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[sarkonovich]

Hello!

I am currently doing an update to HouseBand to include better support for Movies and TV.  I haven't looked into image support, but I'll keep it in mind, if not for this update, then for the next.

Thanks for the input!

Steve

[cgott42]

thanks, Steve!

[MrMcKlusky]

Thanks, I'm really enjoying this House Band skill you've implemented
Keep up the great work

[bluescale]

I just stumbled across this thread very randomly.  Now I have to buy an Echo - thanks a lot.

[bluescale]

I went out and bought an Echo just for this skill, and I have to say, this is awesome.  The JRiver implementation is now simple enough that my wife will use it rather than asking me to play something.  I just realized, I've been her music assistant for the last year.  Finally, I can hand that responsibility off to Alexa  .

Any possibility of adding the ability to list songs with a title or keyword?  For example, after starting the House Band skill, I asked Alexa:  "Alexa what songs do I have named Caravan?"

Alexa responded: "I didn't find anything by name caravan in your music library."

Needless to say, I have multiple versions of Caravan in my collection.

If I say: "Alexa play the song Caravan," JRiver starts to play the first hit for Caravan without asking which one I want to hear.

[sarkonovich]

I'm glad you like the skill!

So, currently, you can't ask for a list of songs by name. You can only ask for a list of albums by artist, e.g, "What do I have by Van Morrison?" If you ask your question ("What songs do I have named caravan?" it's going to interpret that as a request for albums by the group called, "named caravan.")

However, if you say, "Play the song Caravan" and you have multiple versions, it should list them. I just tried it and got a list of five different versions (two by van morrison, one by thelonius monk, etc.)

On the other hand, if you just say, "Play Caravan" it should just play everything that matches that string.

I'm not sure why it's not picking up on the songs you have with that name...

[bluescale]

However, if you say, "Play the song Caravan" and you have multiple versions, it should list them. I just tried it and got a list of five different versions (two by van morrison, one by thelonius monk, etc.)

On the other hand, if you just say, "Play Caravan" it should just play everything that matches that string.

I'm not sure why it's not picking up on the songs you have with that name...

You know what...I may be mistaken.  I may have said "Play Caravan" instead of "Play the song Caravan."  That request didn't generate a card in the Echo app, so I was going off of memory.  I'll test it out when I get home tonight.

Is listing songs by title on the roadmap?  Once your collection gets large enough, and when you have enough jazz standards in your collection, sometimes you forget who performed what.  For example, last night I was looking for the Freddie Hubbard version of Caravan, but for the life of me, couldn't remember who played it.  When I asked Alexa to play Caravan, she queued up the version from the movie Whiplash.  It's a fine version, but not what I wanted at that moment. 

[bluescale]

Good news!  Saying, "Play the song Caravan" worked exactly as you described.  With that in mind, I do't know that there's a need to add the list functionality, although it might be nice for the sake of intuitiveness.

I encountered other challenges with House Band tonight.  Here's what's going on:

1.  I said, "Alexa, tell House Band to play the album High and Mighty."  Alexa heard this correctly and listed the following albums and asked me which album to play:
-Gov't Mule, Mighty High
-Gov't Mule, High and Mighty

I changed my mind, and said, "Play Mighty High."  Alexa heard, "Play Mighty Hi," and said, "Sorry, I couldn't find an item on the list matching Mighty Hi..."

Next I tried, "Alexa ask House Band for albums by Gov't Mule," Although I pronounced it "Government Mule.  Predictably, House Band couldn't find anything.  So I tried saying, "Alexa ask House Band for albums by Gov't Mule," but this time said "Gov't" just like it looks.  House Band interpreted this correctly and returned the following albums and asked me what to play:
-Gov't Mule, Mighty Hight
-Gov't Mule, By A Thread
-Gov't Mule, Mo' voodoo
-Gov't, High & Mighty

Interestingly, when Alexa recited the names out loud, it pronounced "Gov't" as "government".  At that point, I went back into the same loop as before.

2.  I decided to move on to something less difficult - I thought.  I said: "Alexa, tell House Band to play album Fast Paced World by the Duhks."  Alexa heard: "Play album Fast Paced world by the Dukes."  Understandably, House Band wasn't able to equate Duhks with Dukes.  I'm not sure there's anything you can do about that.

