philchillbill wrote:
> The base-ID is not an end-user's concern, it's mine. Favorites in LMS
> are more like a plugin-thing than a built-in. They have to be
> queried/controlled via LMS' XML Browser which is basically like parsing
> the UI's menu structure and figuring out which sub-item to
raglencross wrote:
> My favourites consist of 4 folders with the 4th folder containing 4
> subfolders. When I ask MS on an echo show to list level 2 favourites, it
> correctly lists the contents of the first 3 folders by showing each
> folder and its contents in succession. A level 3 request
philchillbill wrote:
> MediaServer's handling of favorites has been extensively re-written to
> improve the user-experience with nested hierarchies. The call-out of
> ordinal numbering while listing favorite names was removed as it adds
> little value. Folder names are likewise no longer
https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?113966-Announce-Easy-ngrok-setup-for-MediaServer-amp-LMS-lite-Alexa-skills=1032022=1#post1032022
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MediaServer's handling of favorites has been extensively re-written to
improve the user-experience with nested hierarchies. The call-out of
ordinal numbering while listing favorite names was removed as it adds
little value. Folder names are likewise no longer called-out, as they
are not in
The commands for NowPlaying, ComingNext, Duration and PlayerState will
now more elegantly handle the metadata from remote streams like internet
radio.
Under the hood, the skill now checks the 'remote:1' flag. If it is set,
the returned JSON is parsed differently to extract the stream metadata.
I see many newbs with this skill just saying things like 'Play -BBC
radio 3-', without aiding poor Alexa by mentioning whether that's a
-favorite-, a -playlist-, a -genre -only found in Thailand, a new -song
-by Blur, or a previously-unreleased -album- by Rick Astley.
The fallback is usually
An issue which was preventing Account-Linking from successfully
completing has been resolved.
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V4.6 of MediaServer is now live, with support for *individual streams*
for all of your Echos.
In other words, a separate "/stream.mp3" endpoint is created for each
Echo. I've tested it with 9 concurrent streams and it worked perfectly,
although YMMV if transcoding is needed and your hardware is
The format of the ngrok tunnel URLs has changed somewhat.
I'm now seeing the likes of https://a82d-80-57-241-207.eu.ngrok.io/ (so
the dashes are new).
My regex was not expecting those so some people with dropped tunnels
were getting the wrong error message today and yesterday. That's now
35539
I'm playing with a beta that allows -infinite -concurrent
*Stream-to-Echo* players to exist (in the released skill, only one Alexa
pseudo-player is possible). :cool:
For the P.O.C., the name that shows in the LMS GUI or iPeng for the
pseudo-player is formed by prepending 'Alexa-' to the
Has anybody installed ngrok on a Mac for use with this skill? I'd like
to add MacOS to the easy-setup procedure so any pointers would help -
I'm not a Mac guy.
philchillbill's Profile:
I noticed in the logs that somebody in the UK struggled yesterday with
directing a favorite to a specific player. Because the {Favorite} slot
is of type AMAZON.SearchQuery, it's not allowed to have any other slots
in the same intent, so {Player} cannot be specified at the same time.
When you
The landing pages for the *easy-setup* configurator and the manual*
account-linking* have been migrated from CoreUI to native Bootstrap 5
libraries and have a new look-and-feel (with better responsiveness as a
result).
Please advise of any issues.
For people who prefer minimal setup instructions without explanations,
there's now https://mediaserver.smartskills.tech/minimal.html.
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Amazon just extended APL with the ability to handle inline styles via
(like in HTML). The Help screen for MediaServer is therefore now
more colorful and uses more font sizes to be more easily readable. On an
Echo with a screen, just say "Alexa, ask MediaServer for help". If
you're already in a
wtnh wrote:
>
>
> I use Chrome on a Macbook Pro. Chrome is showing Version 91.0.4472.114
> (I think the latest). Mac is running Big Sur V11.4. I also have Avast
> and Malwarebytes running, but I did not get a pop-up when I did the
> download. I am guessing one of them silently renamed the
philchillbill wrote:
> Your browser or antivirus renamed the file from setup.sh to setup.txt
> before saving it "to protect you". What browser and platform did you
> use? Chrome on Mac? Would be a first... Usually it's just an "are you
> sure?" popup.
