INTERACT FORUM
Windows => Third Party Plug-ins, Programs, and Skins => Topic started by: sarkonovich on January 19, 2016, 09:47:13 pm
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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
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I don't have Echo.
But i wanted to say nice work and good video demo.
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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" ?
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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
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So how do you get it to play your playlist?
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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
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Steve is there anything I will have to do?
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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
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@nobody40.
I can't send you an email until you empty your inbox -- you can only keep 4 messages in there!
Thanks,
Steve
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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[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. 8)
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We still have job openings in Minnesota.
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;D I'll take my chances with the critters in Oz as this is truly alarming!
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/51/f1/7c/51f17c035ce77ec1101bd52a0214a5f7.jpg)
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Those little mosquitoes aren't very common here.
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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 8)
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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. :D
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
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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
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Hi Steve,
I've got the Echo and set it up (PITA for non-us people, but thread here (http://www.echotalk.org/index.php/topic,228.0.html) 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
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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.
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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
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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
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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! :P
William
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I would prefer to write a review once you have worked out a few more bugs so I can give you lots of stars.
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Joel
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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It's probably my Antipodean accent then ;D
-
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
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:) 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"
-
Top 1000?
That's why I thought it was a playlist before....1000 is a long album! :)
-
It was a long decade!
-
Okay. Looks like she's thinking it's a playlist even though you're saying album. I need to adjust the interaction model....will do!
Steve
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House Band -- a JRiver Amazon Alexa app -- has been updated as of this morning. In addition to numerous little bug fixes, improvements include:
Revised Recognition Model.
Overall, recognition should be better. (I hope.)
Revised searches
Overall, searches should be a bit quicker, and more accurate.
More robust support for playlists.
Built-in Smartlists can be called up without going through the whole name, e.g.,
"Play the Last 100 Tracks playlist" will play 'Audio -- Recently Imported -- Last 100 Tracks'
Overall better handling of numbers, e.g., 2005 Top 100 Billboard USA, 80's hits, etc.
Better Feedback:
1. Spoken Feedback:
If a search fails, Alexa will tell you what she searched for. She'll also send a card to the Alexa app with the search string(s) used. This should help diagnose if there was a voice recognition failure, or a search failure.
2. In general, the feedback -- both spoken and written -- should be more informative.
3. Saying "Help" will send a 'quick reference' card to the Alexa App.
TO DO:
Classical Support. (Currently, there's no support for the "Composer" tags.)
Video Support. (Currently, videos will come up in general searches...but there's no way to do video only searches, etc.)
As always, looking for feedback, especially of the following form:
1. Bugs! "There was a problem with the requested skills response."
2. Failed searches. The search string delivered to the card doesn't turn up what it should (e.g., if you paste it into the Media Center search window.)
3. Poor Recognition. Alexa refuses to "hear" what you are saying.
Thanks!
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Thanks for these!
I am now back at my home (before at my daughters in Houston). I will try this when I my Echo which is back ordered right now arrives.
Joel
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Did some testing, Alexa is understanding my requests perfectly but not finding the Album.
This is the card:
Here are the search strings I used for your request:
[Album]=two thousand one top one hundred uk
[Album]=2001 top 100 uk
In MC the Album is "2001 Top 100 UK"
Another Example:
Here are the search strings I used for your request:
[Album]=two thousand fifteen top one hundred
[Album]=2000 15 top 100
In MC the Album is "2015 Top 100"
Could it be capitalisation?
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Thanks for the feedback.
What happens if you paste '[Album]=2001 top 100 uk' into media center? Do you get the results you expect?
Media center searches are not case dependent, so that's not the problem.
(Pasting the second search string won't work because of a formatting error -- '2000 15' -- that's fixed now.)
I went through and renamed a compilation album of mine these exact titles, and titles like them, and it always worked. So, I'm going to have to think about this. (Maybe there's something about the way you've tagged the albums, though this sounds unlikely...)
For these searches....of compilation albums...you should either get a listing of matches or a message saying to limit the search or say, "Play All." It depends on the number of different artists on the album. Since there's no way for me know know if multiple results are because there's a single compilation album, or if you have albums by different artists with the same title, each track (by a different artist) on a compilation album is treated as a separate album. This is the same as media center behavior, I believe.
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Uploading tens of thousands of mp3 files to Amazon -- much of my library is transferred from old 78s and will definitely not match their tracks! -- and wasting hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth and months of continual upload time just was not an option. Thus, I have been looking for a local DLNA-to-Echo integration solution for quite some time now and was happy (and surprised, at this point) to run across a mention of the 'House Band' Alexa skill.
I downloaded a demo version of your program, added my music library (all properly tagged by hand), and added the skill to my Echo. I'm happy to say, the solution seems to work rather painlessly, with some caveats.
1.) Echo Playback: Is it not possible to stream local audio to Alexa? Any way? I saw this addressed earlier in the thread... If I connect the Echo to the PC as a (dumb) Bluetooth speaker, I can still control the media center via voice, so it works out, but that's a strange work-around. I realize that JRiver MediaCenter is probably installed mostly as a centerpiece of a home entertainment PC connected to external audio, but I don't think my use-case -- casually listening to my own music on the Echo in the kitchen using voice control -- will be an edge-case either.
2.) Track Information: I get the wrong information back when I ask for info about the track.
"Alexa, ask House Band who this is" tells me,
"You are listening to PLAYING by [album name] from the album [track name]" instead of
"You are listening to [track name] by [artist] from the album [album name]."
Some questions work, some don't (which I expect since you're currently developing and debugging this.)
If I ask "Alexa, ask House Band the name of the song" I get the above 'playing' result, but if I ask "Alexa, ask House Band who this artist is" it just times out with the complaint that it can't reach the House Band skill (every time). Similarly, if the album field is blank, it complains it can't reach the media server too.
I'll have to fiddle with it a while before I decide whether it is worth the purchase price for your software; it looks very nice, but for my desired application I wouldn't be using 90% of the functionality. However, regarding the Echo integration, it's quite nice overall to see progress in this area and it seems to generally work well. I'll definitely revisit in the future.
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Hello there!
Thanks for the feedback! Just to be clear, House Band isn't an official JRiver product, so all fault goes to me, not them.
Echo Playback. Right now, the only way to get playback through the Echo is the way you've got it set up. It's true, the central use case for House Band is to get your music to play through your home stereo. But, more importantly, there is currently no way for 3rd party developers to play through the Echo (except via bluetooth.) Amazon simply doesn't allow it.
Track information. I several thoughts here. First, try the command, "What's playing?" or "What song is this?" This should get you the most consistent results.
(I'm guessing that "who this artist is" actually doing a search of your library, maybe trying to find all tracks that have 'is' in the information. If you have a very large library, this could cause it to timeout.)
Second, launch House Band first, and then ask "What's playing?" I've found that unless my speech is pretty deliberate, "ask house band what's playing" will frequently just trigger some built-in Echo functionality.
