Hello, I recently got my first Echo Dot and I wanted Home Assistant (mainly for HACS and Music Assistant) on it. Google tells me to use Home Assistant Cloud but I’m not gonna pay 7.5 bucks a month for this. Does anyone know a way to configure Home Assistant and use HACS and Music Assistant integrations on Alexa ?
Sorry for the dumb question, I’m new here.
Sure- people have.
For starters, open an Amazon Web Services account.
Then set up a LFA (Login from Amazon) account.
Obtain a 2FA code for your device
You will need a privacy statement on your web page- Amazon requires it.
Obtain a KeyID for the device
In case you think it’s easy, here are the instructions from ChatGPT for finding your LWA Access key.
Step 2: Generate an LWA Access Key
- Inside the Security Profile, look for “Web Settings”.
- Click “Manage” next to it.
- Scroll down to “Security Credentials” (or a similar section).
- Click on “Generate a new access key”.
- This should create a KeyID (Access Key ID) and Secret Key.
- Copy the KeyID (You will need it in the Home Assistant integration).
There’re about 20 other steps. Most frustrating is that Amazon changes the process every 24 minutes just to frustrate us. Even AI can’t help much.
It is SOOOOO much easier to subscribe to Nabu Casa. And it supports the project development. With a Nabu Casa account you can log on to your Home Assistant dashboard from anywhere you have Internet. Nabu Casa will back up your system every night.
If you just want to respond to instructions spoken to Alexa, like “Alexa, turn on the kitchen light”, there is a easier method using the Alexa Home node on Node Red. Ben Hardill deals with the AWS crap so you don’t have to.
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Alexa does not use Home Assistant integrations, so you cannot “use HACS and Music Assistant integrations on Alexa”.
It is possible to use Alexa devices to control some things in Home Assistant, without using HA Cloud, by setting up a custom skill that exposes your HA instance to Alexa. The instruction for setting up a custom Alexa skill are available in the docs, though they may be a little outdated. Amazon changes the layout of both The Alexa Developer and AWS console pages at least once a year, so the descriptions and pictures may not match anymore. Unless you are familiar with developing for Alexa, the process can be quite frustrating. I won’t go so far as to tell you not to do it, but I would advise you make it a weekend project… IIRC, it can take a up to 24 hours for the skill to become available, even if you do everything correctly.
Echos are not supported players for Music Assistant, there is currently no way to use them directly with MA.
There is also a custom integration, Alexa Media Player, that allows HA to have limited control over Echo devices and access to some of their data. AMP is not a replacement for the custom skill described above or HA Cloud, they cover two different aspects of control and access.
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Just pay for Nabu Casa it’s no worth the head ache of trying to get the Alexa working and keeping it up and you’re funding the projects you’re using so win win.
OK, I’m not paying NabuCasa at this price so I’m gonna try to set it up myself… Thank you anyway;)
This addon lets you expose HA entities to Alexa, Google and Apple via Matter giving you full local control, no cloud, simple setup.
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Thank you !