Topic: House Band -- Amazon Echo integration is available (Read 286122 times)

sarkonovich · « **on:** January 19, 2016, 09:47:13 pm »

JRiver Media center now works with Amazon Echo. The skill is called House Band, and it's available now in the Alexa app.

Here's a short video demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqBOaoEssN0

And a bit more info:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=15326.msg717359#msg717359

I would love feedback about bugs, features requests, etc.

Give it a try! If you have comments/complaints, suggestions, please feel free to write me at:
sarkonovich at gee male dot com

Castius · « **Reply #1 on:** January 25, 2016, 12:50:36 pm »

I don't have Echo.
But i wanted to say nice work and good video demo.

Mike Foran · « **Reply #2 on:** February 14, 2016, 04:02:52 pm »

Wow this looks cool! How complicated a command can it parse? For instance, could you say "Alexa, play all Tom Waits songs rated 4 or higher" ?

sarkonovich · « **Reply #3 on:** February 14, 2016, 04:16:41 pm »

Right now, it doesn't do ratings, but I can add that in future releases. (Adding features like that is pretty straightforward, but it needs to get re-certified by Amazon, and that takes a bit.)

Now it can search by Artist, Album, Track, or just a string.

So, things like, "Alexa...."

Play songs (albums) by Tom Waits. (This will give you a list of albums by Tom Waits --if you don't have too many to make a voice listing tedious -- from which you can select.)

Play the album Rain Dogs -- will play the album, unless there are two albums with that exact title, in which case you'll be prompted to choose.
Play the album Rain Dogs by Tom Waits -- that will play the album.

Play Tom Waits will just queue up everything with Tom Waits in the tags (performer, composer, etc.)
Play Rain Dogs will queue up everything with the words "Rain Dogs" in the tags.

In general, the search algorithm first tries to find an exact match. If it finds none, it tries a couple different loose searches.

I really am looking for feedback on the voice UX, trying to streamline it and have it give more intuitive results.
I'm also working on trying to get classical searches working smoothly. They are much more complicated!

Please write me and let me know how to improve it.

Steve

nobody40 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 15, 2016, 09:17:16 am »

So how do you get it to play your playlist?

sarkonovich · « **Reply #5 on:** February 15, 2016, 07:16:49 pm »

This is coming soon. End of next week, I'd hope.

Just keep checking....one day she'll respond like she knows what you're talking about!

Steve

nobody40 · « **Reply #6 on:** February 16, 2016, 04:49:41 am »

Steve is there anything I will have to do?

sarkonovich · « **Reply #7 on:** February 16, 2016, 10:54:56 am »

Nope. It will just start working.

By tomorrow I think I can get basic playlist support working. After launching the skill, say,

"Play my playlist desert island" or
"Play my playlist mellow jazz"

(Actually, right now it will appear that those commands work , and Alexa will say, "Playing my desert island." But she won't actually do it.)

It will take about a week for Amazon to re-certify the app, after which what you can say will be much more flexible. You won't be constrained to saying "play my playlist blah..."

Steve

sarkonovich · « **Reply #8 on:** February 17, 2016, 01:48:06 pm »

@nobody40.

I can't send you an email until you empty your inbox -- you can only keep 4 messages in there!

Thanks,
Steve

jmone · « **Reply #9 on:** February 19, 2016, 07:45:47 pm »

Looking forward to trying this out. Just purchased one but it will take a couple of weeks to get it from the US to Oz.

sarkonovich · « **Reply #10 on:** February 19, 2016, 07:52:27 pm »

Great! Let me know what you think!

It's being updated a lot....by the beginning of next week there will support for playlists and zones (report current and available zones, change zone.)

Steve

JimH · « **Reply #11 on:** February 19, 2016, 07:53:59 pm »

Quote from: jmone on February 19, 2016, 07:45:47 pm

Looking forward to trying this out. Just purchased one but it will take a couple of weeks to get it from the US to Oz.