Finally, it would be very helpful to me if you could tell me if a) you always get that weird response ("you're listening to Playing by [album name]...") and what command you're using to start the song playing. For example, if you say,
"Play the song taking a chance on love by Benny Goodman" do you get the strange result?
Finally, I'd suggest saying "Help" after you've launched the skill and take a look at the 'quick reference' card that's sent to the Alexa app. It has lots of tips on how to search by song, artist, album, etc.
In any event, I'm glad it's working (mostly!) well for you!
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Thanks for the feedback.
What happens if you paste '[Album]=2001 top 100 uk' into media center? Do you get the results you expect?
Yup - "[Album]=2001 top 100 uk" in MC works correctly and FYI they individual tracks are tagged with Individual Artist but the Album Artist and Album Artist (Auto) is "(Multiple Artist)"
...but I'm having trouble testing again with Authentication On. Alexa is issuing commands but MC is not responding unless I turn Authentication Off. Do I need to set up the Skill again?
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Hello there!
Thanks for the feedback! Just to be clear, House Band isn't an official JRiver product, so all fault goes to me, not them.
Echo Playback. Right now, the only way to get playback through the Echo is the way you've got it set up. It's true, the central use case for House Band is to get your music to play through your home stereo. But, more importantly, there is currently no way for 3rd party developers to play through the Echo (except via bluetooth.) Amazon simply doesn't allow it.
Track information. I several thoughts here. First, try the command, "What's playing?" or "What song is this?" This should get you the most consistent results.
(I'm guessing that "who this artist is" actually doing a search of your library, maybe trying to find all tracks that have 'is' in the information. If you have a very large library, this could cause it to timeout.)
Second, launch House Band first, and then ask "What's playing?" I've found that unless my speech is pretty deliberate, "ask house band what's playing" will frequently just trigger some built-in Echo functionality.
Finally, it would be very helpful to me if you could tell me if a) you always get that weird response ("you're listening to Playing by [album name]...") and what command you're using to start the song playing. For example, if you say,
"Play the song taking a chance on love by Benny Goodman" do you get the strange result?
Finally, I'd suggest saying "Help" after you've launched the skill and take a look at the 'quick reference' card that's sent to the Alexa app. It has lots of tips on how to search by song, artist, album, etc.
In any event, I'm glad it's working (mostly!) well for you!
Oh, sure, and thanks your efforts on the plugin then! Here's some I just tried
Me: "Alexa, ask House Band to play the album City of Refuge"
Echo: "Playing songs from Abigail Washburn City of Refuge"
Me: "Alexa, ask House Band what's playing"
Echo: "You're listening to PLAYING by City of Refuge from the album Prelude"
(The track should be 'Prelude' and the album 'City of Refuge'. In the Playing Now program display, the tags show in the correct places.)
-------------
Alexa: "Ask House Band to play No Rain by Blind Melon"
Echo: "Playing all tracks matching No Rain By Blind Melon" (Only one match)
Alexa: "Ask House Band what song is this"
Echo: "You are listening to PLAYING by Blind Melon from the album No Rain"
(Artist - Blind Melon, Album - Blind Melon, Track - No Rain)
It seems to do it for every song no matter how I ask it. I'm using JRiver MediacCenter 21.0.50 (latest) on Windows 10. All files were tagged with Mp3tag with ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 tags and embedded album images, where applicable.
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Yup - "[Album]=2001 top 100 uk" in MC works correctly and FYI they individual tracks are tagged with Individual Artist but the Album Artist and Album Artist (Auto) is "(Multiple Artist)"
...but I'm having trouble testing again with Authentication On. Alexa is issuing commands but MC is not responding unless I turn Authentication Off. Do I need to set up the Skill again?
So, the easy one first. You might need to disable and reenable the skill. House Band grabs the Media Server authentication token on linking, but if that changes -- which I think it does? after a couple of days if you close the program -- you need to re-link. That was the best I could do. Amazon wouldn't let me gather Media Center user names/passwords.
The hard one: ugh. Nothing comes to mind immediately. I'll try recreate how you have things tagged on my end and see if I can reproduce it.
Thanks for all your help.
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Oh, sure, and thanks your efforts on the plugin then! Here's some I just tried
Me: "Alexa, ask House Band to play the album City of Refuge"
Echo: "Playing songs from Abigail Washburn City of Refuge"
Me: "Alexa, ask House Band what's playing"
Echo: "You're listening to PLAYING by City of Refuge from the album Prelude"
(The track should be 'Prelude' and the album 'City of Refuge'. In the Playing Now program display, the tags show in the correct places.)
-------------
Alexa: "Ask House Band to play No Rain by Blind Melon"
Echo: "Playing all tracks matching No Rain By Blind Melon" (Only one match)
Alexa: "Ask House Band what song is this"
Echo: "You are listening to PLAYING by Blind Melon from the album No Rain"
(Artist - Blind Melon, Album - Blind Melon, Track - No Rain)
It seems to do it for every song no matter how I ask it. I'm using JRiver MediacCenter 21.0.50 (latest) on Windows 10. All files were tagged with Mp3tag with ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 tags and embedded album images, where applicable.
Venner,
Thanks for helping me out. I'll look into it. Maybe it's a windows thing....but honestly at this point I have no idea!!!
EDIT: We got this one figured out. Thanks for your help!
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Did some more testing, this Time on a Collection of "Radio Station"s. If I have just "Album" tagged with "Radio Station" then Alex will not find it but as soon as I add "Radio Station" to Album Artist / Album Artist (Auto) then Alexa will find it. The search in Alexa was heard as [Album]=radio station
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...so given my issues with (Multiple Artists) it seems to be something to do with when Album is different to Album Artist / Album Artist (Auto)
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Thanks. That gives me something to look at!
Steve
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Back up with a new echo. I really would like play doctor to be an option.
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It is, in a limited way. You can say, "Create a playlist based on....." or "Make a ..... playlist." For example, "Make a playlist based on Neil Young."
You can't modify the PlayDoctor parameters by voice, though.
But is that what you had in mind?
Steve
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Steve there is a MCWS call for PlayDoctor if that helps:
Added MCWS/v1/Playback/PlayDoctor to allow a simple entry to starting Play Doctor playback using a seed.
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Yes, that functionality already exists in House Band, using that MCWS call.
"Make/Create a playlist based on [seed]" or "Create/Make a [seed] playlist]" or "Create/Make a playdoctor playlist based on [seed]"
....anything in that arena should work.
Steve
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I just purchased an Echo and I'll be glad to report back any issues once I get it.
I see that built-in smartlists are supported (I think) but can we play from custom smartlists?
Thanks for all of your work on this.....
--Jon
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Yes, they are.
If you look in the Alexa App, under the skill, the description provides a reference of supported commands. For example,
"Play my top 10 Springsteen playlist" or
"Play the playlist running tunes"
etc.,
should work.
