[Announce] LMS-lite certified Smart Home skill for Alexa

[philchillbill]

It would be great if this were extended to support discontinued products (as squeezebox) and open-source projects like WLED,
the most valuable effect would being able to use 'smart' devices with alexa even after their manufacturer goes belly-up and takes their servers with them.
(like Best buy's insignia products)

I mostly use my squeezeboxes as radio's and only use mysqueezebox.com, wouldn't itbe possible to directly control the on/off, volume, channel from alexa with this, bypassing LMS?

Well the skill talks to LMS and not to the players directly, just as the GUI does. So I don’t see this working without a server in the loop.

[Simon74]

können radio favoriten direkt (per name oder nummer) angesprochen werden ?
can radio favorites be addressed directly (by name or number) ?

[philchillbill]

können radio favoriten direkt (per name oder nummer) angesprochen werden ?
can radio favorites be addressed directly (by name or number) ?

Not with this skill (limitation of smart home skills). The ‘other’ skill (MediaServer) can do that because it has a custom voice model.

[philchillbill]

Actually, @Simon74's request got me thinking it should be possible to play favorites by number using the Alexa.RangeController interface and I got that working easily in a beta skill.

The syntax is "Alexa, favorite 2 on Livingroom" without mentioning "play". Once the targeted player has voice focus, a subsequent "Alexa, favorite 3" will work just fine with the same player. Etc.
As an alternative text, I've chosen "Preset" unless anybody has a better suggestion?

Before I upload the code to the live skill, any suggestions as to what 2 words to use for Favorite in French and German?

Favori / Programmé | Favorit / Lieblings are what I beta'd with but they sound off to even my untrained ears...

[philchillbill]

Ok, favorites support is live. Enjoy !

[PoppyDad]

First of all philchillbill, a big thank you for sharing the fruits of your hard work and making this brilliant system even better (and to all others in the community doing the same).

To set the scene I'm not an IT professional but have written code many years ago in QuickBasic, VB and APL (strange mathematical language) and regularly write queries using SQL in my job. I don't know about tunnels, Linux Pearl or Python but will enjoy spending some time studying some of this when I retire next year.

I have LMS running on a Windoows 10 PC and have followed your instructions to get LMS-lite up and running. I now want to setup autostart and autoupdate for ngrok. It looks like the setup instructions for autostart refer to Linux. Where the instructions say use nano to update ngrok.yml I used notepad.

I'm struggling with the systemd config section. This appears to create a file in the Linux folders etc/systemd/system/. Is there an equivalent under Windows?

I've looked at the autoupdate instructions for which I assume I'll need to download Python or Pearl and read up on them - but I need to sort out autostart first.

I hope the above makes sense but basically I'm hoping for some guidance using Windows. Has anyone out there setup autostart and autoupdate on a Windows system? If so could you share some detail on how you did it.

Many thanks.

[philchillbill]

I'm struggling with the systemd config section. This appears to create a file in the Linux folders etc/systemd/system/. Is there an equivalent under Windows?
I've looked at the autoupdate instructions for which I assume I'll need to download Python or Pearl and read up on them - but I need to sort out autostart first.

All that systemd stuff is only for Linux-based OS users . For Windows, see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...e-startup-apps to get ngrok to autostart at system boot.

I'd advise playing around with ngrok initially via your browser rather than via the skill, as it will be easier to debug. Remember, your ngrok url will conveniently expose the familiar LMS GUI in the browser if correctly configured. If you get ngrok autostarting then after a reboot visit http://localhost:4040 to see what your newly-assigned ngrok subdomain url is. Visit that https url from a browser and enter your username/password when prompted - if it all worked out, that will be the familiar LMS GUI.

[staresy]

I hope the above makes sense but basically I'm hoping for some guidance using Windows. Has anyone out there setup autostart and autoupdate on a Windows system? If so could you share some detail on how you did it.

Many thanks.

I run autostart/update on Win10 using the free ngrok, so it is possible and works well.

Check out the thread on this forum for the companion Mediaserver skill. Read from post #589 there is a description of how I set this up on Windows using .BAT files, and a discussion (with help from fellow forum contibutors) of how to tweak and fine tune it.

The principles of operation outlined in the Mediaserver help pages apply to Linux and Windows, it's just the fine detail of how to implement that differs slightly, but rest assured it can be made to work.

[philchillbill]

The online setup instructions now have sections addressing the setup of ngrok with autostart and autoupdate under Windows. Thanks to @staresy for sharing how he did it.

[maxzampieri]

Hello philchillbill, I can translate the skill commands in Italian and even in Spanish, if you agree contact me in PM. I saw that LMS is an amazing system, simple but very powerful.

Max