I think the Echo is one of the most remarkable devices we've seen in the last few years. I have a couple.

sarkonovich · « **Reply #12 on:** February 19, 2016, 07:59:50 pm »

I agree. I think the Echo (or some version of it) is going to be completely common place in a few years.

I remember when cell phones started getting popular, and I thought, "Why would anyone want a cell phone. There's a phone on every corner."
When I hear people say, "Why would I want an Echo, my phone does most of that," I can't help but draw the analogy.

jmone · « **Reply #13 on:** February 19, 2016, 08:55:05 pm »

[rant]...but as usual for some of this tech, the deployment and support is not well thought out for use outside the US. From what I've read you config location by US Zip Code, so we have to use workarounds to even get the Time to be correct. Same with the Nest thermostat (so I imported the Ecobee3 instead). [/rant]

Anyway, stocking up on lots of "smart" things, but now how to bring it all together.

JimH · « **Reply #14 on:** February 19, 2016, 09:00:27 pm »

We still have job openings in Minnesota.

jmone · « **Reply #15 on:** February 19, 2016, 09:10:31 pm »

I'll take my chances with the critters in Oz as this is truly alarming!

JimH · « **Reply #16 on:** February 19, 2016, 09:17:10 pm »

Those little mosquitoes aren't very common here.

jmone · « **Reply #17 on:** February 21, 2016, 09:39:21 pm »

Also just ordered a Rachio Iro 2nd Gen Irrigation Controller that works with Echo as well! (Same story. Need to buy in the US and ship. Interesting to see how all this smart stuff goes).

So I want a script where I can say to the Echo "Play Goodby" and it will have MC play "At the end of the day", then turn down then off the sound system, turn up the lights, and finally turn on the sprinklers

broncodan · « **Reply #18 on:** February 22, 2016, 03:36:46 pm »

I hooked up my echo and messed around with this for about 10 minutes but thought I would provide some quick feedback:

1 - when hooking up the app - you need to make sure that the password protection is off your network settings in JRiver - not a big deal but had to go back and start over as I wasn't aware of this.
2 - not really clear once the skill is activated - do I have to say "alexa - house band" every time I want to use it or can I just say "alexa play"? I don't know if echo would get confused if someone (like me) has their music uploaded to Amazon as it obviously could play from there too.

The bummer for me is that I really thought that this would allow the Echo to stream my music from the server - I didn't realize that it was only for voice control of the main server (my computer). This doesn't really help me much as my echo is in a different room. I currently have my entire library loaded up to Amazon - so I can stream my music that way but playlists and Amazon music do not play well together so I was hoping that this would allow me to listen to my playlists on the Echo, along with using the Play Doctor feature so I could save some money on the Amazon cloud. Needless to say I was bummed when I requested a playlist creation and heard it come from where my computer is located...

I guess this could be helpful if you had zones set up or something along those lines (although not sure if this works with zones at this point).

The other workaround I currently use if I really want to listen to a particular playlist is connect my phone/other devices via Bluetooth and stream to the Echo with JRemote.

Hope this helps.

sarkonovich · « **Reply #19 on:** February 22, 2016, 04:17:24 pm »

Hey there!

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it.

The app does work with password protected servers, but during account linking password protection has to be off. Once the account has been linked you can turn it back on. As you noticed, if you try to enable the skill with a password protected server, you'll get a message asking you to turn off authentication and re-link.

Yes, you have to say, "Alexa, launch House Band." Or, "Alexa, tell House band to play...."
This is just the way the Echo works. Third party skills (all of those in the skills tab) have to be invoked, rather like you have to open up a third party app on your phone or your tablet. Only the built-in Echo functionality doesn't require an invocation name (just like the clock on your phone is always there, but you to open up a game...)

This *does* allow you to stream your music to your Echo. As you mentioned, you just have to connect your computer, via bluetooth, to the Echo and use the Echo as a bluetooth speaker.