EDIT: Smartlists (and dumblists) both work.
-
I am looking to say play "song" with play doctor or say play album with play doctor.
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Well, one thing I've learned in working on this is that I haven't scratched the surface of what JRiver can do.
What is the difference, I wonder, between entering, for example,
"kind of blue"
in the Play Doctor search, and
[Album]=kind of blue
??
I just tried both and couldn't really distinguish a difference in the lists that were generated. In fact, I think it defaulted to the album. I'd be interested to know if there is a difference.
In any event, you can currently use the name of any album, artist, track to create a PlayDoctor playlist.
And, I don't think it would be any difficulty in implementing search of the sort:
"Create a playlist/playdoctor playlist based on the [album|song|artist]....."
where that would create strings like, [Artist]=Miles Davis
I'll look into it and report back here.
Thanks for the input!
Steve
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When you name a song and then play it with play doctor JRiver generates a list of 100 tracks with what it thinks are similar or related music,
I have over 1500 albums so play doctor can provide rather interesting playlists. I use it a lot.
-
House band could not identify Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett. IT thought I asked for colon cancer.
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Kind of blue is an album. "So what" is the lead track from that a ablum. Several artists play this.
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I think KOLN is hard to understand for the echo.
-
jmshnur,
Thanks for the feedback.
Just to be perfectly clear, House Band does allow you to generate PlayDoctor playlists right now. You just say,
"Create a playlist based on [song | album | artist]" (e.g., "Create a playlist based on So What" or Make a playlist based on "Kind of Blue")
and you'll get a list of 100 songs based on that seed. The command is equivalent to just typing "so what" or "kind of blue" into the playdoctor search box.
There is no command currently equivalent to typing in:
[Name]=So what
or
[Album]=Kind of blue
But having tried both "Kind of Blue" and "[Album]=Kind of Blue", I couldn't really discern any difference in the kind of playlist that PlayDoctor generated.
Anyway, just try it. I bet it does what you're looking for?
About Koln. Alexa is not so good with foreign words -- and as the result "colon cancer" shows, she really doesn't parse things word by word but looks for context, too. (I bet if you said, "Koln Germany" she'd get it right.)
There's two things you can do that really can help. First, make sure you've done the voice training, available in the Alexa App. Second, if you go to your history in your app, you can see what you've said, and give feedback on whether she heard you correctly. Sometimes repeating the phrase a few time, answering "no" every time she misunderstands, will eventually get her to give up and try something different. If she ever does hear "Koln", then answer "yes" -- that usually takes care of it.
I will add the exact phrase "Koln Concerts" in the next update of the recognition model, which should help. (Though it might make it harder to play any album you have called "colon cancer." :) )
EDIT: I just tried, many times, to play the Koln Concert on Amazon Prime...and the Echo just couldn't get it, though it's in my library. She just can't understand the word "KOLN". I'm afraid this one is out of my control, I think.
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This is very helpful. I think I can get what I need from play a list based upon..
To bad about KOLN I started a card on that with the Echo people as well.
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Ah good. I was going to suggest that. I was surprised when I couldn't get Simon says to say "Koln Germany" (I got "cold in germany") or just a regular (non House Band) "Alexa, play The Koln concerts"
I was going to report this as well.
Steve
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What happens if you pronounce it like "Kiln" or even "Cologne"?
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Hey!
"Play the album the Cologne Concert"
is recognized perfectly.
So, in the short term, you just need to rename (well, translate?) the album title.
I had to do this with Sigur Ros albums. Even if I could pronounce "Ágætis byrjun", there's no way Alexa would recognize it. So, for now, it's renamed in translation,
"A Good Beginning."
Thanks for the suggestion!
Steve
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Yes the phrase u suggested worked. But you need to be quite precise in the wording.
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It might help if you do so as well . This would insure that they know there is interest .
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Got my Echo today and installed the House Band skill and so far..........flawless! Thank you so much for all of your efforts on this. Fantastic!
--Jon
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That's great! I plan to keep working on it, so if issues crop up, post them here and I'll do what I can.
Steve
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Basic Video Search:
House Band now supports basic video queries. For example, you can say:
"Play the video Citizen Kane"
"Play the movie Annie Hall"
etc.
Essentially, this will send the relevant MCWS string with the parameters: [Media Type]=Video [Name]=Citizen Kane
At this point the video support is pretty rudimentary:
1. It does not search to see if you have the video requested, or if you have multiple versions. It just tries to play it.
2. No real support for TV Shows (season, episode, etc).
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Thanks for all your work on this Steve. Works pretty well!
-
Started having problems last night with playing any playlists. Whenever I say "Alexa, Tell Houseband to play playlist [playlist name]" she responds with "I couldn't find any playlists matching [playlist name]". I have tried variations on the phrases but nothing is working.
Also, If I say "Alexa, Tell Houseband to play all music by [Artist Name]" She responds with "Playing all videos by [Artist Name].
--Jon
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Jon,
Thanks for the feedback. Here's what's going on.
"Tell House Band to play playlist [playlist name]"
The response you're getting isn't from House Band, it's from Amazon. The solution is to first launch house band, and then ask for the playlist.
Very unfortunately, it's hard to get House Band to play music with what is called a "one-shot" invocation, e.g., "Tell House Band to play", "Ask House Band to play." I (and others) have complained many times to Amazon about this. But Alexa hears "play", and decides you want to hear Prime Music, even though you said "House Band." Amazon's recognition model heavily skews toward it's in built functionality. (It also doesn't surprise me if this just started happening. They are constantly tweaking their recognition model.) They've promised they are going to fix this, and said that "big changes" are coming regarding how 3rd party skills are invoked. But nothing definite.
"Play all music by [Artist Name]"
House Band doesn't currently support that command. But a) it should and b) it certainly shouldn't give you that response!
I'll see if I can implement that command without having to resubmit the app to Amazon. If I can, I'll fix this (and the response) today.
For now, the way to do what you want is this. Launch the skill and then say,
"Play [Artist Name]"
Alternatively, you can say,
"Play songs by/albums by [Artist Name]"
If you have more than one album by the artist, Alexa will list them. You can interrupt at any time and say,
"Play All"
I'll report back here when "Play all music by [Artist Name]" is working.
[EDIT: This command is now supported. See response below]
Thanks again for the feedback!
Steve
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Jon,
Okay, the command,
"Play all music by [Artist Name]"
now does just that. As does:
"Play all music." -- will play everything in your library.
(Erroneous response "playing all videos..." is now fixed, too)
Let me know if it works for you, and thanks for the help!
Steve
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OK Great. I just tried the "Play all music by" feature you added and it's working great. I (accidentally) tried "Tell Houseband to turn up the volume" without the "Launch Houseband" command first and that worked. I tried it again several times and that seems to work without missing. So, to be clear, I should always say "Alexa, Launch Houseband" before issuing any commands. Is that correct?
