Hi, I would like to point you to the very important alexa media player integration (maybe google is effected as well)
For me, the output of information (washer status, window status, weather information, traffic information etc) is an essential part of home automation. Without that, half of the value add is lost.
As the integration via nabu casa, which provides the way from alexa via speech to HA works without issues from the beginning, the other way round seems to be much more complicated. I think most of us using the integration provided by Keaton Taylor and Alan Tse and meanwhile a few more contributors https://github.com/custom-components/alexa_media_player which is interfacing to the unofficial api from amazon. This api often changes and causes instability. @alandtse, who is doing a great job in order to continuously provide solutions as fast as possible, mentioned in a post, that he is not shure that the functionality can be provided for a long time as it seems, that amazon tries to get rid of some apps using this interface.
The question now: Is it planned to import, at least the most important, functionalities into the official integration? When can we expect first solutions.
As I pointed out in the beginning. The possibility of output via media solutions like google or alexa is essential and I fear, that we will run into trouble by the time.
As I have 7 echos running, it is, from the financial point of view, not easy to exchange these speakers by other ones
I’m not sure I fully underatand, but if the dev of the custom component says
How should HA core devs then create this functionality if Amazon tries to get rid of it?
To be clear, the issue is the login functionality for the custom component is brittle. The custom component emulates the Alexa webapp functionality by emulating a browser session and navigating through the various anti-automation/2FA/Captcha checks Amazon has implemented. Amazon likes to update this mechanism and this is likely to be a losing battle unless Amazon implements some OAUTH mechanism allowing long term third-party log ins.
To the extent the official Alexa Skills API can access some of that media player and communication functionality, it’d make sense to start adding it since the login mechanism is brittle. I haven’t reviewed used the Skills API to know how much it can implement but I doubt it will suffer the same login problems since it’s designed for third-party development.
It would be great to see the Alexa Media Player custom component and the Alexa Actionable Notifications skill get rolled into the core, especially if utilizing the Home Assistant skill from Nabu Casa would let us bypass the authentication issues that alandtse is fighting with the custom component.
Not the right place for this question. You can ask on the thread for alexa media player, or in the github repository for it, under issues.
Sorry I think I have moved it!!
@alandtse touches on the major issue. The APIs are unofficial and some level of screen scraping is required to ensure that the login method can remain functional. This more or less disqualifies both the Alexa Media Player and the Alexa Actionable Notifications apps from functioning properly.
I’d also like to point out that the overwhelming response and use of these two custom components is well beyond anything that I could’ve possible imagined. For me, this was all started because I wanted some enhanced functionality that was otherwise not available via usual channels.
Unfortunately it is unlikely that amazon will ever provide a official API for the sheer volume of features that they offer in their app, much less an auth method that does not require logging in via screen-scraping. There is very little incentive for them to operate in that field, and all we can hope for is more advanced functionality provided in the skills API to fill these gaps.