3.  Next I tried, "Play album Fast Paced World."  Alexa heard this correctly, and House Band started playing the correct album.  Unfortunately, the songs are out of order.  There's a column called Sequence order.  For some reason House Band is using this field, and not Track Number to select the order for the songs.  I tried manually sorting by track rather than sequence, and restarting, but it still plays in sequence order.  I suspect this might be user error.  If anyone has configuration suggestions for me, I'd love to hear it.

I hope this doesn't sound like griping.  I love House Band.

Edit:  I should clarify, I don't have *any* playlists in Media Center.  Boring as it sounds, I use it pretty much to play an album at a time, in order. I have no idea why Media Center automatically assigns a sequence number that doesn't match the track number.

[sarkonovich]

Hello!

Well, I'm glad it's working....somewhat. I definitely consider HouseBand a work in progress. I have rewritten almost the entire thing from and I hope to be finishing it in the next couple months. That might help with some of these issues.

The only thing that you listed below that surprises me is "Mighty Hi" -- I would have thought that would work since in selecting an item from a list the program translates everything into phonemes, and there shouldn't be a difference between "Mighty Hi" and Mighty High."

What band names/album names get recognized is a lot in Amazon's hands. Honestly, I'm shocked that it picked up "gov't"! 

Here's a couple tips, going back to your first email.

The program can do two different kinds of search, a straight string search and a label search. If you just say, "Play..." followed by a string, then this is equivalent to just typing the words in the JRiver search bar. So if you say something like "Play Freddie Hubbard Caravan" it will play all the results that would show up if you type "Freddie Hubbard Caravan" in the search bar.

Label searches occur when you use the words "Album," "Song," and "by" So, "Play the album Caravan by Freddie Hubbard" is equivalent to entering the following in the search bar:

[album]=Caravan [Album Artist (auto)]=Freddie Hubbard

And so on. Sometime you get better results one way rather than the other.

For search that just aren't working for whatever reason, just creating a playlist is a pretty good workaround. Then you can just say, "Play my Caravan playlist"

I think I have the same feelings about HouseBand as you: it's really cool, but it can be frustrating and a bit unpredictable. I'll continue to work on it, and will let this space know when a new version comes out.

[steveklein]

I have a library with tens of thousands of songs on my PC (in a home office) that I use most frequently. However, at any given time, I typically only have about 2000 songs rated 3 stars or higher. We can call that subset "Current Favorites".

I also have an Amazon Echo and have been dabbling with the House Band skill (very cool by the way).

The problem is that the vast majority of times I want to play a song, I'll give the Amazon Echo the command and House Band comes up with more than one result and I have to then go about using another voice command to select the actual song I want to play. This comes from having "duplicates". If I want to play Billy Joel - Piano man, I would tell it to play Piano Man by Billy Joel and instead of just playing, it tells me I have multiple copies of it... on a greatest hits album, on the original album it was on, maybe on a movie soundtrack, and hell, maybe an electronic mashup that includes it. You get the idea.

However, when I "rate" songs, I only rate one copy of it.

So if I were to somehow have House Band just play my songs rated 3 stars and above, (or, more generally, just search on a certain playlist) I suspect this would just return one result and start playing immediately. Much more efficient.

Is there a way to do this? I think this would be super useful and eliminate a lot of frustration.

As a test I backed up my full library and created a new library with just my "Current Favorites" and as expected... it works a lot more fluidly.

Love your product though and would be happy to give a nominal donation for developing it.

[sarkonovich]

Hello!

I see the issue. House Band, obviously, was intentionally designed to allow you access particular versions of songs/albums, etc.

Currently, items are not searchable by rating. However, there is a pretty easy way to accomplish what you want. Just create a custom tag (or use a default tag that you tend to leave blank, e.g., "Access Rating.") Put some value in their like "default." Then just say "Play default piano man."

It would also be easy to automate the tagging so that every album with a 3 star or higher rating get the "default" value added to the chosen tag.

Best,
Steve

[bluescale]

Hi Steve,

I'm still playing around with House Band, and still loving it.  I'm a little confused by why some of my albums get pulled in with a sequence number that is different than the track number.  For example, if I'm in any of the audio views, and I put this in the search field:

[album]=Mo' Voodoo [Album Artist (auto)]=Gov't Mule

It plays the songs in the right order.  However, if I tell Alexa:

Alexa, tell House Band to play Mo' Voodoo

It finds the album without issue, but the songs play slightly out of order.  The order is based on sequence number, not track number, and I have no idea why or how the sequence number is set.  Even if I manually resort the Player view by to Track #, it continues playing based on Sequence number.  Only if I resort based on track order, right click on Player, and then select Update Order, does it play in the right order.