> The smartskills.tech webpage uses
wtnh wrote:
> I finally got around to trying this out on piCorePlayer and LMS. A
> couple of notes:
>
> > >
- The install script wizard worked as expected, but the downloaded
> file was named setup.txt, not setup.sh. A quick rename fixed that
> and I was able to get the tunnel
It's free to evaluate for 7 days for first-time subscribers, thereafter
costing $2.99 or £2.99 (ex. taxes) per month. There's no minimum
contract and you can cancel at any time using just your voice.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Paul Webster
http://dabdig.blogspot.com
author of
I finally got around to trying this out on piCorePlayer and LMS. A
couple of notes:
- The install script wizard worked as expected, but the downloaded
file was named setup.txt, not setup.sh. A quick rename fixed that and
I was able to get the tunnel running.
- The account linking section
I saw in the logs that somebody Stateside tried using an Echo as a
player in a sync group (which is unsupported because of uncontrollable
latencies). There's now a new error message to explain this
specifically.
The *ListPlaylists* intent should now correctly handle not only Spotify
but also Tidal, Deezer and Qobuz playlists.
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Amazon recently fixed the progressive response bug so interim spoken
responses while lengthy processes are running is again possible.
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If you ask to play or stream an album/compilation/single and you get the
album name correct but the artist wrong, the skill always pointed out
who the correct artist was and offered to play it anyway via a yes/no.
Provided there was only one artist match - if there were matches for >1
artists,
philchillbill wrote:
> In the log, I saw you having difficulty matching artist names Cerrone
> and Deadmau5. That's down to the difficulty in mapping how some words
> are spoken versus how they are spelled. We'd need a plugin with Double
> Metaphone to get that to work :cool:
Sounds
gegen wrote:
> Thanks again for the help :)
In the log, I saw you having difficulty matching artist names Cerrone
and Deadmau5. That's down to the difficulty in mapping how some words
are spoken versus how they are spelled. We'd need a plugin with Double
Metaphone to get that to work :cool:
philchillbill wrote:
> Good to hear.
>
> I've just now modified the code to use a fallback which would at least
> play tracks where the artist in question matched the artist_id when the
> plugin is missing. This would miss collaborations between that artist
> and others (those have a
gegen wrote:
> Thanks philchillbill, as you said installing 'Full Text Search' fixes
> the issue.
>
> (I had assumed a full rescan was also needed).
Good to hear.
I've just now modified the code to use a fallback which would at least
play tracks where the artist in question matched the
philchillbill wrote:
> What Alexa locale are you on (UK or US)? Do you have the 'Full Text
> Search' plugin installed and active?
>
> EDIT: I've added a warning message about the need for the search plugin
> to the skill's response. I can reproduce the issue when the plugin is
> disabled and
philchillbill wrote:
> What Alexa locale are you on (UK or US)? Do you have the 'Full Text
> Search' plugin installed and active?
>
> EDIT: I've added a warning message about the need for the search plugin
> to the skill's response. I can reproduce the issue when the plugin is
> disabled and
gegen wrote:
> Hi philchillbill
>
> Recently if I ask MediaServer to play something by for example 'Steely
> Dan' Alexa replies "Apparently you do not have any songs by Steely Dan
> in your library".
> If I then ask MediaServer to play something by 'Steely' then a selection
> of Steely Dan
Hi philchillbill
Recently if I ask MediaServer to play something by for example 'Steely
Dan' Alexa replies "Apparently you do not have any songs by Steely Dan
in your library".
If I then ask MediaServer to play something by 'Steely' then a selection
of Steely Dan songs do play.
If I ask to play
Amazon just certified version 4.4 of MediaServer which brings much
better usability through shorter commands.