One last thing....Is there a command for shuffling playlists?
Thanks for getting me straight. That's no easy feat! ::)
--Jon
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Jon,
You *should* be able to do everything in one shot: "Tell/Ask House band to...." I've just found it hit and miss, especially with volume commands, or "play" / "pause" commands. About 1/3 of the time, it doesn't trigger the skill and instead turns up the volume on the Echo. It works better if I add deliberate pauses, like, "Tell...house band...to play"
So, I just usually launch the skill and go from there. But, again, it should work both ways. But how *well* it works is completely up to Amazon. I have no control over that.
There's no way to shuffle playlists. But I'll add that to the to-do list. Over the next couple months I hope to add more robust video support and classical music searches. (No good way to search by composer now.)
Steve
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Got it.....Thanks again!
--Jon
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I can't get House band to change Zones. It lists the Zones correctly, but will not change to another one. House Band will respond with "I can't find a Zone Patio" even though House band responds with Patio as one of the available zones when queried. I have tried numerous times, and have renamed a couple of Zones with very easy names to recognize and still no joy.
Any thoughts??
Ken
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Hmm....It sounds like you doing everything right. Just to double check, what is the command that you are using to change zones? Try:
"Change the zone to patio"
(Though if you are getting the error message, you're clearly giving Alexa some command she likes....)
Also, does House Band report the correct current zone when asked:
"What is the current zone?"
And one more thought: Is the server House Band is linked to the playing from it's own library, so that the zones are "Patio" and not something like "There: Patio"?
EDIT: House Band now sends a card to the Alexa app when it cannot find the requested zone. The card contains the name of the requested zone along with a list of available zones.
If the requested zone appears on that list (and appears in both places identically -- punctuation, spelling, etc) and you still get the message about not being able to find the requested zone, well, I'll have to think about that. I'm guessing/hoping that there will be some discrepancy between the requested and listed zones, though.
Steve
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Houseband is linked with my Jukebox PC. It is a client of my Main PC library.
Houseband reports MainPc as my current zone. IT is listed on my Jukebox PC as There:Main Pc Zone
When I request to play a song it plays to my Main PC.
When I ask "What Zones do I have?"
Jukebox:Patio is listed among the others
When I say "Change the Zone to Jukebox Patio"
Response is "I can not find a Zone called Jukebox Patio"
Houseband sends a card with this information spelled correctly and the Zone Jukebox: Patio listed among the others.
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So, that's the answer. It's looking for a zone called Jukebox Patio and your is named Jukebox: Patio (with a colon.)
I'll push a fix to this in the next few days (ignoring colons), since JRiver adds that colon with Zone names of client libraries.
For now the easiest thing is just to rename the zone to JukeBox Patio (without the colon.)
I put a lot of work into creatively getting music search to work with lots of variations of symbols and digits (none of which Alexa recognizes), but for now the zone control just looks to see if there's a zone named as you said it.
Alexa only hears words, so symbols, uncommon abbreviations, odd spellings (e.g., PCZone) she's not going to pass along correctly.
Really, the whole challenge of the program is that people have always tagged their music for visual interfaces, not spoken ones. For a visual interface, it doesn't matter if you called a playlist "TopHits!!!-I-luv-the-most"...but it's hard to get at that with voice. In the end, there will be some cases -- though not yours -- where things will just need to be renamed to be voice accessible.
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My Zone is called Patio.
The PC name is Jukebox.
JRiver names it JukeBox: Patio
I do not use : in any Zone name.
Ken
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Ken,
I understand, I hope. But I might be missing something.
I think -- I could be wrong -- that you can rename the zone on your client PC even though JRiver assigns the name "Jukebox: Patio." I think you can rename it to whatever you want.
I'll fix the colon thing in the program over the weekend, though. But I'd be curious if rename the zone on your client works.
Steve
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My Zone is called Patio.
The Zone is named Patio
When the app queries the Zones it comes back from JRiver as Jukebox: Patio
The Clients PCs name is being put in front of the Zone name by JRiver.
I am not naming the Zone Jukebox: Patio.
I can post some screen shots if needed, but to the Server the Zones will always be referred to by the Client PC Name: Zone Name rule.
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Okay...thanks. I'll need to setup a client/server configuration set up to test on.
I assumed that if you renamed "Jukebox: Patio" to "Patio" -- and that's the way it was displaying in Media Center - then "Patio" is what the MCWS query of available zones would return. But it sounds like that's not what happens in this case.
I'll look into this more and report back here.
Thanks for your patience.
Steve
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Thanks for your work on this. I think Alexa is going to be around for a while...
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So, I think I replicated your set up, but cannot replicate your problem.
Media center running on two computers, A and B.
Zones on computer A: Player and Living Room
House Band linked to Media center on B.
B is playing from A's library
Zones on B: Player, There, There: Living Room.
I rename "There: Living Room" on B to "Living Room"
I ask House Band, "What are my zones?" I get: "Player, There, Living Room."
House band can successfully switch the zone on B to Living Room.
Is this a different set up from yours?
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So, I think I replicated your set up, but cannot replicate your problem.
Media center running on two computers, A and B.
Zones on computer A: Player and Living Room
House Band linked to Media center on B.
B is playing from A's library
Zones on B: Player, There, There: Living Room.
I rename "There: Living Room" on B to "Living Room"
I ask House Band, "What are my zones?" I get: "Player, There, Living Room."
House band can successfully switch the zone on B to Living Room.
Is this a different set up from yours?
You're looking at server zones from a client, not a client zone from the server which is what kensn's describing. Server zones show up as "There: zone name" by default, but can be renamed. The reverse is not true: server to client control enumerates client zones as HOSTNAME : ZONENAME (I think so that it's consistent with non-MC DLNA zones). No edits to the zonename will eliminate either the colon or the hostname in the server to client control scenario (at least no way that I can discover).
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Okay...the light is gradually dawning. Maybe. Thank you.
So -- sorry for being dense -- how do I set this up with multiple instances of MC. I seem to be able to change the zone names on both A and B.
Steve
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Okay...the light is gradually dawning. Maybe. Thank you.
So -- sorry for being dense -- how do I set this up with multiple instances of MC. I seem to be able to change the zone names on both A and B.
Steve
You can change zone names on the client, but changing the zone name won't change the whole string on the server (i.e. it won't change the "HOSTNAME :" portion of the enumeration on the server, just the zone name part), and changes to the names on the server don't stick.
On the server instance can you see the clients zones? If not, make sure that the following options are checked
1) On the client Options-->Media Network-->DLNA renderer should be checked.
2) On the server Options --> Media Network --> DLNA controller should be checked.
I know it may seem trivial in a 2PC setup that there's such a distinction in the nomenclature, but it becomes rapidly more meaningful when you have multiple clients because this is the mechanism by which the clients can be controlled from the server and from each other.