I can't for the life of me figure out why Media Center is assigning a sequence order to the songs.  This happens to about half of my albums.  Is anyone else experiencing this issue, or does it have something to do witch my particular setup?

[sarkonovich]

Hello!

I don't know the reasons behind Media Center's sort behavior. But you're getting different results because "Tell House Band to Play Mo' Voodoo" is equal to just entering "mo' vodoo" in the search bar. To enter the equivalent of

[album]=Mo' Voodoo [Album Artist (auto)]=Gov't Mule

You'd have to say, "Play the album Mo' Voodoo by Gov't Mule."

Steve

[bluescale]

Sorry, that was a typo on my part.  I am telling it to play the album.  Are you seeing the same behavior when you tell it to play an album?

Below is an example of what I get when I say, "Alexa, tell House Band to play the album Nevermind by Nirvana."

I forgot to expand the columns before taking the screen cap, so the first column is the sequence number.  The 8th column (after Genre) is Track number.

[bluescale]

To reiterate, if I click on Audio-> Albums, and manually run a query in the format you mentioned earlier in this thread:

[album]=Mo' Voodoo [Album Artist (auto)]=Gov't Mule

or

[album]=Nevermind [Album Artist (auto)]=Nirvana

and then right click on the resulting album, and select "Add to Playing Now" the songs are in the correct order. 

I apologize if my questions are getting annoying.  I'm simply trying to determine the difference between what House Band is doing vs. what happens when I try to accomplish the same thing manually.  I want to ask in the main forum about this behavior, but since I cannot reproduce it in any way other than House Band, I don't think I'll get much help.

[sarkonovich]

Hello!

You are right. The songs do get added to playing now out of order with the commands you describe.
I will ask in the main forum why this is. House Band just sends a command "play" command to JRiver with the search parameters. It doesn't do any sorting itself, but perhaps there is a parameter I'm missing with the command.

Thanks for pointing this out!

Steve

[azathot]

This is fantastic.   Any plans on using the new audio streaming for skills:
https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx1DSINBM8LUNHY/New-Alexa-Skills-Kit-ASK-Feature-Audio-Streaming-in-Alexa-Skills

With the new DOT announced today, this could be absolutely killer with direct streaming.

[sarkonovich]

That was the first thing I thought of. But the audio files need to be hosted on a secure server, so can't be streamed directly from JRiver library. That's as far as got in thinking about it before I decided to stop thinking about it.

[azathot]

That was the first thing I thought of. But the audio files need to be hosted on a secure server, so can't be streamed directly from JRiver library. That's as far as got in thinking about it before I decided to stop thinking about it.

Any chance you want to share that repo on github?  I would like to take a stab at integrating https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WebEngine_SDK
It seems like it's possible, and even more relevant given Amazon's announcement today.

[wig]

Hey sarkonovich,

Thanks so much for doing this. I'm really enjoying learning how to control MC with my Echo. I'll be happy to give you feedback as I try out commands.

2 Items:

• I found the Command "Tell to House Band to Play" will start playback from a stopped state.
• Will Smartlist support be added at any point?

[Kid Twist]

This looks wonderful and I'm intrigued, but I'm kind of a novice at things like this so I hope someone won't mind answering a couple of very basic questions.

1) Will House Band work with the new low-priced Echo Dot that's coming out in October?
2) If so, how would I connect the Echo to my system so it controls MC? I have JRiver running on a PC that's connected to a home theater system in
my main room and I've got a small networked wifi speaker in an adjacent room.

Thanks!

[zxsix]

This looks wonderful and I'm in intrigued, but I'm kind of a novice at things like this so I hope someone won't mind answering a couple of very basic questions.

1) Will House Band work with the new low-priced Echo Dot that's coming out in October?
2) If so, how would I connect the Echo to my system so it controls MC? I have JRiver running on a PC that's connected to a home theater system in
my main room and I've got a small networked wifi speaker in an adjacent room.

Thanks!

Dot should work fine.  It's the same as an echo but without the large speaker.  The operating system runs in the cloud so it will be the same as echo.
It connects to your home network via wifi to get to the internet.  You need to set up MC to allow client connections (Tools>options>media network).
The access key in this screen is provided during the setup of alexa on the echo/dot.
If you don't already use this part for remote access to your MC library, you may need to create a rule in your firewall so that alexa in the cloud can get to your MC library from the internet.

