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

[mecouc]

Followers of the thread know I don't currently have a physical Alexa,. so can't subscribe yet. I don't have the auto-update working properly yest, but when I update manually I can try out voice commands.

I'm about (maybe) to rip 2-300 classical CDs and tag them for my mother to play.The only free voice command I've found to test is "List albums by xxxx".

If I tick the box in LMS to include composers in artists, I think the plugin searches the combined (artists+composers) list, but then tries to look up albums using only the artist tag, and so can't find any:

"List albums by Franz Joseph Haydn"
Alexa: You do have works by Franz Joseph Haydn but i can't find any albums

Might this be changed so you can find albums by composer? I'm assuming it's a fair amount of work to fill a niche demand, and probably won't change?

This skill/plugin is great, but I can see that getting Alexa to understand names for classical albums is going to be a struggle. "CPE Bach" is not understood at all by Alexa (seabird, seapen, asbo), though "JS Bach" is, as though Alexa has been primed for that one.

[raglencross]

Phil, your ruminations on network availability after rebooting as the problem with Pi's lead me to finding a solution. You are able to delay the reboot until the Pi (at least on a wired Pi4 ) determines that the network is available in the Raspbian GUI settings under "Preferences - Raspberry Pi Configuration - System - Network at Boot - Wait for network". You can do the same thing using the command "sudo raspi-config". With "Wait for reboot" enabled the updater works without any changes to your instructions such as adding " ExecStartPost=/bin/sleep 90" before running the updater script.

[philchillbill]

Phil, your ruminations on network availability after rebooting as the problem with Pi's lead me to finding a solution. You are able to delay the reboot until the Pi (at least on a wired Pi4 ) determines that the network is available in the Raspbian GUI settings under "Preferences - Raspberry Pi Configuration - System - Network at Boot - Wait for network". You can do the same thing using the command "sudo raspi-config". With "Wait for reboot" enabled the updater works without any changes to your instructions such as adding " ExecStartPost=/bin/sleep 90" before running the updater script.

Great to know ! I’ll add this to the formal instructions. Thanks.

EDIT: Done

[philchillbill]

Followers of the thread know I don't currently have a physical Alexa,. so can't subscribe yet. I don't have the auto-update working properly yest, but when I update manually I can try out voice commands.

I'm about (maybe) to rip 2-300 classical CDs and tag them for my mother to play.The only free voice command I've found to test is "List albums by xxxx".

If I tick the box in LMS to include composers in artists, I think the plugin searches the combined (artists+composers) list, but then tries to look up albums using only the artist tag, and so can't find any:

"List albums by Franz Joseph Haydn"
Alexa: You do have works by Franz Joseph Haydn but i can't find any albums

Might this be changed so you can find albums by composer? I'm assuming it's a fair amount of work to fill a niche demand, and probably won't change?

This skill/plugin is great, but I can see that getting Alexa to understand names for classical albums is going to be a struggle. "CPE Bach" is not understood at all by Alexa (seabird, seapen, asbo), though "JS Bach" is, as though Alexa has been primed for that one.

I'll take a look at whether this is a minor change or something bigger. If the search returns it and I was just filtering it away then it will be easy. If the search does not include composer results it will be a different matter.

EDIT: I can already see in the logs that searching for Haydn resulted in: Verified artist: 'florence joseph haydn' --> Franz Joseph Haydn | id: 205 (fuzzily matched after she misunderstood your pronunciation) but then subsequently doing a {"id":"1","method":"slim.request","params":[0,["albums",0,300,"artist_id:205","tags:Aaly"]]} returns nothing. So it's not being filtered away, it's simply not being returned by LMS.

[philchillbill]

Some people with a roll-your-own nginx/apache proxy were receiving an error message about a firewall blocking access during account linking. This has been resolved and was due to an outbound firewall blocking the php curl the landing page uses to validate your LMS server before linking. So it was a firewall, it was just mine and not yours

[raglencross]

I've had reason to reload Raspbian on a Pi4 necessitating that I redo ngrok which was previously working. I get the following when I attempt to install ngrok per the Setup Instructions (personal info "X'd" out):

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cd /home/pi/Downloads
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ sudo mv ngrok /usr/local/bin
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ cd
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ngrok http -auth "XX:XX" 9000 > /dev/null 2>&1 &
[1] 19258
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ curl -s http://localhost:4040/api/tunnels | grep -Po https://.+?\.io
[1]+ Exit 1 ngrok http -auth "XX:XX" 9000 > /dev/null 2>&1
pi@raspberrypi:~ $

Note that the "curl" command does not give a URL and there is no ngrok online dashboard. It looks like ngrok is on the "$Path" because running "ngrok help" from the home directory works. I am using ngrokARM which is, I think, the correct one for the Pi4. Thoughts?...

[Paul Webster]

Try running ngrok without redirecting output or putting it into background so that you can see what error (if any) it is giving before it exits.

ngrok http -auth "XX:XX" 9000

[raglencross]

Running "ngrok http -auth "XX:XX" 9000" resulted in:

HTTP auth is only available after you sign up.
Failed to bind a tunnel with HTTP authentication for an unauthenticated client.
Sign up at: https://ngrok.com/signup

If you have already signed up, make sure your authtoken is installed.
Your authtoken is available on your dashboard: https://dashboard.ngrok.com/auth/your-authtoken

It looks to me like the the Setup Instructions assumes that you have not signed up with ngrok and have no authtoken. As I already have a free account and a token, I had to create the "ngrok.yml" file to get things working while still in Part 2 of the Setup Instructions. Thanks, Paul, for the tip that got me on the right path.

[philchillbill]

It looks to me like the the Setup Instructions assumes that you have not signed up with ngrok and have no authtoken. As I already have a free account and a token, I had to create the "ngrok.yml" file to get things working while still in Part 2 of the Setup Instructions.

The instructions do recommend reading all relevant ngrok parts if you are going to use ngrok. Part II describes a sort of 'quick and dirty' ngrok test or one-off method while Part III addresses authtoken use for a more permanent setup. Are you implying that ngrok no longer accepts the Part II approach without a token (that would be new) ?

[raglencross]

From my experience, that may very well be the case. The first time I installed ngrok on a Pi4 months ago, I was able to complete Part 2 with no problems and no requirement for an authtoken until Part 3. The second time I installed ngrok after reinstalling the Raspbian OS, I couldn't get past Part 2 because I was getting the error shown in my post yesterday. The part of the error message I underlined led me to install the authtoken per Part 3 and all went well after that through Part 4. I have no idea why ngrok required an authtoken in Part 2 the second time around particularly after an OS reinstall.