I've attached a picture of how remote zones on clients look from the server:
In the picture "Player" is the only local zone. The zones below that are actually named what you see to the right of the colon. If you attempt to rename them on the server it will appear to work, but will revert eventually because they're generated from the way the client identifies itself (at least that's what happens in my own testing).
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And I thought I was making it easy linking it to the client... ::)
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I've pushed a change to the code that, I think, should fix this issue.
I'll admit in front of God and everyone that I did it without setting up a client with zones to test it on. But I did name one of my zones "Jukebox: Patio" and I can now change the zone to that. (And Jukebox-Patio, Jukebox/patio, etc., should work).
Let me know if that works. If not, I guess I'll have to be responsible and set up something to test properly. :)
Steve
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Great work. House band will now switch Zones for me. I have tried the skill connected to the server and connected to the client and can switch Zones both ways.
Connected to the Server or the Client gets the following results:
Me "Alexa open Houseband"
Alexa "What should I play?"
Me "What is my current Zone?
Alexa "The current Zone is Main PC Zone"
Me "Change the zone to Jukebox Patio"
Alexa " I've changed the Zone to Jukebox Patio, what should I play?"
at this point anything requested is still played to the Main Pc Zone. When asked what the current zone is, Houseband replies with the Zone requested but always plays to the Main Pc Zone.
Houseband also reverts back to the Main Pc Zone when restarted.
so to sum it up.... Great work so far, getting really close !! ;D
So Houseband needs to play to the Zone that is switched to.
It would be convenient to be able to specify a default Zone during setup.
Nice if it would remember the requested Zone on a restart.
Thanks again,
Ken
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neat test perhaps?
someone w/ multiple clients all connecting to ones own Main server, changes their authentication (just the pass is all that would be needed) to a test account for main server/all clients.
Then they let sarkonovich into main server via his laptop/pc/houseband (library access key), then he uses echo to play audio on client patio from his residence... if you can use echo to change clients locally, it should work to control off of home network as well?
I can be away from home, connect to main library in office then choose to play music in garage/client. ( i dont own an echo yet.. otherwise i'd run the test myself from a friends/family members lappy/pc etc)
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Well, that's something -- but not much. :'(
So, you're saying, basically, that switching zones never has any effect on where the music plays for you?
Looking at Media Center, can you see the zone change after the command is given?
On my simple setup, Media Center with a couple zones (one of which is another copy of Media Center on another computer, the other is a PSAudio DAC), this all works.
The default MCWS command I use to play music includes "Zone=-1&ZoneType=ID"....just play to whatever zone is currently selected, right? (i.e., those parameters aren't doing anything in the command...)
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@xtacbyme: that would work. (When Amazon was testing House Band I gave them access to my server. It's very weird to have someone else controlling your stereo!)
But I should be able to set this up myself. Don't I need:
Controller (Media Center on computer A) => Client (Media Center on computer B) => Zone (my DLNA dac)
I can't seem to get this set up in a way that causes problems though.
Steve
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So, you're saying, basically, that switching zones never has any effect on where the music plays for you?
That is correct.
Looking at Media Center, can you see the zone change after the command is given?
No. If I look at Playing Now - Overview in standard view I do not see the current Zone switch. I do see the requested items show up in Main PC zone.
I can test some MCWS commands later today...
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That is correct.
No. If I look at Playing Now - Overview in standard view I do not see the current Zone switch. I do see the requested items show up in Main PC zone.
I can test some MCWS commands later today...
Kensn are you using zoneswitch by chance?
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You should certainly see the zone change in the server House Band is linked to.
I would look at Services => MediaNetwork (selecting the server that House Band is linked to) and see if you can see the Set Zone command sent to that server from House Band. After saying, "Change zone to....." you should see in the activity log a command like:
<server address>/MCWS/v1/Playback/SetZone?Zone=yyyy&ZoneType=ID&Token=xxxxxxx
I guess the first step is figuring out whether the command is being sent (which I have to assume it is), or whether your server isn't responding to it (I'm guessing it's that.)
For each zone change, the value of Zone= should be different.
On my end, the bare enabling of ZoneSwitch (which I'd never heard of!), without any rules, doesn't affect anything. But that's a good suggestion.
Steve
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One more question, just to eliminate possibilities:
Are you sure that you're forwarding the port for the IP address of the server that House Band is linked to? That is, are you sure that House Band is controlling the server you think it is?
Steve
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So using MCWS calls from my Jukebox pc I can see the following:
http://"my server IP":52199/mcws/v1/Playback/Zones
<Response Status="OK">
<Item Name="NumberZones">4</Item>
<Item Name="CurrentZoneID">10012</Item>
<Item Name="CurrentZoneIndex">0</Item>
<Item Name="ZoneName0">Main PC Zone</Item>
<Item Name="ZoneID0">10012</Item>
<Item Name="ZoneGUID0">{blah blah blah}</Item><Item Name="ZoneDLNA0">0</Item><Item Name="ZoneName1">JukeBox: Living Room Multi Channel</Item>
<Item Name="ZoneID1">10045</Item>
<Item Name="ZoneGUID1">{blah blah blah}</Item><Item Name="ZoneDLNA1">1</Item>
<Item Name="ZoneName2">JukeBox: Living Room</Item>
<Item Name="ZoneID2">10046</Item>
ect...ect...ect...
When I ask Houseband to change the current Zone and then resend the MCWS call the response shows the Zone has changed to the correct Zone.
Then after Houseband to play something and resending the MCWS call I see the Zone was instantly changed back to the Main PC for playback.
Went and checked my Zone Switch settings on my Server and found a couple of goofy old settings. :o Deleted them
Everything works GREAT now!!! The last piece of the puzzle was the Zone Switch.
Thanks mwillems for the clue...
Great job Steve !!!
Ken
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Excellent!
Thanks mwillems for solving the mystery!
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Glad my guess panned out! It was the only thing I could think of on the JRiver end that would cause playback to keep going back to the same zone regardless of external switching. It's a neat feature that I use everyday, but can be frustrating if your rules are misconfigured and/or you've forgotten you enabled it ;D
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Hi,
Thanks for this wonderful skill.
Please help me out here:
I have 2 JRiver servers exposed to the internet, so one of them is working with the default port (52199) and the other one changed to another port (52198).
My home router forwards requests to the right server based on the port.
JRemote works nicely with this configuration - I guess it gets the port from the Access Key.
When I configured House Band using the Access Key of the non-default-port-server it still works with the default port, and not taking the configured port from the Access Key.
Am I right?
If so, any plans to fix it?
thanks,
Moshe
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Moshe,
Yes, that's right: currently, House Band only works with the default port.
I'll take a look into seeing what would have to be done to accommodate non-default ports, and report back.
Steve
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Moshe,
Okay...it should work with non-default port values now.
Thanks for catching that!
Steve
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That was quick! :)
Can I test it already, is it fixed in the published skill?