[Kid Twist]

Great. Perfect. I'm already using the access key for remote control apps, so I guess this is essentially the same. Thanks very much.

[chriswatson]

Houseband is a lot of fun and I enjoy using it, however I am finding with my multi-zone setup it seems to "forget" the zones every day or two. Rebooting doesn't cause then to re-appear, I have to remove the houseband skill and then re-install it.

I can see the correct Zones on my Music Center PC. They work correctly, but Houseband can't see the Zone information until I re-install

I do have a password set for access, I am on version 21.0.83. I am using Whitebear to play to my Squeezebox devices.

Any ideas? Is there some easier way to trigger a re-load of the zones?


Thanks!

Chris

[Kid Twist]

So while I wait for the Echo Dot to come out, I decided to test House Band by loading a third-party Alexa app onto my Android phone. Brilliant work! But 80 percent of my collection is classical music and as you've noted, HB is not as good with classical. Looking forward, though, to any improvements you make. Thanks!

[sarkonovich]

@chriswatson

I'm not sure what you mean by "forgetting" the zones. You mean you ask for zone information, and you don't get what you expect?

Every time you ask for zones, HouseBand queries the server the current zone information. The information isn't stored anywhere.

Do all other functions works properly?

[chriswatson]

@sarkonovich

The behavior I see is as follows:

Alex Load HouseBand
"What should I play?"
What are my zones?
"I'm sorry I'm unable to access zone information"

It works fine for a day or so and then stops being able to see the zones and won't play anything. And this is even if I previously had a zone "Living Room" set.

I can issue commands like "Play Chill" and it doesn't complain, it seems to be "working" but I don't hear any sound or see anything change on the MC server.

Thanks for responding so quickly. 

[danvm]

Having LOADS of fun toying with this! Also came across an interesting blog post about it: http://digitalmediaphile.com/index.php/tag/house-band-alexa-skill/

Thank you!

[chriswatson]

@sarkonovich

Hi, I've done a little bit more debugging. i've discovered if I turn off passwords on MC i can get my zones. I can then set the zone and play. Sometimes it seems to let me turn back on passwords for a while, sometimes not.

Chris

[sarkonovich]

Chris,

Yes, that was going to be my suggestion, that you try it with the password protection off. Also, I have to assume this is not just an issue with zones. If you can't get zones, then you can't, e.g., ask "What do I have by Led Zeppelin" and get an answer. (Maybe you can start/stop/change volume....can't remember exactly how JRiver works.)

HouseBand shouldn't let you get through Amazon's "account linking" unless your server is *not* password protected. When you link your account, JRiver sends an authorization token to HouseBand, which is stored. That token is then sent along with all the commands, and allows access to password protected servers.

My guess is that the authorization token is changing between uses, and so you have to re-link your account to get a new one. In a way, that's expected behavior: those tokens do expire after awhile if you don't use JRiver (but I thought it was more like a matter of months, not days.)

Is there some way you can keep JRiver open? That should solve the problem.

[chriswatson]

@sarkonovich

The token changing makes sense. I actually do keep JRiver up all the time. I have a little laptop in a closet that run Media Center 24/7.

I have a pretty solid network here (I'm a professional IT guy) but I do have a lot of things going on on my Media Center Server. Perhaps it's the interaction of those things that in some way that is causing the token to refresh? Or perhaps it's that I'm still on MC 21?

This is a partial solution that works for now. I appreciate your help.

Chris

[sarkonovich]

If you go to "Services and Plug-Ins" => "Media Network" you should be able to see HouseBand activity, including the commands that are sent to the server. The authorization token should be obvious...you could check if the token changes just to confirm that this is what's going wrong.

Steve

[Fangio]

I got a message that HouseBand could not be enabled due to 'geographical restrictions'. I am in the UK.

[Aircub]

I am also in the UK and House Band is not in the list of Skills.

I have asked the echo team why it is not available and am awaiting an email response.

Is it possible to have it activated for the UK by the developer or is it just an Amazon issue?

Perhaps other UK users can put pressure on Amazon as it shouldn't be geograhical as jriver is not.

Thanks.

[sarkonovich]

The various "skills" stores are location specific (right now, there's US, UK, and Germany.) Developers have to certify their skills for each locale separately.

Unfortunately, the way House Band is currently written, it cannot be certified for any non-US zone given Amazon's rules.

I am going to try to get it certified for the UK, but that might be a couple months away. It's involves some non-trivial changes to the code.

Sorry about that.