For most commands to play/stream an album or a song/track, the {Artist}
tag can be omitted as it's now optional rather than required. Your
library will be searched with just the
Under the hood, matching against tags with diacritics has been improved
- some stuff was being filtered away that should not have been :o
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Yeah, like about a year or so ago only a few of the big services would
stream in stereo then without anyone doing anything apps like yours,
Plex and Mymedia started to work in stereo. Perhaps we will be as lucky
with lossless streams in due course...
raglencross wrote:
> The stereo pair stream everything except lossless streams.
There are no errors or other clues in the logs so it must just be an
Amazon quirk.
philchillbill's Profile:
philchillbill wrote:
> Does any other audio from MediaServer (e.g. from LMS or a lossy stream)
> play on that setup? My guess is that the combo-Echo has a different
> deviceID to where I'm directing the stream.
The stereo pair stream everything except lossless streams.
I've been playing around in my beta with more relaxed intents where you
can (initially) leave out some parameters that are currently always
required.
Take *PlayAlbum* as an example. Currently, you must always specify
*both* the {Album} name and the desired {Artist}. If you leave out the
artist
raglencross wrote:
> Has anyone successfully direct streamed FLAC URL's (e.g. Radio Paradise)
> to 2 echoes plus a bass unit paired for stereo play back? The echoes
> announce that they are direct streaming, but no audio ensues. FLAC
> streams work fine on a variety of other echo devices
Has anyone successfully direct streamed FLAC URL's (e.g. Radio Paradise)
to 2 echoes plus a bass unit paired for stereo play back? The echoes
announce that they are direct streaming, but no audio ensues. FLAC
streams work fine on a variety of other echo devices (Thanks, Phil!) and
MP3 streams
I noticed in the logs that somebody yesterday afternoon was having
issues with playing a V.A. called 'Rip it Up' due to a mismatch of the
album/compilation/single concept when asked if you want to play an
alternative to the not-found spec.
That's now fixed. :o
BTW, I've also added a check in
Now there is a challenge ;)
Paul Webster
http://dabdig.blogspot.com
author of \"now playing\" plugins covering radio france (fip etc),
planetradio (bauer - kiss, absolute, scala, jazzfm etc), kcrw, supla
finland, abc australia, cbc/radio-canada and rte ireland
Some recent changes I made under the hood to the matching of player
names are so successful that I've taken out the warnings about weird
player names. Basically, you can now use any player names you like
:cool:
philchillbill wrote:
>
> How do the new visuals in the skill look on the Echo Show 10 (I haven't
> tried one of those myself yet)? Is the artwork loading quickly enough
> for you for the experience to be fluid?
The Show 10 has a very high resolution screen so the skill visuals look
really
I had a question in a PM relating to the APL/display stuff, so a few
pointers may be useful:
- APL that results e.g. from you asking "what's playing?" will display
for 30 seconds and then the Echo Show automatically goes back to your
Home Screen. In other words, the APL is not a
raglencross wrote:
> I have a US Amazon account and sign in using DNS/VPNs.
Ah, that explains it. I can suggest this to others based in Canada when
they ask about the skill - thanks.
How do the new visuals in the skill look on the Echo Show 10 (I haven't
tried one of those myself yet)? Is the
I have a US Amazon account and sign in using DNS/VPNs.
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raglencross wrote:
> Thanks, for the effort. The Naim FLAC streams are now working for me.
> Just a note for anyone wanting these streams, make sure you use the
> "https" URL's listed in https://www.hiresaudio.online/naim-radio. The
> "http" ones don't work. Just to second what Phil is saying,
Thanks, for the effort, but I am still not able to get the Naim FLAC
streams to play on an Echo Show 10 using any of the URL's listed in
https://www.hiresaudio.online/naim-radio. These URL's clearly meet your
criterion of having FLAC in their names, so should work like the Radio
Paradise ones.
raglencross wrote:
> I would assume that all FLAC streams should now play?