Moshe
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Yes, give it a shot. Let me know if it works!
Steve
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Indeed it works!
thanks
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Please help....
House band had been working with JRiver until we had a power outage. Now I can't link my Echo with JRiver. When I try to link MC in the Alexa app it says that linking failed. Cannot reach JRiver Media Center....not accessible from outside your home network. I checked my port forwarding and it's correct. Other ideas?
Thanks...David
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If the Echo and MC are on the same LAN, you don't need port forwarding. That's only needed when you want to access MC from the outside world.
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@dlbeck:
Actually, House Band always accesses MC from outside your network, since it's in the cloud.
If it was working before, and isn't now, it's a port-forwarding issue. I'd double check. Did the IP address of your server change? This will often happen if you reset your router, and you haven't assigned MC a static IP address.
That's the first things I'd check.
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I've just got to say thank you for this, it's totally awesome.
I do have some feature requests though :)
I would love to be able to rate the currently playing track "Alexa, ask house band to rate this song 5 stars"
Some more video support would be nice, television seasons/episodes
This one is more a personal thing and I feel bad for bringing it up, but I really don't like the name house band, for some reason I have a hard time remembering it and it's kind of long. I'd like an option to have it called something else, I would suggest MC or EmmSea if you're worried about Amazon not allowing MC.
Thank you again though, this is totally awesome and one of the big reasons that I bought an Echo in the first place.
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@Moe,
Thanks for the kind words!
I do have plans to work on the program over the next couple months.
I will definitely look into adding ratings (though that will require getting Amazon to re-certify the program, which is always an adventure.)
And, additional video support is definitely on the list.
I sort of agree with you about House Band. I've turned against it a bit, too.
There are lots of constraints on what you can name your skill, though. For example, it has to be two or three words that are not easily confused with a similar sounding phrase. So, I think M. C. might satisfy the 2 word requirement, it sounds just like the English work "emcee", which is disallowed.
Amazon keeps saying that they are going to be making major changes to how skills can be invoked, because they realize that the current system is not scaleable. I agree it's a total pain now....
I'll be sure to post back here if there's any news on program updates!
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I'll be sure to post back here if there's any news on program updates!
additional video support is definitely on the list.
Woot, Woot!
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I agree on invoking using House Band.
How about "Jay River" ?
Ken
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I'd need approval from JRiver to use their IP. But maybe I could get it? I agree, though, that would be best.
Steve
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Not a great idea.
How about Good Vibrations?
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There's a shop in Portland, OR (where I live) with that name. But I'm sure I wouldn't need their approval...no chance of confusing the products they sell :o with JRiver
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Tune Up
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Would really like something a bit more natural sounding.
"My Media Server"
"The Media Database"
House band isn't terrible... Just doesn't roll off the tongue.
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Well, if there's a clear consensus I might change the name!
I sort of like "Tune Up"
I don't know if "my media database" rolls off the tongue more easily than "house band."
You can also say, "ask the house band to play...." That sounds a bit more natural.
Really, you just want to be able to say, "Alexa, play...."
I'm hoping that they will move the platform to a "default" skill model, so you can choose which skill gets launch with words/phrases like "play" or "what's the weather." There are signs that they are going to do this....
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I think they should just put you on the JRiver payroll so we can have it called Media Center or JRiver ;D ;D ;D
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I kind of doubt it's possible, but it would be cool if you could get the Echo to read some fields for you. For instance, I include a biography for all of my artists, it would be cool if I could say ask House Band to read me the bio for Led Zeppelin.
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Hello!
HouseBand was meant to play on devices that are running JRiver Music Server -- Sonos, or some other media server, including your laptop.
So, if you want to use HouseBand to play your local music files to your Echo, you just need to set up a bluetooth connection between the server and your Echo.
What you heard the first time, most likely, was not HouseBand playing your local files at all, but just the native Alexa music service.
Steve
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No, you'd absolutely get voice control. So, if you have JRiver running on your laptop, and your laptop connected via BT to your Echo, you can listen to your local music through your Echo, with voice control.
Steve
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Does this allow me to play my JRiver library while using Amazon Tap away from home?
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That would be cool, but no. That's a hardware thing.
But, I think you could use Gizmo on your phone, and then bluetooth that to the Tap, to get your library to play on the Tap.
Steve
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That would be cool, but no. That's a hardware thing.
But, I think you could use Gizmo on your phone, and then bluetooth that to the Tap, to get your library to play on the Tap.
Steve
Gotcha - so it seems that Home Band is to control what plays on my JRiver on my PC?
Is there integration with Gizmo - so I can tell Alexa (Tap) to play song ... from Gizmo, or do I have to select the song by hand, and it'll just use Tap as a BT speaker?
I accidently found Home Band plays videos too - I was able to tell it "Alexa ask Home Band to play Breaking Bad" - however is there a way to tell it what season, episode - because when I did she still played S01E01?
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Yes. HouseBand is really to play music from JRiver to any JRiver client - a PC, yes, especially if it's connected to a home stereo. Or commonly some sort of DLNA compliant music server like Sonos or (higher end) or something like this: http://www.psaudio.com/products/directstream-dac/
Actually, now that I that I think of it, it might work the way you want it to. I'm away from the setup right now but...
If, after you start up Gizmo on your phone, it shows up as a zone on your JRiver media server -- which it might...never looked -- then it should work with the Tap. I'll have to experiment tonight. But you would then be able to select Gizmo as the zone (which you can do with HouseBand). Connect your phone's audio to Tap via bluetooth, and then use voice command to play music through the Tap from your home library.
You could give it a shot!
About video. There is *very* rudimentary support for video. Basically, as you discovered. You can say, "play the *the movie* ...." or "play "the video...." and HouseBand will return all matching videos.
I am rewriting HouseBand, and am going to incorporate video support and classical music support. But I've been distracted by other things!
Steve
Steve
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In addition to the about Q of whether Amazon Tap can control Gizmo or Houseband via voice ("Alexa tell ... to Play ... song")
also - is there a way for Gizmo/Houseband to remember where I left off in a "song" - I have a library of lectures on mp3 and would like to listen in the car, these lectures are usually longer than my car ride - and would like that JRiver (Gizmo/Houseband) can remember where I left off, the next time I get in the car to listen.
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Is there possibly a way to also make it recognize the Images media?
I run a lighting system in my home theater that I have images in my MC that are solid colors or landscape/album covers that I select and what ever colors are in the image it "paints" the rooms 7 zones that color
Right now I just select a picture, but with House Band I could just say Image "green" or Image "blue" or whatever you name the image
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Then the room accent lighting shows the current color of what showing in JRiver
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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
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thanks, Steve!
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Thanks, I'm really enjoying this House Band skill you've implemented
Keep up the great work
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I just stumbled across this thread very randomly. Now I have to buy an Echo - thanks a lot.