That said, it's not the primary purpose of the app at all. The Echo already allows you to upload all your music to Amazon Prime Music, or stream from Spotify, Pandora, etc. So the main point of this is as voice interface for JRiver, allowing you to play your music on your home stereo (or anything that can play a DLNA stream.)

I mean, the Echo is a fine(-ish) bluetooth speaker. But it's certainly not audiophile quality. So, for those who want quick access to their music (hi-res or otherwise) playing over an actual stereo -- that's what this is for.

Yes....zones are supported now.

Again, thanks for giving it a try!

Steve

William-NM · « **Reply #20 on:** March 13, 2016, 08:04:16 pm »

Hi, Steve
Just wanted to say THANKS for House Band. It took me a couple of days of trial and error tinkering to get port forwarding working - nothing to do with House Band - just my double-router setup. (hint to other poor souls: the first router has to forward port 52199 to router 2s 'WAN' address, not it's 'LAN' address. In my case, 192.168.0.2 vs 192.168.2.1). How did I miss that?

I'm enjoying it so far, though I'm still getting familiar with the syntax. I have to bang around in it for a while and then re-read your very clear instructions a few times before the power of keywords sinks in. For example, to help me distinguish between between the 'SHM', 'MFSL' or 'Remastered' version of "Dire Straits", etc.

It's an excellent problem to have, though.

The only issue I've run into is that it doesn't seem to be able to find playlists in subfolders (groups). For example, I have a 'Whitburn' group with sub folders for 'Pop', Classic Rock', etc., and playlists named by year in each. Maybe I'm missing something?

In any case, I'll happily rename them something like "Whitburn Pop 1965" and toss them in the root directory if that's what it takes to 'Alexify' them.

Thanks, again - it's a really great 'skill', and much more productive that asking Alexa if she is really Scarlett Johansson.

William

sarkonovich · « **Reply #21 on:** March 13, 2016, 11:03:45 pm »

William,

Thanks for all the encouraging words! I appreciate them.

(I had someone else run into trouble with double port-forwarding. Maybe I should put a link to a site that will walk people through as part of the error message that comes up when port forwarding isn't enabled.)

You can access playlists in playlist groups. In this case the issue is the name of the playlist. I just checked and I can't access a playlist named '1974' (it's irrelevant whether it's in a group or not.) But a playlist named 'Springsteen' or 'workout tunes' will work fine.

In general, I haven't yet put the time into playlist searches that I have into music searches, but I'll work on this. (Just to give you a sense of this, Alexa passes all digits as words, e.g., nineteen seventy four. So the skill has to decide how to handle all of that...is it a year? Should 'ten new songs' be '10 New Songs'?)

I'm going to be turning my attention back to this skill again in a week or so, and I'll definitely beef up the playlist search algorithm.

I'm still not happy with the overall accuracy of the voice recognition, so I'll be working on that as well.

When searches fail, it's very often that Alexa just doesn't recognize what you're saying (you can look at the settings => history card in the Alexa app.) It's helpful to me if you can pass on specific examples of phrases/names/words she just can't recognize. It helps me build a better recognition model. So, feel free to PM with any/all annoyances with the skill!

Thanks again for taking the time to try it!

Steve

sarkonovich · « **Reply #22 on:** March 14, 2016, 10:02:08 am »

William,

Okay, you should now be able to play playlists with years in the title, e.g., "1974" or "Springsteen 1974" - whether it's in groups doesn't matter.

Smartlists are not yet supported. And the number handling is still not robust (e.g., "80's Pop" won't work.) Will get to that soon.

As for "Whitburn" -- that's a voice recognition issue. Alexa, I believe, hears it as "with burn". Right now the solution is to rename the group....