I changed the regex to /https.+?(flac?|lossless|hi-?res)/i so it should
now work for the Naim hires stream too. If you have any other wishlist
items to match against, let me know and I'll add. There's no magic
formula
raglencross wrote:
> I have the Radio Paradise FLAC streams working per your instructions on
> a Show 2 with the noted limitations of no player shown in the GUI and no
> metadata on the Show, both of which are acceptable tradeoffs for the
> better sound quality. Interestingly, the Naim FLAC
I have the Radio Paradise FLAC streams working per your instructions on
a Show 2 with the noted limitations of no player shown in the GUI and no
metadata on the Show, both of which are acceptable tradeoffs for the
better sound quality. Interestingly, the Naim FLAC streams shown on
34670
A 6th APL template has now been added to the skill to provide fallback
visual feedback of the spoken response for all commands that don't
generate one of the other 5 screens. Can be useful if the music is loud
and it's hard to hear Alexa because now you can read it. It can also be
fun to
Skills are now permitted to send *lossless* streams to Echo devices -
yaay! Under the hood, MediaServer uses the *stream.mp3* mechanism to
setup a network client whose audio is directed to the Echo. This always
transcodes the stream to - you guessed it - mp3, so it's lossy. I have
some ideas for
34647
I've added a 5th APL template to MediaServer which is displayed when you
use the *Help* intent.
A (long) scrollable list with all the example command from the website
is displayed if your Echo has a screen. When you touch the screen to
start scrolling, the spoken response stops.
This
philchillbill wrote:
>
> From LMS version 8.2.0_1620395888 onwards, either the new 'Balanced'
> shuffle (if enabled) or the traditional Fischer-Yates shuffle is applied
> to the generated playlist (thanks Michael!), even if the player being
> targeted has shuffle disabled.
Works a treat, a
Some of MediaServer's commands, such as e.g.
*Play* *something* by The Corrs
*Play* songs *about* 'Girls'
*Play* *some* Classic Rock
would always result in exactly the same generated playlist each time you
used the intent, unless player shuffle was enabled. That's because under
the hood they
Very clever.
Paul Webster
http://dabdig.blogspot.com
author of \"now playing\" plugins covering radio france (fip etc),
planetradio (bauer - kiss, absolute, scala, jazzfm etc), kcrw, supla
finland, abc australia, cbc/radio-canada and rte ireland
Amazon has freshly certified V4 of MediaServer which is now live (no
need to update anything on your end - you automatically use the newest
version always).
There are 2 new commands (to play/stream a random playlist from your
library), but the most noticeable change is that the skill now
philchillbill wrote:
> Are you sure that the uuid is correct/unique? If you re-used your setup
> script from your first installation, it will still have 'your' uuid in
> it and that's then the one you would be updating via the script. The
> uuid is stored on your machine in your browser's
gegen wrote:
> Hi hoping you can help :)
> This is a second setup for me, for my son, my setup works perfectly on
> same hardware :)
> Have got the skill working for him on a pi4 with piCorePlayer 7.0.1 and
> works very well.
> However if I reboot the pi the ngrok tunnel is lost, running the
Hi hoping you can help :)
This is a second setup for me, for my son, my setup works perfectly on
same hardware :)
Have got the skill working for him on a pi4 with piCorePlayer 7.0.1 and
works very well.
However if I reboot the pi the ngrok tunnel is lost, running the startup
script manually
I don't think so.
All of the "Stream" commands have an asterisk beside them meaning
subscription required
https://mediaserver.smartskills.tech/commandref/StreamAlbum.html#75
Paul Webster
http://dabdig.blogspot.com
author of \"now playing\" plugins covering radio france (fip etc),
planetradio
Paul Webster wrote:
> With the MediaServer skill use the "Stream" command
>
> See lots of examples in the documentation section "Play Music on Echo
> (Stream)"
> https://mediaserver.smartskills.tech/mediaserverhelp.html#section-4-0
Thank you! Is there a simple stream command that just plays
With the MediaServer skill use the "Stream" command
See lots of examples in the documentation section "Play Music on Echo
(Stream)"
https://mediaserver.smartskills.tech/mediaserverhelp.html#section-4-0
Paul Webster
http://dabdig.blogspot.com
author of \"now playing\" plugins covering radio
How do I start playback on the echo device itself? I was under the
impression this is possible, but couldn't figure out how to do that
through the skill. Thanks!
wildgoose's Profile:
Amazon were able to reproduce the issue so it's now being worked on.
