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

[slartibartfast]

Yep, but I doubt you'll be able to send a command to a skill so it will be pretty useless. It's more for starting a skill that auto-plays beach sounds through your echo speaker, and that kind of nonsense

Seems you were right about Alexa routines. You can only open a skill. Useless.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[slartibartfast]

There is a feature request to allow the user to issue commands to skills in Routines rather than just opening the skill.
https://alexa.uservoice.com/forums/9...nts-in-routine
Please add your vote to increase the chance of this happening.
In my case I have a routine that turns off my lights and my amplifier at the end of the day. All that is missing is the ability to
"Ask media server to stop playback"
which this feature would provide.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[bakker_be]

There is a feature request to allow the user to issue commands to skills in Routines rather than just opening the skill.
https://alexa.uservoice.com/forums/9...nts-in-routine
Please add your vote to increase the chance of this happening.
In my case I have a routine that turns off my lights and my amplifier at the end of the day. All that is missing is the ability to
"Ask media server to stop playback"
which this feature would provide.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

Even though I have no use at all for anything Alexa, I've added my vote

[slartibartfast]

Even though I have no use at all for anything Alexa, I've added my vote

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[Jayhawk]

Added my vote...

[philchillbill]

Good news! V2.0 of the skill has been certified by Amazon and brings the number of intents supported from 69 to 95. The main changes include support for streaming audio to an Echo as audio sink, new commands to address favorites, playing and querying newly-added/scanned albums, playing the newest album by an artist (by release year), player renaming, plus Alexa's response repeating. Some things can now even be done without saying the skill invocation name and there are additional ways to say several commands. A few transport commands like next/previous had to be changed so as not to conflict with streaming but this was minimal. You are strongly encouraged to check out the full command reference at the MediaServer website.

First off, the account-linking process has changed so you can omit adding ':443' to ngrok details in your server path. A script will now validate that any ngrok details you enter are valid before submission occurs, so you will be warned if the tunnel is invalid and/or if the auth details are incorrect for a valid tunnel. Local IP address will also be rejected (you'd be surprised how many people try to link by just making their local IP address 'https'). This means that there is first a blue 'Press to Validate' button which becomes a green 'Submit' if you're good to go.

Regarding new command categories, here are some examples;

List my favorites
List level 2 favorites
List the favorites in folder 'Podcasts'
Play favorite number 3
Play favorite 'JAZZ FM'

List my new albums
List any new albums by ZZ Top
Play my newest album by Pearl Jam

Rename Touch player to Bedroom player

The experimental/contrived way of addressing favorites as if they were playlists has now been superseded by proper commands, so anybody doing it that way will have to switch. Note that 'List new albums' will read off the 10 newest albums found in your library, while 'List new albums by ZZ Top' will not only list but also offer to play the first album found in the most recent 100 additions that matches that requested artist. Play 'newest' album is not about order of addition to your library but by sorted album year tag, so you can use both definitions of 'new'. With 'Play favorite blah-blah' you can play a named favorite at any depth level in your favorites folder by name, fuzzy-matched. Or you can use the numbers if you prefer.

All of the 'Play' commands now have a 'Stream' equivalent, meaning that the Echo to which you issue the command becomes the audio sink from LMS. Touchscreen buttons for prev/next/pause are supported on Echos with displays. As a plus, the invocation name of the skill can be omitted for transport commands such as play/pause/stop/next/previous/startover when streaming (you can just say 'Alexa, next'). Also, audio will auto-pause the moment you say 'Alexa' to that Echo so Alexa can understand your command better.

Note that the current-time and track number shown in an LMS GUI (iPeng, Default, Material) will not match the stream (due to buffering). If you change the current song in the GUI, simply say 'Alexa, resume' to clear the buffer and have the modified stream play immediately. This is done automatically under the hood whenever you change the streaming playlist by voice instead of GUI.

Here are some examples:

Stream the album Parachutes by Coldplay
Stream the compilation album 101 Running Songs
Stream the single Alone Tonight by Above & Beyond
Stream my newest album by Peter Gabriel
Stream the song Chocolate by Snow Patrol
Stream songs about 'Alabama'
Stream songs featuring ATB
Stream a random album by Pink Floyd
Stream a random single by Shakira
Stream some Acid Jazz
Stream favorite number 7
Stream favorite 'FUNK FM'

Finally, if you say 'Alexa, repeat that' then the most-recent spoken response from the skill will be repeated aloud - useful if you missed something in e.g. a Now Playing response.

