custom:button-card and aspect_ratio (and size for that matter) succesfully, please let me know. Would actually be very nice to have these cameras stream via badges atop of the view
maybe this should go in button-card thread, because we can set the picture style to
entity_picture:
- width: 170px
- height: 170px
but because the video element is not using that same dimension we get this…
not yet straighforward, will hop over.
