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

[philchillbill]

Hi, I would like to help translating the app in italian, since I have to keep my devices on italian language.
Let me know if I can help. Thanks!

Thanks for offering to translate. For smart-home skills, it's not the skill voice model that needs translating but the description shown in the Alexa app when you browse the skill. Should be easy-peasy.

However, one of the key Amazon code-library items needed by the skill (Alexa.PlaybackController) is not available in Italian, so it's simply not possible. Amazon does not publish roadmaps so I have no idea when it will be available (I do monitor availability from time to time). https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/d...nterfaces.html

[philchillbill]

A user asked if it would be possible to add a slider for player volume for use in Alexa Routines. It's now live and is called

Player Volume
Volume du lecteur
Player-Lautstärke

How can you use this? Well, you could already use an Alexa routine to e.g. start a player playing e.g. favorite 2 when motion is detected in a room or when a smart light is turned on. But the player would of course play at its most recent volume, which may be inappropriate. By having a volume slider in the routine, you can always set a fixed volume for when playback starts due to a routine. Remember, all those options for a player are selectable in every routine, so routine A could play favorite 2 at volume 20 with repeat on, and routine B could play favorite 5 at volume 50 with repeat off. That's why the volume slider is useful.

[FredFredrickson]

Is there a way to tell this skill to play a certain song or artist, or should I continue using Media Server?

[philchillbill]

Is there a way to tell this skill to play a certain song or artist, or should I continue using Media Server?

That’s not possible in a smart home skill so you will have to continue using MediaServer for those commands. This skill is more for accessing the players for home automation purposes and simple commands.

[philchillbill]

The way favorites are handled by LMS-lite has been changed. Under the hood, if you asked for Favorite 'N', it used to call ["favorites","playlist","play","item_id:'+str(int(N ) - 1)+'"] which is fast but does not traverse nested favorites. On Squeezeboxes with a display, it also led to a heart symbol on the screen instead of the now-playing screen.

It now works the same way as favorites in MediaServer, meaning it parses the hierarchy in multiple API calls to retrieve all your favorites. Flattening to a numerical index should be the same as it is in MediaServer. In case this to-and-fro'ing to the API causes a timeout with your slow internet, you can still use the old method by asking for 'preset' instead of 'favorite'. With favorite, you now also get now-playing as under the hood it uses ["favorites","playlist","play","menu:favorites","is ContextMenu:1","item_id:'+str(id)+'"]

If you ask for a numerical favorite that is out of range, Alexa will now tell you rather than just saying 'OK' as she used to.

Enjoy!

EDIT: As a reminder, don't say "Play" - just say "Alexa, favorite 6 on Livingroom"

[philchillbill]

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...=1#post1017968