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staresy wrote:
> Phil,
> All working fine here, just tried "Alexa, ask Mediaserver to play
> something by...
>
> Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Bob Pearce, Tarrus Riley
>
> All worked fine here in the UK.
Thanks Steve. Good that you are unaffected but that might make actually
it more
philchillbill wrote:
> Amazon has not yet responded to the case I filed about this. In the
> meanwhile, I've modifed the request interceptor to fix the incorrect
> array instead of scalar for values of AMAZON.MusicAlbum (Album,
> Compilation, Single), AMAZON.MusicGroup: (Artist), and
>
Amazon has not yet responded to the case I filed about this. In the
meanwhile, I've modifed the request interceptor to fix the incorrect
array instead of scalar for values of AMAZON.MusicAlbum (Album,
Compilation, Single), AMAZON.MusicGroup: (Artist), and
AMAZON.MusicRecording (Title).
However,
Amazon seems to have a problem at the moment in their cloud function for
returning artist/recording names to the skill when parsing your spoken
request. I'm getting values like 'air liquide' returned when I ask for
'Madonna'. I'm also getting an array of values for what should always be
a single
staresy wrote:
> "Alexa, ask mediaserver to play some Blues" (>200 albums in that genre),
> returns "Amazon reports a service error, the skill is not allowed to
> send directives at the moment".
>
> "Alexa, ask mediaserver to play some Jazz" (less than 50 albums in that
> genre), works fine.
>
philchillbill wrote:
> I've noticed in the last few days that the skill returns an Amazon
> service error for so-called progressive responses. When you try to play
> a genre with a huge number of tracks (>10,000) the skill say "patience
> please" to fill the silence while LMS builds the
I've noticed in the last few days that the skill returns an Amazon
service error for so-called progressive responses. When you try to play
a genre with a huge number of tracks (>10,000) the skill say "patience
please" to fill the silence while LMS builds the playlist. It always
worked 100% and
34123
When streaming to an Echo with a screen, the *cover art* plus the
album-name and (album) artist-name are now shown on the Echo's display
:cool:
This is the case when streaming an album, single (CDM/CDS) or
compilation (various/V.A.).
For tracks/songs, favorites, genre-loads or playlists
https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?113966-Announce-Easy-ngrok-setup-for-MediaServer-amp-LMS-lite-Alexa-skills=1017968=1#post1017968
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philchillbill wrote:
> Its the account linking process in my cloud that assigns you a uuid.
Thanks.
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gegen wrote:
> As you said a clean install was fine... my original setup had owner
> and group set to root on /opt, not sure how it changed .the clean
> install had owner root, group staff.
>
> Hoping I got that right :), one question what creates the UUID is it
> your setup.sh or
gegen wrote:
> Hi, sorry I don't know what I may have done to have that permissions
> issue but I'll do a clean pcp install at the weekend and let you know if
> it was an issue with my original setup and therefore not with the skill
> and ngrok.
As you said a clean install was fine... my
gegen wrote:
> Hi, sorry I don't know what I may have done to have that permissions
> issue but I'll do a clean pcp install at the weekend and let you know if
> it was an issue with my original setup and therefore not with the skill
> and ngrok.
No worries - if it works then it works. Good
philchillbill wrote:
> I asked over at the pCP thread and it would appear to be that something
> outside my install script had previously changed the permissions on /opt
> for you. A normal install of pCP would not have your problem. Any idea
> what might have happened?
Hi, sorry I don't know
gegen wrote:
> Hi, I did try running setup.sh with sudo but got a message about not
> running something as root (sorry to be vague) I can't remember at what
> point that was. So I just installed again as described in your guide and
> added the autostart entry afterwards, anyway as I said
philchillbill wrote:
> Glad you got it sorted. Strange that you got a permissions error but I
> guess that would be solved if you had run the setup.sh script with sudo.
