Echo Devices (Alexa) as Media Player - Testers Needed

[ghstudio (douglas weiss)]

upgraded to .97 and used HACS to update Alexa media Player…actually, I removed it and then used HACS to install. I am accessing two amazon accounts…I deleted both pickles…and I rebooted.

The system hung during the reboot…just sat there. I hashmarked all the alexa code in configuration.yaml and the system started normally. I also tried hashmarking out the second amazon account, so I restarted with one account.

My configuration.yaml:

 #alexa_media:
 #  accounts:
 #    - email: [email protected]
 #      password: yyyyyyyy
 #      url: amazon.com

No matter what I do…if I put alexa media into the configuration file, my rpi just sits and won’t respond to any internet (wired or wireless). If I take it out…I boot normally.

Not sure how to debug this…but something is very amiss…

[hefal (Henrik)]

Squeeze in question here.

I want my bedroom speaker to play music when my gf is sleeping while me and my friends keep using spotify around the house (playing spotify in one room will pause the other sessions so i cant do that)

Is this only capable to output songs from spotify/amazon music?
Ive got plex configured but its not compatible with alexa’s routines, its not possible to output that to alexas media players either?

Thanks

[skynet01 (Alex)]

any way to tell this component from making the extra switches? I have about 8 alexas in the house and after the last update I have 24 switches that i won’t use. Any way to disable them?

[Shayne_Bergan (Shayno)]

I assume you’re using Alexa cloud integration? Go into settings, Home assistant cloud, then Manage entities. Then just switch off the ones you don’t want.

[automateit (rrubin0)]

I can’t get these to work and think it’s not currently supported but -

Are there any plans to add Alexa Skills Kit Sound Library support?
This would be truly awesome!

[automateit (rrubin0)]

alexa:
  smart_home:
    client_id: !secret amazon_client_id
    client_secret: !secret amazon_client_secret
    filter:
      exclude_entities:

[Shayne_Bergan (Shayno)]

[automateit (rrubin0)]

is that in the cloud ui? I don’t use that myself …but just realized that I probably replied to the wrong person too

[automateit (rrubin0)]

this was meant to address your question:

Echo Devices (Alexa) as Media Player - Testers Needed

alexa: smart_home: client_id: !secret amazon_client_id client_secret: !secret amazon_client_secret filter: exclude_entities:

[kanga_who (Jason)]

Facing the same issue, on a RPi3 running Hass.io on Raspbian.

Working fine with Hass.io installed on a NUC running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, really strange.

[alandtse]

1.4.1 is out.

This fixes the major bugs caused by Amazon’s API and HA 97.0’s changes along with other misc bug fixes. As for new features, we added in support for shuffle, repeat, and do not disturb through 3 new switches. I haven’t drafted the documentation but shuffle and repeat only impact a player which is playing a playlist or service that supports it in the Amazon app.

Please note, while I don’t normally like releasing with bugs, we released with two known bugs related to the NoEntitySpecifiedError. This should be a harmless bug as it’s thrown only during startup because HA is trying to update the component before it’s fully loaded. If you see anything worse like lost functionality, then please let us know in the appropriate thread (switch, alarm_control_panel).

For those on hassio, you may have to restart 2-3 times before HA will load the dependencies. It doesn’t look like something we can control too well.

Features:
feat(switch): add basic switch support (do not disturb, repeat, shuffle) (resolves #195, resolves#203)

Fixes:
fix(media_player): remove unused MEDIA_PLAYER_SCHEMA (#261) (resolves #259)
fix(media_player): alternative serial numbers not recognized for mobile apps (resolves #249)
fix(guard): catch TypeError exception for regions without Guard (#245) (fixes #243, fixes #248 )
fix(guard): add additional checks for failed guard access (fixes #243, fixes #248 )
fix(guard): add 2s delay for guard state check after voice activity (fixes #256)
fix(guard): schedule HA update after processing voice (fixes #256)
fix(media_player): fix bug where get_last_called called before init
fix(captcha): add captcha to handle OTP selection page (fixes #258)
fix(wshandler): properly handle entryId does not contain #
fix(switch): add unique_id function

Full changelog.

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

---

@ghstudio

Not sure how to debug this…but something is very amiss…

Provide logs.

@skynet01

any way to tell this component from making the extra switches?

No, not yet. They are created for any enabled media player. exclude_devices won’t work at the switch level. We need to add that feature.

