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

[slartibartfast]

Found this and it works
https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=988187

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[ashceryth]

The problem with not being allowed by Amazon in the DE store is that skills with subscriptions must be in the native language of the store. Believe me, I'd love to publish it in all the Amazon stores globally but they have rules preventing this. I cannot even publish to the Canadian store despite supporting English. If they ever relax this policy I will immediately publish. What Amazon says is:

"Customers can choose the language they want to use for their devices, and they aren't constrained by their location when choosing the language. For example, a customer that uses a .de account can choose to use a different language from German, such as English (UK), for their Alexa-enabled devices. However, changing the language doesn't affect the skills catalog available to the .de account in the skills store. Therefore, to make a skill available to customers who use .de accounts, you must include a German version of the skill in the skills store."

Thanks for the clarification! Hopefully Amazon will relax their policies soon.

[philchillbill]

Found this and it works
https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=988187

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

Yep, the online docs were updated with that at the time so I assumed you had already implemented.

[slartibartfast]

Yep, the online docs were updated with that at the time so I assumed you had already implemented.

I probably installed only a few days before that post so missed the updated instructions

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[dperrigan]

Hello. I set up MediaServer yesterday using ngrok. I got my echo to recognize the link and list my Players. I was also able to subscribe to the unlimited version and to start playback on a player. But when I tried to stream to the echo I got the expected response from Alexa, but then silence. I used:

"Alexa, ask mediaserver to stream the album News of the World by Queen"

It responded, "Ok, streaming News of the World by Queen". But then nothing but silence. After 20 seconds or so I said "Alexa, stop" and got "Ok".

I stopped and restarted LMS and tried again. Same results.

Any suggestions? Is there a log file I can check?

Thanks,
Dan

[philchillbill]

Any suggestions? Is there a log file I can check?

There's no local log available to the user but I can examine the Amazon cloud log for you. This is what I see:



It would indicate that the interaction between the skill and LMS went OK but Amazon failed to process the resultant audio for you - that's the [FINISHED] that's shown as Echo player status even before you issue the STOP command (STOP is always a PAUSE under the hood for later resumption as far as an Echo is concerned).

I have not seen this before - what type of Echo device do you have? Was it a one-off thing or can you reproduce the anomaly?

[dperrigan]

I have not seen this before - what type of Echo device do you have? Was it a one-off thing or can you reproduce the anomaly?

I can't find the model number on it, but it's the tall cylinder. I just tried again -- this time streaming one song instead of an album. Same thing. In fact I haven't gotten it to stream yet. Other functions seem to work fine though. I'm on LMS 7.9.0, running on Windows 10.

And I noticed something just now while looking up the LMS version: It did add the temporary player ("Web Client") and created a playlist of the three versions of "Creep" that I have. It just wouldn't play.

Dan

[philchillbill]

I can't find the model number on it, but it's the tall cylinder. I just tried again -- this time streaming one song instead of an album. Same thing. In fact I haven't gotten it to stream yet. Other functions seem to work fine though. I'm on LMS 7.9.0, running on Windows 10.

And I noticed something just now while looking up the LMS version: It did add the temporary player ("Web Client") and created a playlist of the three versions of "Creep" that I have. It just wouldn't play.

Dan

Your setup is rather different to most in that you are on an older version of LMS than most, almost everybody is on RPi or NAS rather than Windows, and most people use 192.168.x.y networking instead of 10.2.x.y. But none of those on its own should be reasons to prevent streaming.

Try this. In a browser, visit http://10.2.0.189:9000/stream.mp3?player=Alexa and see if the audio plays via the browser. There may be a delay of up to a minute before you hear anything, but you should hear audio. This will create a player with 'Alexa' in the name (plus the user agent of the browser you use) and if you select that player in the LMS GUI or iPeng and play something on it by clicking/selecting some song from your library, the audio should play in the browser. If it does not, we know the problem is local to your LMS and not an Amazon issue. If it does play, we know it is somehow related to your Echo.

[dperrigan]

Try this. In a browser, visit http://10.2.0.189:9000/stream.mp3?player=Alexa and see if the audio plays via the browser.

Aha! The 10.2.x.y address reminded me that I was running a VPN on that server. I stopped the vpn and used the normal 192.168.x.y address and it works in a browser now. But still doesn't on the echo. Do you mind checking the logs again? Do I need to refresh ngrok after stopping the VPN?

Dan

[philchillbill]

Aha! The 10.2.x.y address reminded me that I was running a VPN on that server. I stopped the vpn and used the normal 192.168.x.y address and it works in a browser now. But still doesn't on the echo. Do you mind checking the logs again? Do I need to refresh ngrok after stopping the VPN?

Dan

Good one - I hadn't thought of a potential VPN in the loop. Amazon will indeed not accept a stream over a VPN.

The IP that you see when you browse to LMS --> settings --> information is what LMS reports to the skill for streaming purposes. If that's still showing the 10.2.0.. address then it's LMS rather than ngrok that needs restarting. Check then that LMS is reporting the 192.168 address. and you should be good to go. It looks like ngrok is reaching your LMS fine or else other commands would not have worked so you probably proxied to the 192.168 when you set up ngrok.