Steve

William-NM · « **Reply #23 on:** March 14, 2016, 11:12:42 am »

Thanks, Steve
I just saw your second reply - I'll give it a try today. Great to hear that it's not a 'groups' issue - makes organization easier for us humans, heh. Yes, I noticed that 'Whitburn' was tough to get right - not a commonly used word - I'll either substitute/abbreviate or give Alexa some time to learn it - Amazon says 'she' does that.

The article that helped me figure out my port forwarding issue was here: http://portforward.com/help/doublerouterportforwarding.htm

Tom's Hardware also has a number of good "Double Router Port Forwarding" articles, including: "http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/33700-42-ultimate-modem-router-setup-thread"

Thanks for the help & fast reply. No stress re: smartlists, etc. - I've got plenty to keep my ears happy. It's cool to have some 'magic' in the house, and MC integration is one of the best. I have some non-Audible audiobook playlists that I'm looking forward to playing with, too.
William

William-NM · « **Reply #24 on:** March 14, 2016, 07:37:49 pm »

Hey, Steve - just a quick update. I tried converting one year of the whitburn pop to a static playlist (naturally, they're all smartlists, heh) named 'Pop 1966'. I just renamed another year 'Pop 1965' and left it as a smartlist. Both were left in their original nested locations and both played perfectly.

Just for kicks, I tried adding 'Whitburn' to the name - Alexa sure hates that word. Happily, it isn't needed. Just FYI, I tried playing my smartlist "Soul & Motown" and she didn't like that one - maybe the '&' ??

As you said, she didn't like my playlist named 'The 50's', as expected. Interestingly, Alexa said 'Sorry, I'm having trouble (something or other...), but a minute later, all my (1,238) songs with 'Fifties' in the genre field started playing. She gets an E for effort and for picking out 'Fifties' in the middle of semi-colon delimited genres.

Thanks for the fine tuning, I'm really pleased to have the ability to access my playlists with a minimal effort. (Now, if my Dot would arrive, I'd have most of the cave covered!)

William

sarkonovich · « **Reply #25 on:** March 14, 2016, 07:51:59 pm »

William,

Great! Glad it's working!

Like I said, I've done very little work on playlists (so, almost no handling of symbols, etc. If you replace the ampersand with 'and' I'm sure it will work..) But I'll turn to that soon.

I'll give you an update when I've done the work. And, I'll add "Whitburn" in the recognition model (though that's a step Amazon has to approve.)

Best,
Stee

jmone · « **Reply #26 on:** March 17, 2016, 07:20:06 pm »

Hi Steve,
I've got the Echo and set it up (PITA for non-us people, but thread here on how to do this ... kinda ...)

On house band, so far so good! Just want to make sure I've go the Syntax right as I can do some things but not others well (or at all):

"Alexa, tell House Band to..."
* "Play Songs by ABBA" = too many to list out loud so I've sent a card (16 hits) but then asks if I want to "Play Abba" to it create a playlist with all the ABBA stuff. This works but not only did it create a playlist with the ABBA tracks but also included some songs by Black Sabbath, ABBA Music Videos, and a bunch of movies including, The Life of Pi, Mamma Mia, Guardians of the Galaxy, Corpse Bride, The Hurt Locker, and Stars Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
* "Play Songs by Adele" = listed the 7 album hits by voice and I selected the the Album but the playlist it creates is not in Track order (eg it created one with an order of 2,4,3,1,5,6,7,8,9,10). I repeated this for "Blondie" and the Seq = Track list this time.

I get odd results trying to do stuff like "Play Movie 8 Mile". Do you mind giving some examples of the best way to:
- Play a single item (eg: movie such as "8 Mile" or "BBC World Service")
- Play all Audio by ABBA
- Play Music Videos by Adele

Also I found the following with various Commands such as:
* "Pause" = works (then Play = works)
* "Stop" = does nothing
* "Play" = works (note, does not re-commence playback has been manually stoped in the MC GUI)
* "Play Next Track" = Works
* "Play Previous Track" = Command Works as with MC (eg tends to go to the start of the current track if not done in the first few seconds)
* "Turn the Volume Up" / "Turn the Volume Down" = 10% increment change

Thanks for the work!
Nathan

sarkonovich · « **Reply #27 on:** March 17, 2016, 09:22:48 pm »

Nathan,

Hey there! Thanks for giving it a try and for the detailed feedback. I really need feedback like this.