[WeeHappyPixie]

I am going to try to get it certified for the UK, but that might be a couple months away. It's involves some non-trivial changes to the code.

Thanks Steve. I am so looking forward to this.

John

[Aircub]

I am going to try to get it certified for the UK, but that might be a couple months away. It's involves some non-trivial changes to the code.

Sorry about that.

Yes, thanks Steve for any work you have to do to get UK certification.
Looking forward to being able to use HouseBand in the UK!

[Skeet]

As others have said - disappointing that this is not available in the UK. Really hoping this is enabled soon.
Thanks for your efforts in making this happen.

[Fangio]

Very much looking forward to seeing this working. Thanks for all the hard work.

[neilgower]

I am using the Alexa skill to send music form JRiver to my various Fidelio Philips DNLA players, the problem I have is that the volume steps are to large, volume 1 (10% I think) is okay, but anything more and its just too loud.

Whilst I know its a problem with various renders e.g. 20% on the Philips is very loud, 20% on my Pioneer and you cannot really hear it, could the skill allow you to use percentages rather than just 1 to 10

This skill is amazing, its the only skill around that lets Alexa control UPNP from my NAS to my renderers thanks so much for this...

[Kid Twist]

Just wanted to return here to say thank you. My Echo Dot arrived last week and I'm loving House Band. Thank you for making it and I hope you find the time to continue developing it.

[infomas]

So far this is terrific. I have a couple of issues, not sure if it is me or AMZ or what. It doesn't seem to like "stop", but "pause" works. Also, and I haven't come up with a pattern to explain it yet, but often, it brings up the correct album when I ask for it, but it doesn't actually start playing it. I then say play and it seems to work. I'll keep testing.

I have another question that probably I already know the answer to... I use JRiver for my multi-channel audio files. But, with Alexa, I want to bring over the rest of my collection so that I can get it to play on my stereo. The problem is that most of my multi-channel collection has stereo versions in my main music collection. I can bring them over and use different views in JRiver, but I have no idea how I can distinguish them with Alexa. Any ideas, or is this just not going to work?

Thanks for all your work on this. It's a killer app, way ahead of everyone else.

Bruce

[sarkonovich]

@neilglower:  I will look into that. Have you tried to just say "raise volume" or "louder"? It's been awhile since I've looked at the code -- I'm guessing this also works in 10% increments -- but maybe not. In any event, I'll see if there is a quick fix for this.

@Kid Twist: Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you like it!

@infomas: You're right, "stop" doesn't work, but "stop music" does. This is because "stop" is a reserved word for controlling Alexa, and Amazon doesn't -- or didn't -- let developers use it to control their individual skills.

I think the only way to distinguish between stereo and multichannel is if the albums are tagged that way. If so, you should be able to say something like, "Play dark side of the moon stereo". That should work. However, I don't think an actual album search ("Play the album dark side of the moon stereo") would work, since then it would be looking for an album with the word "stereo" in the title.

[arsim1]

Hi,

I can link the house band skill and it says everything is ok.
I can also access my server remotely, as I use JRemote all the time.
When I say "launch house band", all I get from the echo is a short tone and no other response.
Anyone have any idea what this means?

Thanks.

[sarkonovich]

Do you have multiple Alexa accounts/profiles?

[arsim1]

Do you have multiple Alexa accounts/profiles?

No, only the one account.
Could it be my location? I'm in Australia and the echo is not officially available here.

[arsim1]

No, only the one account.
Could it be my location? I'm in Australia and the echo is not officially available here.

Worked it out, I have to select "United States" under language.
If I select United Kingdom, House Band will not launch.
Shame, because it cant understand me very well

[brantome]

Hi, I'm in the UK and much as I toyed with JMC a long time ago, I currently use minimserver on my Synology NAS to play my local music thru my Linn SneakyDS. Do you have any intention to expand Houseband to support other UPNP servers, or indeed work with other developers to integrate HouseBand into their product?

If not, I may have to consider JMC again, although I doubt my Synology DS213j would support it

[sarkonovich]

@brantome

There are no plans right now to develop HouseBand for anything other than JMC. (Though I suppose Logitech Squeezebox would be next on the list.)

Immediate plans...that keep getting pushed back...is to develop HouseBand to handle video and classical music, and rewrite it so it can be available in skills stores outside the US.

Thanks for your interest and encouragement!

Steve

[renerene]

Hello,

I ca not find the skill in the UK Amazon store. Probably because of my location (NL).
Is it only available in US store?