[Announce] 'MediaServer' *certified* Alexa skill for LMS

[Dronne]

Quick question about using Echo’s as audio-sinks.
if I tell an Echo to stream something via its own speaker all works.
If I tell an Echo to stream something via a connected Bluetooth speaker all works.
But if I tell an Echo to stream something via an external speaker connected via Alexacast then no go.
Is this expected?

Can you expand a little on the last case? Personally I reserve AlexaCast to cover casting from the Amazon Music app, and asking Alexa to play something just that as the ability for Alexa to play music pre dated AlexaCast.

[staresy]

Ok, MediaServer's code is now modified to handle the proxied artwork via RNP.

Just to confirm working fine here, thanks.

[philchillbill]

Yes, but only when something was included in favorites.

[Paul Webster]

Great - thanks.
Did it already handle /imageproxy but not /imageproxy/rnp ?

[philchillbill]

Listed under "The Jazz Groove" in RNP

Ok, MediaServer's code is now modified to handle the proxied artwork via RNP.

[Paul Webster]

I never listen to internet radio so no idea. What station should I try in order to see what happens?

So - please try the beta with a station that does not provide extensions (Jazz Groove for example) on an Alexa device with a screen to see what happens.

Listed under "The Jazz Groove" in RNP

[philchillbill]

See also my query below.

I never listen to internet radio so no idea. What station should I try in order to see what happens?

[Paul Webster]

See also my query below.

[philchillbill]

Never tried it

[d6jg]

Quick question about using Echo’s as audio-sinks.
if I tell an Echo to stream something via its own speaker all works.
If I tell an Echo to stream something via a connected Bluetooth speaker all works.
But if I tell an Echo to stream something via an external speaker connected via Alexacast then no go.
Is this expected?

[Paul Webster]

I have recently made a change in Radio Now Playing plugin beta so that it can use a 3rd-party image proxy service to convert from otherwise unsupported (by LMS) image formats (like webp) to png/jpg.
As a consequence - the link to cover art is different to before if the original image file did not have a jp(e)g/png/gif reference in the URL.

So - please try the beta with a station that does not provide extensions (Jazz Groove for example) on an Alexa device with a screen to see what happens.
If it does not display then there might be a code change required to construct a URL for this that start /imageproxy
so that they become
h t t t p : / / lmsip:lmsport / imageproxy/etc
where lmsip and lmsport should be replaced with the local IP address and port for the local LMS.

While this is new behaviour for the plugin ... the syntax is not new and could already happen for other things but perhaps they are masked by an updated icon URL with a real external URL.

[loz2103]

To LMS, an AlexaPlayer is just a network player so it should certainly disappear after a restart of LMS

Yep, that did it. Doh! Thanks again.

[philchillbill]

Hi Phil,

For some reason I can now see one of my echos in the LMS player list. It was never there before, but is now. I've tried to get lms to forget it vis the 'forget player option', but this doesn't work. Any ideas?

Cheers,

Loz

To LMS, an AlexaPlayer is just a network player so it should certainly disappear after a restart of LMS

[loz2103]

Hi Phil,

For some reason I can now see one of my echos in the LMS player list. It was never there before, but is now. I've tried to get lms to forget it vis the 'forget player option', but this doesn't work. Any ideas?

Cheers,

Loz

[philchillbill]

Afraid not. Amazon only allows audio to be sent to an Echo using the so-called AudioPlayer interface. Because Alexa is voice-centric, that can only be triggered after a voice command. Your AlexaPlayers within LMS are ephemeral because Amazon keeps track of the last service or skill that sent audio to an Echo and it then becomes dominant. Nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.