So first: it's meant for music only. There's no (intentional) support for playing video or pictures right now.

All of the behavior you describe is expected, but your example of 'abba' is making me think it shouldn't be.

Currently "Play [value]" is just a string search, and will play anything with that string. I recognized that, for example, "play love" would play anything with "love" or "lovely" or "de-lovely" in the relevant fields. But the 'abba'/'black sabbath' case makes me think I will change that.

"Play albums|songs by Abba" would give you a list of Abba albums. If you have 7 or fewer, Alexa will list them, e.g.:

"I found two matching results. Abba Gold. Arrival."

Then you can say, "Play Arrival"

(If you have more than 7, I found it irritating to have Alexa list them, so I just sent a list of them to a card in the Alexa app.)

To play a particular album, the syntax is:

"Play the album arrival"

or

"Play the album arrival by Abba"

What I didn't think about was that a string search would add movies to the playlist. I'll look into this. Maybe MCWS gives me a way to filter a string search to audio only.

As for controls:

"Previous", as you say, works as MCWS does, which really isn't the previous track. I already had it on the to-do list to change this to actually go to the previous track if there is one, or start the present track over if there isn't.

"Stop" is a reserved word for Alexa - Amazon insists that it immediately exits the skill. You have to say "Stop music" or "pause music" or "pause."

You can say "resume", "play", "play music", "resume music" to play.

"Play the next track", "skip", "skip this track", "next track" will skip.

"Previous track", "go back", "play the previous track" will go backward (i.e., start the track over....for now.)

"Louder", "quieter", "turn up the volume", "turn the volume down", etc., will move in 10% increments. "Volume 5|1|9", etc., will set volume at absolute values.

I'm about to do a major re-write of the code. (All my loved ones have decided to abandon me for Spring break!) If there are any features/behaviors that you'd like included, let me know.

jmone · « **Reply #28 on:** March 17, 2016, 10:04:24 pm »

Thanks for the quick reply and looking forward to playing some more.
- MCWS: lets you specify a Media Type (Audio, Video, etc) and then there are Media Subtypes for each (eg Music Video)
- I see no reason why you would want to exclude other Media (sub)types than Audio, as I could use "Play Music Videos by ABBA" as well as "Play Songs by ABBA" or even "Play Anything by ABBA"
- Would it make sense to have a cmd that just played all matches automatically eg if the cmd was something like "..."Play All Songs by ABBA" or "Play Songs by ABBA Now"

I'm also having issues trying to get House Band to play any (Multiple Artist) albums like, "2000 Top 100 UK", "2005 Top 100 Billboard USA", even "Disco Hits"

I also really liked that in your video you could say "Alexa, tell Media Center to..." rather than "Alexa, tell House Band to..." as it is much more intuitive but I guess there was a reason to change it?

Thanks
Nathan

sarkonovich · « **Reply #29 on:** March 17, 2016, 11:18:31 pm »

Nathan,

Well, "disco hits" should work! Check in the Alexa app (under setting => history). See what she heard. If that's a phrase she's having a hard time hearing, I'll add it.

You can play everything with "ABBA" now -- "Play abba" -- but as you noted, it play everything that contains "abba" as a substring. I'll fix that.
And I agree, "Play songs by Abba" should probably just queue up all songs instead of giving a list of what you have by ABBA to select from.

Have you tried just asking for "Play the album top billboard" or "Play top 100 billboard"? In general, if you're having trouble getting to an album, try the fewest words that uniquely identify the album.

