Echo Devices (Alexa) as Media Player - Testers Needed

mdanilo · November 16, 2021, 12:30pm

I received an update notification from Alexa Media Player in my Home Assistant. I believe it is with these changes. I just updated and the integration was re-established.

mdanilo · November 16, 2021, 11:46pm

The update didn’t solve it. Alexa Media Player integration stopped working again and ECHO devices are unavailable in Home Assistant. I deleted the integration and try to re-authenticate and the validation on the Amazon website doesn’t finish.

thoughton · November 17, 2021, 12:11am

thoughton:

the last week or two volume changes on an Echo no longer updates the HA media_player entity when the Echo is idle. It only works if the Echo is actually playing something. If the Echo is idle the volume in HA never changes despite changing the volume on the Echo. If a song is playing and I press the Echo’s volume button changes DO make it back to HA, but it seems much slower than they used to be (anywhere up to 5-10 seconds or so)

This suddenly happened on all of them (3 Dots and 4 Shows) last week. I was testing out playing Amazon playlists via an HA script at the time. I read something about possibly hitting a rate limit, but I only played a few dozen playlists in half an hour or so which doesn’t seem excessive.

I’ve deleted the integration and reinstalled the add-on, but the behaviour hasn’t changed. Everything else works normally, I can set the volume of an Echo from HA, but changing volume on the Echo isn’t shown in HA. I can force the media_player entity to update the volume with homeassistant.update_entity.

There’s nothing unusual about Alexa in my logs. Is this due to some recent HA change or has anybody got any ideas how to get the old behaviour back?

Just a note that the latest update seems to have fixed this strange problem. Volume changes on an echo are now reflected in HA within a second or so, like they used to be. Yay

Thanks for the amazing work!!!

Pirol62 · November 17, 2021, 10:59am

I can confirm that. Just tested.

BigMal · November 23, 2021, 4:59pm

Having all kinds of issues so I uninstalled AMP and removed from my HACS repository. When trying to reinstall, it states that HA 2021.12 is required. That is not available yet. Any suggestions on what I am doing wrong?

Holdestmade · November 23, 2021, 7:04pm

Same here, I had to roll back to v3.10.13

alandtse · November 23, 2021, 10:16pm

That’s a HACS bug.

You need to install 3.10.12 for any version of HA below 2021.12. 3.10.14 requires 2021.12.
If HACS won’t let you install because you’ve completely removed, then you’ll have to manually install a release.

EDIT: I went ahead and turned the 3.10.14 to a pre-release. This should avoid the HACS bug for now.

BigMal · November 24, 2021, 12:46am

Thanks, I rolled back to a previous version and was able to get it reinstalled.

The reason I was trying reinstall was because none of my echos will play from Home Assistant if “standby” is the state. I have to wake them via a voice command and only then can I control from Home Assistant. Is this a known issue and something that I can overcome?

alandtse · November 24, 2021, 12:49am

The media player UI may become stale after a certain period and then play/pause won’t resume what was there before. Essentially, the media player actually changes to nothing loaded to play so that’s why play/pause don’t work anymore. There is no state change for our component to catch though. That appears to be an Amazon limitation. However, if you issue a media_play command it should start working.

henry8866 · December 2, 2021, 1:26am

I have a Sengled bluetooth bulb that added by Alexa, is it possible to expose this bulb to home assistant? I looked the devices for this integration, only see echo dot and firetv, this bulb is not there.

ReneTode · December 2, 2021, 12:35pm

most likely you cant control it directly.
but you can create an input booleand that sends 2 commands to alexa.
alexa, turn bulb off
alexa, turn buld on

Bartem · December 2, 2021, 12:41pm

Did you do these steps? It is experimental so no guarantees it will work

Although this may only be for devices that are connected directly using Zigbee

ReneTode · December 2, 2021, 1:16pm

thx for pointing that part out.
didnt know that that was already there.

eHouse · December 2, 2021, 9:50pm

I am trying to find the attribute that will tell me if an Echo device is on-line but have been able to locate it. Can someone post the name? I assume it is attached to an entity?

Thanks!

henry8866 · December 3, 2021, 1:10am

Thanks. Do you have any example code I am referencing too?

henry8866 · December 3, 2021, 1:11am

Thanks. I enabled this option and rebooted HA, the bluetooth bulb is not showing up in HA. I think this doesn’t work for my case.

ReneTode · December 3, 2021, 1:17am

nope, because i dont use a recent HA
but i know that the mediaplayer has a service that you can use to send commands to alexa.
and you can connect services to booleans.

alandtse · December 3, 2021, 7:11am

It’s the custom command. Home · alandtse/alexa_media_player Wiki · GitHub probably tied to an input boolean. How to make a input Boolean switch? - #7 by SteveDinn. One difference is we won’t have a value sensor for state, but you can probably set it manually depending on the last command.

henry8866 · December 11, 2021, 10:41pm

Just reporting back that my bluetooth light connected via alexa/echo dot is now available in HASS.

When I tested 9 days ago (rebooted HA) the light was not there. Today I am trying to use the custom command way and trying to add an input boolean, and surprisingly found the entity is already there! Not sure why, I did have a few more reboots since 9 days ago though.

tman75 · December 12, 2021, 5:30am

seems like my announcement to more than one echo isn’t working. Not sure when it started. It will announce to first echo, but not second. Here is my code.

alias: Garage Door opened
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: device
    device_id: 6d2fe2ea6e1b466a9f09f75f2df390d1
    domain: cover
    entity_id: cover.garage_door
    type: opened
condition: []
action:
  - data:
      data:
        type: announce
      message: The Garage Door just opened.
      target:
        - media_player.twilight_zone
        - media_player.office_dot
      title: Attention
    service: notify.alexa_media
mode: single