Echo Devices (Alexa) as Media Player - Testers Needed

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1931

@keatontaylor
We are pleased to announce that we have officially pushed version 1.0.0 to the master branch. This requires HA 0.88.0 and greater. If you have an older version of HA you will need to use the old branch which is 0.10.2. We do not plan any more updates to that older branch.

Please note, there are breaking changes including the need to change your configuration.yaml.
Please follow the migration instructions completely.

We fixed a bunch of outstanding bugs and added features including:

  • Volume control regardless of playing state
  • Multiple accounts.
  • Alexa sequence and routine support.
  • Reduced the frequency of polling by primarily only polling playing devices and reducing the keep alive poll. This will avoid flooding Amazon particularly with those with multiple devices. Please note you may have to interact with your device with your voice or in HA for the media player to start refreshing again.

Full changelog.

Moving forward:
We continue to work on getting this ready for HA inclusion. We will be creating a notification component (Announce, TTS, App push) and will in the future deprecate the media_player.alexa_tts service in favor of the notify service.

As always, please use the the Wiki and FAQ if you need instructions or have questions. Also, we appreciate any help in documenting features since this thread is basically unsearchable now. We also use GitHub for bug reports/feature requests.

7 Likes
1932

events are overtaking us, as of version 1.0 this custom component now supports all the features of

Amazon Alexa per Shell fernsteuern (Echo remote control)

So this script is now no longer required :slight_smile:

1933

Thanks for the kind words, but not quite I believe. We’re missing some of the features like WHA management, but we’re trying to catch up.

1934

Can this output custom TTS on my Alexa devices? For instance when door lock is unlocked it will say a welcome message.

1935

yes :slight_smile:

1 Like
1936

Just a little note: When you update to 1.0.0 you wil probably get new entities with the ending_2

so if it was media_player.X it will become media_player.X_2. Delete those entities in .storage or in the new section in home assistant and restart to get your old entity names again. This way you don’t have to cahnge your automations to the new names.

This might be obvious for most users, but maybe not for new ones.

3 Likes
1937

So now it’s also possible to change the volume when its in idle/standby mode?

Nevermind, just tried it, It works, very nice, this way we can get rid of the silence song title.

I can control the volume iusing the services in the dev tools tabs. But is it also possible to see the volume bar in the mediaplayer card, even when its in standby?

can someone point out how to use this?
Edit: see Home · alandtse/alexa_media_player Wiki · GitHub

1938

will it be possible to have services without mediaplayers?
so can i only activate TTS service or is the mediaplayer needed?

edit: good work by the way!

1939

@andrew.vint , i’ve moved to the new 1.0.0 version and its all working fine, the TTS is working too. i’ve followed the instructions

and it all is working fine. I also removed everything and re-did and it still worked fine.

@alandtse. great effort, thanks for your work :slight_smile:

1 Like
1940

Ok, so sequence works for me, but I don’t get routines working.

I have a routine called “test” and I tried it this way

{
“entity_id”: “media_player.myalexadevice”,
“media_content_id”: “test”,
“media_content_type”: “routine”
}

but it doesn’t work.

When I say “alexa, test” it works.

1941

hi guys in the instructions it says add it to the config but i have mine broke out can i add it ot the media_player.yaml file and if so is it set out the same as the instructions say?

1942

You need to to this:

1943

This has to be added to the main config.yaml, remove the old entries on the media_player.yaml.

alexa_media:
  accounts:
    - email: !secret alexa_email
      password: !secret alexa_password
      url: amazon.in
      scan_interval: 30
1 Like
1944

I assume, it’s not yet possible to invoke skills with this component?

Great project you got here! Thanks for all you do!

1945

Was someone here yet able to fire a routine with this?

As I mentioned above mine doesn’t work and I’m wondering if it’s maybe region specific.

1946

in option we have to type Sms, email or 1 ,2 ? because I tried both and no email confirmation recieved

1947

I run HA 0.88.1 and I moved to 1.0.0.

While previous version worked fine now I found this error:

2019-02-23 21:24:51 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Error during setup of component alexa_media
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/setup.py", line 154, in _async_setup_component
    component.setup, hass, processed_config)  # type: ignore
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 57, in run
    result = self.fn(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
  File "/config/custom_components/alexa_media/__init__.py", line 63, in setup
    from alexapy import AlexaLogin
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'alexapy'

What am I missing?

Thank You

1948

See post above from @Prathik_Gopal

You have to change your config too

1949

What to you mean? Wrong topic?

1950

Capture