> I can add a note to the docs but on a fresh test-install I had no
> problem without sudo and neither did @chill as far as I
gegen wrote:
> Hi philchillbill changing wifi position or using ethernet still made no
> difference to tunnel not being re-established after a reboot so decided
> to reinstall. During the install I noticed the following:
>
> --> Adding autostart entry to /opt/bootlocal.sh
>
> sed: can't
philchillbill wrote:
> OK. There's a new *troubleshooting* section in the online help at
> https://smartskills.tech/lmslitesetup/#section-2-6.
Hi philchillbill changing wifi position or using ethernet still made no
difference to tunnel not being re-established after a reboot so decided
to
philchillbill wrote:
> OK. There's a new *troubleshooting* section in the online help at
> https://smartskills.tech/lmslitesetup/#section-2-6.
Thanks a lot.
gegen's Profile:
OK. There's a new *troubleshooting* section in the online help at
https://smartskills.tech/lmslitesetup/#section-2-6.
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philchillbill wrote:
> The script runs at boot and refreshes at boot automatically. However,
> long after booting, if ngrok on the pi loses contact with the ngrok
> cloud service because of bad WiFi, you will also get a new tunnel when
> it reconnects. If that happens then you would have to
gegen wrote:
> On my piCoreplayer setup after a reboot Alexa says;
>
> -"Oh dear your ngrok tunnel no longer exists, maybe you restarted a
> server? If ngrok is set to autostart please rerun the updater script
> manually, if the result mentions OK then your problem is resolved"-
>
> So at
philchillbill wrote:
> It is run automatically at boot so no need to do anything manually.
On my piCoreplayer setup after a reboot Alexa says;
-"Oh dear your ngrok tunnel no longer exists, maybe you restarted a
server? If ngrok is set to autostart please rerun the updater script
manually, if
gegen wrote:
> Thanks for the info.so on my setup after a reboot I have to run the
> updater script manually to connect to the new tunnel url, that's what
> you would expect?
It is run automatically at boot so no need to do anything manually.
philchillbill wrote:
> Yes. But the updater script pushes the new url to the skill every time
> it changes on the free plan. So it should not be necessary unless you
> are using the url somewhere else too.
Thanks for the info.so on my setup after a reboot I have to run the
updater script
gegen wrote:
> Sorry if I'm taking a while to fully understand everything :)
>
> If I wanted to have the ngrok tunnel persist with no url changes after a
> reboot...I would have to have a paid plan with ngrok, is that right?
Yes. But the updater script pushes the new url to the skill every
philchillbill wrote:
> No problem. The simpler one-pass process is now live so no reboot
> required - ngrok is immediately available after running setup.sh.
Sorry if I'm taking a while to fully understand everything :)
If I wanted to have the ngrok tunnel persist with no url changes after a
gegen wrote:
> Thanks for the explanation. :)
No problem. The simpler one-pass process is now live so no reboot
required - ngrok is immediately available after running setup.sh.
philchillbill's Profile:
philchillbill wrote:
> It is already automated - as the docs state: 'An entry in
> /opt/bootlocal.sh ensures ngrok_startup.sh runs at system boot to
> continually refresh your tunnel details when you reboot.' This was done
> so you don't have to 'waste' a user-command on ngrok.
>
> The reason
gegen wrote:
>
>
> One question, after a reboot the ngrok tunnel needs to be reinstated
> with 'sh ngrok_startup.sh' which works fine, is it possible to
> automate this?
>
> Perhaps a command in the 'User Commands' section of the pCP Tweaks page?
It is already automated - as the docs
philchillbill wrote:
> Great to hear - thanks. You had the good fortune of the new easy-setup
> being available instead of having to create files manually like the
> pioneers here on the forums. :D
>
> As it's new , there has not been so much feedback on it. Was there any
> step that you
FredFredrickson wrote:
> Configuring ngrok with your tool was fine, however if I had to choose
> I'd put all the steps for enabling the skill + ngrok in one place.
>
> Now as for WAF- convincing her to say "tell mediaserver to " in front of
> the commands where she's used to saying "play song"
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