@dhaker

I have just updated to 0.97 and my automation notifications to call services, media_player.alexa_tts no works.

This was deprecated in 1.3.0. Please use notify.

@automateit

Are there any plans to add Alexa Skills Kit Sound Library support?

I believe we already support some SSML. I don’t know if that automatically gets the sound-library. If it does, please update the wiki.

@hefal

Is this only capable to output songs from spotify/amazon music?
Ive got plex configured but its not compatible with alexa’s routines, its not possible to output that to alexas media players either?

We replicate the Alexa app functionality. If you can do it with the app, then we can try to add it here. If you can’t do it in the app, then we can’t do it.

@automateit

My question was not meant to criticize the project but rather, to find out if the integration into hass as an official component has a target time frame.

Also, there are so many posts on this thread that it is hard to follow from the beginning. Have you guys considered maybe starting a new thread using the latest release?

No timeline since HACS gives us many of the benefits of ease of distribution. Not sure there’s a benefit to starting a new thread. We already tell people to use the Wiki instead of the thread.

[kanga_who (Jason)]

@alandtse @ghstudio

So, turns out, PiHole (adblocker) was stopping it from working.

I just turned PiHole off, rebooted, and everything came back online. Very strange as PiHole has been running previously and the issue has not occurred.

PiHole also running on my NUC, updated and runs without error. Weird…

[Ciquattro]

The upgrade from 1.3.1 to 1.4.1 is okay and everythings seems working from HA logs in debug mode… but the speaker don’t reproduce the audio messages I don’t know why… anyone have the same behaviour?

[ghstudio (douglas weiss)]

I have reinstalled alexa_media manually…copying all the raw files. I have reentered configuration.yaml entries (shown in my previous post).

If I hashmark out alexa_media entries in configuration.yaml, I boot normally and can access my rpi using a web browser. When I remove the hashmarks, I then check the configuration and it just loops! This is the same configuration.yaml file I used before I upgraded to .96 and 1.4.1…

If I manually reboot, hass never starts…I can’t get to it via internet and some automations where I use a z-wave switch to activate something don’t work…so it’s not just an internet interface issue. adding the Logging didn’t help…since hassio didn’t start the log files were never created.

I essentially have a pretty vanilla rpi installation. I am running two other custom_components (icloud3 and HACS) and and alexa_media is in the same folder.

Clearly, I need to get to a point where the configuration checker doesn’t just loop.

I am out of ideas.

[skynet01 (Alex)]

Ah yes I know about this, I just thought there might be away to disable them all together so they don’t load up in HA at all… you know trying to conserve the Pi3 resources , maybe in the config I can just specify what switches I want to enable

[Montie (Mark)]

First thanks for all the great work on this component - makes home assistant work just the way we want with alexa.

I have recently started moving to node red for automation, and for the life of me I cannot call notify shout from node red to get alexa to make announcements. Im 110% certain its my total lack of skill with JSON.

In Home assistant I have these sort of announcements as part of automatons - work very well. (forgive cut n paste errors)

  action:
  - service: notify.shout
    data:
      target:
      - media_player.livingroom
      - media_player.kitchen
      title: Announcement
      data:
        type: announce
        method: all
      message: Dehumidifier needs emptied.

IN node red:

{
    "data": {
        "message": "Test",
        "title": "Test",
        "Method": "all",
        "tyoe": "announce"
    }
}

Just get these “Call-service API error. Error Message: extra keys not allowed @ data[‘entity_id’]”

Would appreciate any help, ive googled myself silly before admitting defeat and asking here

Many Thanks

Mark

[finity]

I don’t use Node-Red but I think I see two possible issues:

The “type”: is misspelled (you have “tyoe”: )

and “Method”: shouldn’t be capitalized.

[Montie (Mark)]

Thanks, I corrected the typos, still get same error. I have had many json attempts - tried all sorts, even blank. Same error thrown from home assistant back to node red. I note that the mentioned error states ‘entity_id’ which is not in my json but i assume from the dialogue box. perhaps there’s some issue with node red ?

Mark

[markbajaj]

This is my simple ‘Yes’ announcement that works if it helps:

[Montie (Mark)]

Thanks, using your example got your method and mine to work - called with no erorrs. However alexa isnt saying yes or test… but huge step forward after days at this.

Will continue fiddling

Mark