ANNOUNCE: Alexa voice control (development thread)

[Kyle]

Following and very excited about the potential of this! Will we be able to request specific music (artist, album, playlist, etc.) from our collections? I'll help, if possible. I have an SB3 hooked up to a whole-house audio system. Each room has a wall panel to cut the system on in that location, but the ability to control play through my Echo Dot is very exciting! It might require a couple more Dots in other locations.

[meep]

Hi Jim

That's the plan, but first test is going to be general installation, basic play/pause control and an assessment of the response times based on the additional transactions necessitated by the improved security.

Got some more work completed recently so just need to tidy up code now and add in a transaction timer and I'll be ready to release to the testers who've signed up.

[OklahomaGreyBeard]

I would absolutely love to be involved with testing this. I currently have Alexa running on 2 RPi 2s and 1 RPi3 and have a Dot on the way. Those Pi's are also acting as squeeze clients along with three other Pi zeros. I also use OpenHab, Hue, Z-Wave, and some ESP8266 nodes around. I found your app looking for the opposite control of having some of the Hue and custom pixel strips I have change based on the song title that plays (was hoping SB announced a new track starting). Allowing the family more control of music around the house by voice would be excellent..

[meep]

I would absolutely love to be involved with testing this. I currently have Alexa running on 2 RPi 2s and 1 RPi3 and have a Dot on the way. Those Pi's are also acting as squeeze clients along with three other Pi zeros. I also use OpenHab, Hue, Z-Wave, and some ESP8266 nodes around. I found your app looking for the opposite control of having some of the Hue and custom pixel strips I have change based on the song title that plays (was hoping SB announced a new track starting). Allowing the family more control of music around the house by voice would be excellent..

Send on your email by PM and I'll get you set up. You'll need an amazon developer account as well to participate in pre-release testing.

[meep]

Maybe some here will know before I dive in to the developers forum...

In working on the skill this week, I set up a softsqueeze instance to test with (after a worrying episode where one of my Radios sizzled and emitted archid smoke from the power connector - still working though )

Anyway, I found that softsqueeze did not react to HTTP(JSON) pause/resume commands. Only play/stop commands would work. Likewise, they don't respond to clicking the pause button in the LMS UI.

Is this a thing? Any other devices behave like this. Pis?

Thanks

[ralphy]

Maybe some here will know before I dive in to the developers forum...

In working on the skill this week, I set up a softsqueeze instance to test with (after a worrying episode where one of my Radios sizzled and emitted archid smoke from the power connector - still working though )

Anyway, I found that softsqueeze did not react to HTTP(JSON) pause/resume commands. Only play/stop commands would work. Likewise, they don't respond to clicking the pause button in the LMS UI.

Is this a thing? Any other devices behave like this. Pis?

Thanks

Just fired up softsqueeze (really?) and tested pause/unpause from the lms (latest 7.9) gui and softsqueeze reacted by pausing and unpausing.

I can test the json as well if you can post the curl/wget command line to try it.

I had to delete $HOME/.java/.userPrefs/org/titmuss/softsqueeze as it was copied over from an old computer that died about 4 years ago...haven't run softsqueeze since then.

[aich]

I'd be very happy to help with testing

Cant send PM at mo but have developer account and dot at the ready

I love this forum!

[meep]

Just fired up softsqueeze (really?) and tested pause/unpause from the lms (latest 7.9) gui and softsqueeze reacted by pausing and unpausing.

I can test the json as well if you can post the curl/wget command line to try it.

I had to delete $HOME/.java/.userPrefs/org/titmuss/softsqueeze as it was copied over from an old computer that died about 4 years ago...haven't run softsqueeze since then.

Thanks, must be something with my config. Will try again, and try squeezeslave as well. Might share wget if I don't resolve. Not a high priority but if some player types don't respond to basic transport commands, I need to find out why....

[ralphy]

Thanks, must be something with my config. Will try again, and try squeezeslave as well. Might share wget if I don't resolve. Not a high priority but if some player types don't respond to basic transport commands, I need to find out why....

May I suggest you just use squeezelite or squeezeplay; both softsqueeze and squeezeslave are no longer being developed.

[meep]

May I suggest you just use squeezelite or squeezeplay; both softsqueeze and squeezeslave are no longer being developed.

Well, I'll eventually get around to testing them all. I have a soft spot for squeezeslave as I used to run 4x instances outputting to an M-Audio Delta 410.

I tried softsqueeze just now on a different system and it worked fine so there must be something odd about the test system I was using.

Thanks for the time to feedback and set me on the right path.