I tried to get JRiver as the name, and Amazon rejected it without explicit permission from JRiver. I think I shied away from Media Center the next go 'round thinking I'd run into the same problems. (In the video, it was just a private version.) But, I never actually submitted that name.

My main focus of the rewrite is to get better number handling. It's honestly one of the harder things to deal with elegantly with a voice interface. If I controlled your catalog and could tag it just for Alexa, it would be a piece of cake. But obviously I can't. So, for example, if Alexa gives me "twenty four ninety six" should I search for a year, like 2496, or bit rate, like 24/96. etc.) I have some ideas on how to handle this, so I'll post back when I've updated the skill.

But having specific examples to work with -- 2000 Top 100 UK -- is helpful.

Best,
Steve

William-NM · « **Reply #30 on:** March 18, 2016, 12:48:30 pm »

Hey, Steve
Just a few more playlist name examples & feedback in case it's useful. Of course, it's easy enough to rename them in a more Alexa/House Band way, but if it can grok them as is, so much the better:

20-teens Favorites (i.e. current decade)

80's Favorites

This Month's Favorites, Shuffled

NTWICM (abbr. for "Now That's What I Call Music") I also tried the full spelling and NTW, N T W, etc. Not sure why it wasn't recognized - Alexa read back the letters correctly...

I have set up a lot of "views" such as 'Core Rock', 'Current Rotation', '3D Albums This Week', etc.
I can create equivalent smartlists - just thought I'd mention it in case it's possible to play a view.

It would be fun to be able to navigate to 'playing now', choose a visualization, set it to 'full screen'. Hey, ya never know unless you ask!

Glad to hear that you've wisely chosen to spend the quiet time programming instead of risking your health frolicking in the sun and surf with the other spring-breakers!

William

jmschnur · « **Reply #31 on:** March 23, 2016, 01:34:28 pm »

Set this up with a two router system that was a learning experience.
It is now playing Nora Jones on my system.
Can you set it up so I can use play doctor when I choose music?

Thanks! This is way cool!

Joel

sarkonovich · « **Reply #32 on:** March 23, 2016, 01:46:10 pm »

Joel,

Hey...glad it's working. I really need to add something pointing people to a good resource for port-forward with a double-router setup.

Right now there is limited play doctor support. Just say start the skill and say, for example

"Create a playlist based on Bruce Springsteen"

Genre should also work:

"Create a playlist based on Classical"

The skill might have been (and continue to be) a bit wonky for a couple days. I'm re-writing it and pushing updates frequently. But there should be significant improvements to search speed and accuracy since last week.

Also....I'm actively seeking out bugs, searches the don't work or don't work as expected, etc.

If you like it (I guess even if you don't), feel free to leave a review in the Alexa app.

Best,
Steve

jmschnur · « **Reply #33 on:** March 23, 2016, 06:43:57 pm »

I noticed that Spotify has concise command set for echo. Once you get house band cleaned up a bit it would be great if you add such a list here and perhaps with the skill.

Joel

sarkonovich · « **Reply #34 on:** March 23, 2016, 06:47:52 pm »

Happy to do it!

Just to clarify: Do you mean that the commands that are listed in the Alexa app aren't concise? Or just that that you're looking for something else.

Can you point me to the Spotify commands?

Thanks,
Steve

jmschnur · « **Reply #35 on:** March 23, 2016, 07:41:31 pm »

I have encountered several issues with house band.

Echo lost the link and I needed to renter it .
The program misunderstands me.

Beethoven became Benny Goodman
Mozart became Metal.

Are these voice problem with Echo or House Band?

Joel

jmschnur · « **Reply #36 on:** March 23, 2016, 07:42:15 pm »

I would prefer to write a review once you have worked out a few more bugs so I can give you lots of stars.

jmschnur · « **Reply #37 on:** March 23, 2016, 07:48:56 pm »

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jmschnur · « **Reply #38 on:** March 23, 2016, 07:51:48 pm »

https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/guides/#!/article/spotify-amazon-echo

Shared via the Google app

Joel

sarkonovich · « **Reply #39 on:** March 23, 2016, 08:15:51 pm »

Thanks for the info. It's really helpful to me.