Note that you do not need to re-link the skill to start using the new version - it's automatically deployed. You will need to perform discovery again ('Alexa, tell Media Server to discover my players') so as to retrieve additional details required for Streaming, should you wish to use that functionality.

[castalla]

Good news! V2.0 of the skill has been certified by Amazon and brings the number of intents supported from 69 to 95. The main changes include support for streaming audio to an Echo as audio sink, new commands to address favorites, playing and querying newly-added/scanned albums, playing the newest album by an artist (by release year), player renaming, plus Alexa's response repeating. Some things can now even be done without saying the skill invocation name and there are additional ways to say several commands. A few transport commands like next/previous had to be changed so as not to conflict with streaming but this was minimal. You are strongly encouraged to check out the full command reference at the MediaServer website.

First off, the account-linking process has changed so you can omit adding ':443' to ngrok details in your server path. A script will now validate that any ngrok details you enter are valid before submission occurs, so you will be warned if the tunnel is invalid and/or if the auth details are incorrect for a valid tunnel. Local IP address will also be rejected (you'd be surprised how many people try to link by just making their local IP address 'https'). This means that there is first a blue 'Press to Validate' button which becomes a green 'Submit' if you're good to go.

Regarding new command categories, here are some examples;

List my favorites
List level 2 favorites
List the favorites in folder 'Podcasts'
Play favorite number 3
Play favorite 'JAZZ FM'

List my new albums
List any new albums by ZZ Top
Play my newest album by Pearl Jam

Rename Touch player to Bedroom player

The experimental/contrived way of addressing favorites as if they were playlists has now been superseded by proper commands, so anybody doing it that way will have to switch. Note that 'List new albums' will read off the 10 newest albums found in your library, while 'List new albums by ZZ Top' will not only list but also offer to play the first album found in the most recent 100 additions that matches that requested artist. Play 'newest' album is not about order of addition to your library but by sorted album year tag, so you can use both definitions of 'new'. With 'Play favorite blah-blah' you can play a named favorite at any depth level in your favorites folder by name, fuzzy-matched. Or you can use the numbers if you prefer.

All of the 'Play' commands now have a 'Stream' equivalent, meaning that the Echo to which you issue the command becomes the audio sink from LMS. Touchscreen buttons for prev/next/pause are supported on Echos with displays. As a plus, the invocation name of the skill can be omitted for transport commands such as play/pause/stop/next/previous/startover when streaming (you can just say 'Alexa, next'). Also, audio will auto-pause the moment you say 'Alexa' to that Echo so Alexa can understand your command better.

Note that the current-time and track number shown in an LMS GUI (iPeng, Default, Material) will not match the stream (due to buffering). If you change the current song in the GUI, simply say 'Alexa, resume' to clear the buffer and have the modified stream play immediately. This is done automatically under the hood whenever you change the streaming playlist by voice instead of GUI.

Here are some examples:

Stream the album Parachutes by Coldplay
Stream the compilation album 101 Running Songs
Stream the single Alone Tonight by Above & Beyond
Stream my newest album by Peter Gabriel
Stream the song Chocolate by Snow Patrol
Stream songs about 'Alabama'
Stream songs featuring ATB
Stream a random album by Pink Floyd
Stream a random single by Shakira
Stream some Acid Jazz
Stream favorite number 7
Stream favorite 'FUNK FM'

Finally, if you say 'Alexa, repeat that' then the most-recent spoken response from the skill will be repeated aloud - useful if you missed something in e.g. a Now Playing response.

Sounds excellent!

I was really looking forward to the streaming feature, and got an Echo Show 5 (Black Friday deal) for this. I quickly discovered a ridiculous limitation the Show has ... it can stream nicely but the metadata is very quickly covered by the stupid clock screen! There appears to be no way to stop this. What a daft 'feature'.

[d6jg]

I’ll re-enable the skill to try this!innthe next few days but 2 questions.

1. The Alexa playback must be using stream.mp3 but is this going to be at a sensible bit rate e.g 320 Kbps?

2. Does the skill still enable repeat when playback is started on an SB Player? I really don’t understand the logic of this default behaviour when we have DSTM. You said it was explained in the documentation but I couldn’t see it.

[philchillbill]

I don’t try to set the bit rate so it must be a default rate decided somewhere in LMS. Maybe Michael knows what it would be?

Sorry, the docs reference was to shuffle being auto enabled for playlists. There is indeed nothing about repeat. I can of course stop enabling repeat by default but I didn’t realize it might pose problems for anybody.

[castalla]

Oh dear - just tried to relink the skill, and I get:

ngrok reports authorization failure

ngrok is on debiian buster on a pi.