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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 ;D.
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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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!
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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.
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Great. Perfect. I'm already using the access key for remote control apps, so I guess this is essentially the same. Thanks very much.
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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
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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!
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@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?
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@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. :)
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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/ (http://digitalmediaphile.com/index.php/tag/house-band-alexa-skill/)
Thank you!
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@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
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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.
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@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
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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
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I got a message that HouseBand could not be enabled due to 'geographical restrictions'. I am in the UK.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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!
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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.
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Very much looking forward to seeing this working. Thanks for all the hard work.
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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...
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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.
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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
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@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.
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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.
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Do you have multiple Alexa accounts/profiles?
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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.
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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
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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 :)
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@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
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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?
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From above:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,102709.msg748363.html#msg748363
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@renerene
Yes, HouseBand is only available in the US store. I think that non-US users have the US store available to them if they set their language preference to "English (United States)"....but I'm not 100% sure about that.
There are plans for releasing it to non-US users, but this is probably a few months off.
Steve
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For integrating Amazon Echo and JRiver MC through the House Band skill, I have a question about which Alexa voice commands to use. For me, the hardware integration between Amazon Echo and JRiver MC20 worked very easily. My problem is I can never tell if music is streaming from my JRiver MC library (high definition music), or from Amazon Prime (low definition music). For example, if I say "Alexa Launch House Band", and the "Alexa What Do I Have By Steely Dan?" to get an accurate list of the albums I have by Steely Dan on JRiver MC20. But then when I select, for example, the album Katy Lied, Alexa switches over (without notice) to play Katy Lied from Amazon Prime. In addition to being low res quality, this album is not available on Amazon Prime, so it just plays the 10 second sampler version of each song. It would be nice to a) know how to select among the albums available on my JRiver MC, and b) confirm somehow that music I am listening to is actually coming from JRiver MC20. Thanks in advance for anyone who can help.
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@nojazz. Hmmm....that's interesting. After HouseBand responds, "What should I play"...and the blue light should remain on...you should be able to say, "Play the album Katy Lied" and get that from your MC20 library. My skill has no way to access Amazon Prime. So, the only way this could be happening is if for some reason you are dropping out of the skill.
And, a straightforward, "Alexa, ask HouseBand to play the album Katy Lied" should also play that album.
There really isn't any way to ask it the music is coming from Prime or MC20. You can ask, "Alexa, what's playing?" which isn't a HouseBand command. If it knows, then you know it's not playing through MC20. I suppose you could also look at the Alexa app. HouseBand songs won't show up under currently playing.
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Are you still suggesting this is only for music? ...
I have been trying to play a particular music track and I get various movies playing back.
Would be great if the app could consider music and video seperately ... and even better if it's designed to do both.
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@bhampster
It should depend on what commands you give. If you say:
Play the song....
Play the album...
Play songs by...
you'll get only music (tracks, albums, artists, respectively)
These commands are equivalent to prepending
[name]=
[album]=
[Album Artist (auto)]=
to your search string.
If you just say:
"Play the Last Waltz"
you'll get everything matching that search, including video and music.
If you say, "Play the movie the Last Waltz" or "Play the album the Last Waltz" you should get only one or the other.
Let me know if things are working differently for you. (Of course, all this depends on how things are tagged in your library.)
Steve
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Just got our Dot and Harmony remote/hub Monday and I also set up House Band for JRiver. Very nice, excellent work.
One thing I noticed. When you ask it to play a playlist, it doesn't seem to use the shuffle setting. I have JRiver set to shuffle 'auto', but the playlist appears to load and play in the original order.
I tried to tell it to shuffle or reshuffle while playing the playlist but it doesn't seem to recognize those commands.
Anyway, super cool skill that works great for me otherwise. Nice job.
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Based on this thread I was tempted to buy a Dot. But unfortunately amazon.de has not released it yet, and amazon.com or amazon.co.uk won't deliver it.
Actually what I would really like is to use Cortana on my HTPC to operate MC. Reason is that a) I don't have to buy any new hardware, and b) Cortana can issue commands locally without having to roundtrip all commands to Amazon's data centers and back again (not to mention big brother).
So Steve, (hint hint) may I draw you attention to the new Microsoft Cortana software development kit web site mentioned below. Admittedly they will only release the kit in February 2017. But I can hardly bear the wait...
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/cortana or https://aka.ms/cortanaskillspreview
Re-use your custom skill code built for Amazon Alexa. Your existing Alexa skill codebase means there’s no need to start from scratch when building Cortana skills.
Cortana skills aren’t tethered to one platform or device—they work across Windows 10, Android, and iOS so you can reach 145 million monthly users.
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@AndrewFg
Okay, I signed up for the preview!
I'm just finishing up a new "version" of HouseBand, with much improved classical search and video search.
My next project was porting it over to Google Home. Why not Cortana. It shouldn't be too hard, I think.
Steve
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^
I signed up to the Cortana preview too. Let's see what it looks like when it comes, but if I can help as sparring partner or whatever, please let me know..
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Hmmn, just got this device for early Christmas. Been a J River user for years. I can't seem to connect with House Band. It keeps saying "linking failed" and suggests checking port forwarding. All that is set up on my router and Firewall opened up as well (even disabled doesn't work). Not sure what to look into next. This is a problem with MC20 and MC22.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Gizmo works fine on my network and media server enabled with no authentication.
Chris
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Well, if your network isn't accessible from outside your network, then Gizmo will still work fine if connected to your home network.
Or, did you mean you that it worked when you went to this site:
http://jriver.com/webgizmo.html
entered your access code, and selected "Outside my Network" for location?
If that works, then HB should link. Let me know if the site above works and HB still can't link!
Make sure you are forwarding the port from the right IP address (the one that Media Center is running on) and that you forwarding the correct port (i.e., you haven't changed from the default of 52199)
Steve
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Is there a way to make House Band shuffle and play a playlist? Thanks!
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Nope, not now. You can play a playlist, but not shuffle it. I'll see if I can put that in update, coming out in few weeks, I'd think.
Steve
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That was a good test with webgizmo. No that didn't work, so I guess I am not getting at my server from outside my router.
Make sure you are forwarding the port from the right IP address (the one that Media Center is running on) and that you forwarding the correct port (i.e., you haven't changed from the default of 52199)
.
I am port forwarding correctly with the correct port (52199) and the IP address inside the router that Media Center is running on.
Chris
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Do you have a dual router setup?
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Also, just to be clear: you say you are forwarding from the "router" that Media Center is on.
Not sure if that was just a typo, but you need to forward the IP address of the computer that MC is running on.
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Yes, I am port-forwarding from the router that MC is on. Also, I can't seem to connect with webgizmo from inside or outside the network. But just double-checked and Gizmo still connects.
Now the dual router is a good question. I have a wireless extender and have 2 wireless networks in my house. I've tried both wireless networks with the same result. But Webgizmo I tried on a computer that is hardwired into the same router that MC is attached to and port forwarding setup.