Those are both "recognition" problems, but I have some control over them. (This is why feedback is so helpful...the more variety of utterances I get the better.)

It would be very helpful if you could remember the commands where the confusion occurred.

About the skill "losing" your link -- I actually don't think this can happen in the normal course of events.
My guess is that you got the message:

"I've sent a card to the Alexa app. Click on link account to update your six letter locater key."

You can ignore this. No need to update. Alexa "mismapped" your request to the wrong command. I know this happens now with some requests for playlists that don't start with "play." For example, if you ask Alexa to play:

"Neil young playlist"

will give you that message. For now, you have to start the command with "play my.." or "play the..." For example,

"play my playlist Neil Young"
"play my Neil Young playlist"
"play the Neil Young playlist", etc

If you can remember what you said to get the "link account" message, I can fix this next time I submit an update to Amazon.

Also, let me just say that classical music is something I'm working on. I thought I could get to it this week, but other things took longer than I thought. The basic issue is that House Band does not right now use "Composer" tags, just Artist, Album, Name (for track titles), and undefined string searches. Given that usually people tag classical music with the performer as "Artist" (and the composer with "composer") the only way to search for classical music now is either a) with string searches "Play Beethoven" or by creating playlists with albums. Or search by artist....

There is a guide (somewhat similar) in the House Band Skill in the Alexa app, but I'll post another one here, with just the essentials.

sarkonovich · « **Reply #40 on:** March 23, 2016, 08:27:13 pm »

Joel,

Here you go:

House Band on Amazon Echo lets you control your tunes using your voice!

Just say, “Alexa, Lauch House Band” or
"Alexa, tell House Band to...."

and then…

Start Playing

“Play the album [album name]”
“Play the song [song name]”
“Play the song [song name] by [artist name]"
“Play the album [album name] by [artist name]"
"Play songs by [artist name]”
"Play [anything]" queue up everything with that string.
"Create a playlist based on [artist name or genre]"
"Play my/the [playlist name] playlist"
"Play the/my playlist [playlist name]"
"Add the [song name/album name/search string] to the playlist"

Note: Many of the above commands will produce a list of matching results. For example,

"Play the album "Kind of Blue" might get you the result

"I found two matching items. Here's what you have. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (SACD). What should I play?"

You can the select from the list:

"Play the SACD"

or:

"Play all"

Video:

House Band currently supports the following video commands

"Play the video Citizen Kane"
"Play the movie Annie Hall"

Will immediately add all videos with matching names (e.g., "Citizen Kane" and "Citizen Kane 70th Anniversary Edition) to the playlist

Controls

“Pause” pauses the currently playing track.
“Stop the music” stops the currently playing track.
“Resume” continues playback.
“Next song/next track/skip this/next/thumbs down”
“Previous” returns to the last track played.
“Change the/set the/volume [1-10]” sets the volume from 10 to 100%.
“Volume up/down/louder/quieter” turns volume up or down.

Queries

“What's playing?” Alexa will tell you the song/artist that’s playing.
“What do I have by [artist name]” Alexa will tell you the albums you have in your library by that artist.

Zone

"What are my zones/What zones do I have" will give you a list of zone
"Change the zone to [zone name]" to change the current zone. (Note: it doesn't transfer the currently playing music to new zone.)

jmschnur · « **Reply #41 on:** March 23, 2016, 08:47:52 pm »

This helps!

I did get a message that a card was being sent so you are correct on that.

The errors were

Ask House Band to play an Beethoven (got me benny good man) and then
ASk House Band to play Mozart sonatas (got me metal).

