Cloud - Alexa Smart Home Media Player Support

Configuration
1

I just successfully set up the new homeassistant cloud component and integrated it with alexa, so far it seems to mostly work. Sometimes Alexa will say “OK” but the action doesn’t actually happen.

I’m more curious though if anyone has gotten media player support to work. I can turn my TV on and off now, via the cloud component, but I cannot seem to adjust the volume (my wife’s most requested feature!). The cloud component documentation says that this should be possible, and my media_player component supports it, however alexa just keeps saying that it is not supported. Any ideas?

2

I’m also seeing the same issues. On/Off work but attempting to adjust volume does not work.

I also tried setting display_categories: TV but it didn’t seem to make a difference, or display the device as a TV in Alexa

3

Same concern here also regarding media player support.

Setting display_categories doesn’t seem to have any impact on how entities are shown in the Alexa app.

4

The volume issues should be fixed in the next HA release 0.63. There are two types of volume support in Alexa: Speaker and StepSpeaker, and HA had only implemented support for Speaker. Support for step speaker is added in https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/12183, this will require you to re-run device discovery in Alexa once 0.63 is released and you have upgraded your install.

There is another issue regarding the Apple TV Media player not supporting player/pause etc https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/12164, there is a PR to fix this https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/12167 and if you want you can add this as a custom_component in the short term to make it work. It’s unlikely this PR will get merged in it’s current state as additional work is needed to support the Media Player Card correctly.

The display_categories: TV issue https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/12059 appears to be a problem with the Alexa App, not Home Assistant. I would suggest raising the issue via the Feedback section in the Alexa App with Amazon. Alexa does seem to treat my Media Player as a TV. If I add it to a group that has an echo in it I can say Alexa Pause and it knows to pause the Media Player without my having to tell it the device, My understanding is this only works for Lights and TVs which makes me thing that Alexa is recognizing it as a TV and the Alexa App has a bug.