This is an exciting skill and I will use it a a lot.

jmone · « **Reply #42 on:** March 24, 2016, 07:21:04 pm »

So bit more testing. Firstly, I had to relink Alexa with my MC Media Center Key. When I asked Alexa to
- "Play 1990 Top 1000" = Alexa responded with "Playing all tracks matching 1990 Top 1000" but MC then picked the Multiple Artist Album "50 Years of Australian Rock". This is the first listed in my Multiple Artist view.
- "Play Rolling Stones" = Correctly played all items (including Videos) containing Rolling stones
- "Play Music by Abba" = Finds 16 Albums and asks if I want to Play All -> creates a playlist including videos

Let me know of any particular strings to try on my library

Thanks
Nathan

sarkonovich · « **Reply #43 on:** March 24, 2016, 08:09:46 pm »

Nathan,

Thanks! All this input is helpful.

So, to play a playlist (I'm guess "1990 Top 1000" is a playlist") you have to say something like,

"Play the playlist 1990 Top 1000" or
"Play my 1990 Top 1000 playlist."

In short, you need to include the word "playlist" immediately before to let Alexa now you're searching for a playlist, not an album.
In general, just saying,

"Play......"

will perform a "string search", equivalent to just entering that text into the JRiver search box.

You can ignore the message to "link" the account. This is a recognition error that keeps popping up. Do you remember what you said to get that? I know that if I say something like:

"Mellow Jazz playlist" -- leaving off "play my" or "play the" I'l get that message. I'm interested in any other phrases that set it off.

You should also now be able to play many of the automatically generated playlists, without having to say the long preambles. For example,

"Play the playlist Haven't heard for over a year"

should play the automatically generated playlist "Audio -- Top Hits -- Haven't Heard for over a year" and likewise for many of them. (Recently playings now's won't work.)

I'm going to try to tune the interaction model -- what Alexa "hears" -- and submit changes to Amazon on Monday. So, if there are phrases that she's not recognizing,
e.g., you say "Mozart" and she hears "Metal" let me know. Also, if there are particular phrases, names that you use a lot that aren't being picked up. If I include them specifically in the recognition model, Alexa's reliability in recognizing them goes *way* up. (But this cannot include misspellings...like 'Bird Gehrl' or such.)

Thanks for your help in beta testing this!

Steve

jmone · « **Reply #44 on:** March 24, 2016, 08:58:12 pm »

Hi Steve,
These examples are all Album names (not playlists). Just tested some "Playlists" like "Play Rock Chicks Playlist" and these worked fine.

Attached is a Pic of my (Multiple Artists) Albums to give you an idea.

Thanks
Nathan

sarkonovich · « **Reply #45 on:** March 24, 2016, 09:01:57 pm »

Ah! That's great! That's why I need different folks giving me examples.

I just want you to know, if you have the collection of a 50 year old Jewish academic, the recognition is really good!

Steve

jmone · « **Reply #46 on:** March 25, 2016, 01:23:39 am »

It's probably my Antipodean accent then

sarkonovich · « **Reply #47 on:** March 25, 2016, 02:29:03 pm »

On failed searches, Alexa will now tell you what she searched for, and even more helpfully, send a card to the Echo app with the exact search string that was generated.

This will let you know if the problem was poor recognition, or unexpected spelling, or the search was just parsed badly, etc.

Or just a strange accent.

Steve

jmone · « **Reply #48 on:** March 25, 2016, 04:15:35 pm »

I need to listen harder to her accent! Got one piece wrong!

- "Play 1990 Top 1000" = Alexa responded with "Playing all tracks matching 1990 To 1000" and MC starts playing what track I have highligted (Odd)

- "Play the Album 1990 Top 1000" = Alexa responded "I Can't Find 1990 Top 1000 in your music library"

sarkonovich · « **Reply #49 on:** March 25, 2016, 04:44:40 pm »

Top 1000?

That's why I thought it was a playlist before....1000 is a long album!

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: House Band -- Amazon Echo integration is available (Read 286122 times)