Edit: I don't think my Wireless Extender is a factor. It is a D-Link DAP-1522 and is configured as an Access Point (AP). There are no settings on this device for port forwarding. My primary router is a D-Link 655.
Edit2: It seems port forwarding is not working on my router after trying a port tester and webgizmo tool. Everything appears to be configured properly, so not sure what's going on. I am able to use WebGizmo inside the network now, but not outside. That's where my focus lies now, seems to be my router.
Edit3: Do you have a dual router setup?
I didn't think I did, but now realize I do and that is the problem I'm sure. I have an AT&T stand-alone modem upstream from my router. The Modem is doing NAT duties as well as my router. I believe I need to switch the modem to "bridged" mode since there doesn't seem to be anyway to do port forwarding on the modem itself. It also explains why configuration changes I was doing downstream (like port forwarding and Firewall) had no affect. I will report back after making this change.
Edit4: I guess I am screwed. I resolved the double NAT problem by bridging my modem to my router. But that does not solve the problem that my Routers Public address is 10.67.x.x and my external Public address is 76.254.x.x. So there are NAT rules being applied by my ISP (AT&T). This means I will never get port forwarding to work with my current ISP. There appears to be no solution when your ISP does this. A solution like DynDNS won't work and I don't really have an option of getting a fixed IP address.
Chris
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Nope, not now. You can play a playlist, but not shuffle it. I'll see if I can put that in update, coming out in few weeks, I'd think.
Steve
Thanks. I'll keep an eye out. And thanks for the great skill!
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b) Cortana can issue commands locally without having to roundtrip all commands to Amazon's data centers and back again (not to mention big brother).
Not to derail, but how do you get Cortana to work locally and/or is Cortana different in Europe? Since the anniversary edition of Win 10, my understanding is that Cortana won't even work without a connection to MS servers for anything other than file search, and the TOS in the U.S. seems to pretty clearly indicate that it's sending voice data back to Microsoft more or less constantly for analysis (as speech to text is fairly computationally taxing). There are several MS support threads basically saying Cortana no longer works offline, so I'd be interested to know if there's an easy way to get local functionality.
To be clear, I would very much like to be wrong about this as Cortana seems pretty slick ;D
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Any news on House Band for the UK version.
Thanks.
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Yes. I've been actively working on getting a new version done that, among other things, will be releasable in the UK. (It will also have classical search (including search by period, instrument, style....if you have tagged your library appropriately), and video search.
I'm guessing under a month....
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Great news!
Many Thanks Steve.
Seasons Greetings and Happy New Year
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among other things, will be releasable in the UK.
Apropos this, when you publish a skill with Amazon, you have to tell them the data center that it should run on. Amazon has a data center in USA to serve the Americas, and another one in Ireland to serve Europe (which, BoJo notwithstanding, includes UK). So your amazon.co.uk release should be hosted on the Ireland data center in order to minimize round trip latency across the Atlantic (or worse via a satellite bounce). Same would apply if you make a version for amazon.de / amazon.fr / amazon.it etc.
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Yes, that would be best. But the server's aren't free (cost of server + certificate), so both versions will be making calls to the same server in the US!
S
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^
Are you making money on this? Or just doing it for love. IMHO you should be making money, and actually IMHO I think Amazon should not be charging you for it. Just my 2c..
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Love vs Money. Hmmm...
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So far I'm doing out of love...
But, if JRiver wants to chip in (Google Home and Cortana integration?) I personally wouldn't feel that a small monetary gain would cheapen my love. :)
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We'll help out. I'm jimh at jriver. Just let me know what you need.
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We'll help out. I'm jimh at jriver. Just let me know what you need.
Awesome!
Nice to see see JRiver helping out with some of the 3rd party dev's! One of the reasons I never hesitate at upgrade time.
Just got my Dot. Awesome integration!
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@JimH
Thanks so much. That is really great. I'll shoot you an email.
Steve
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@rn701.
Okay, when the next version is released you'll be able to shuffle playlists with the command, "Shuffle my [playlist name] playlist." or "Shuffle the playlist [playlist name]", etc.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Steve
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@rn701.
Okay, when the next version is released you'll be able to shuffle playlists with the command, "Shuffle my [playlist name] playlist." or "Shuffle the playlist [playlist name]", etc.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Steve
Awesome, thanks!
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I suppose this device can't control things locally for folks like me who are restricted by their ISP from port forwarding (see my previous post). It's too bad that this device sits on my local net along with J River and a ton of media, yet all the processing is done on the cloud and it can't directly control local devices. Am I correct in my thinking, or is there another way?
Chris
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@dcpete
I'm afraid there is no way (that I know of.) The requests are coming in from outside your network, since the HouseBand is just a hosted web service.
You might look here for some help:
https://portforward.com/help/doublerouterportforwarding.htm
but I don't know. You seem to have a pretty solid grip on the situation. Still, there might be a tip on that site you have overlooked...
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Hi,
I was just gifted an Echo Dot and I'm trying to set it up with House Band, but I'm having no luck.
I've added the Skill, and when I ask Alexa to launch Houseband, she requests that I link my account, sends me the "card" to the Alexa App, etc. Everything works perfectly. I can link the account just fine... it says "Your House Band Skill was successfully linked. You can now leave this page".
So everything's great right? Except when I ask her to launch House Band, she says I need to link my account. I've linked my account successfully about 20 times so far.
She doesn't see any music, and doesn't seem capable of using House Band.
Worth noting: When testing my Media Library, Media Center says it's accessible. When I link Alexa to my server, I do see a 131 byte event in the server log. I have port forwarding setup, and I do not have password protection enabled.
So, as far as I can tell, my network settings are fine, the link is happening... except that it's not.
Any suggestions?
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@Misterboy
Sorry for that. This is a new one for me.
I know that Amazon has been experiencing difficulty with skill enablement all day, off and on, but I'm not at all sure that that's what is happening.
Try this. Go to the Alexa app, or echo.amazon.com, disable/re-enable the skill, and go through linking that way.
Also you if you could email me privately your access code, I can check to see if everything got saved okay.
Is there any chance that you have two different Alexa profiles?
Steve
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@Misterboy
It looks like everything is setup correctly on your end, and I'm guessing I can see your activity in my logs.
My best guess is that you have two different profiles....or multiple Alexa devices? I think you are enabling the skill for one device/account and requesting the skill for the other. What is happening is that the access token that Amazon gives you when linking your account is not the same one that being presented when you launch the skill. HouseBand needs that token to access your information. But it's not the right token, so it's asking you to link your account again.
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Thanks for your response,
I saw your PM and have replied there. However the PM system of this forum appears broken. There's no record of my sent PM (just one from several years ago) so I can't verify if I'm actually sending you a reply.
In summary: I only have this one, new, device. I do have 2 amazon accounts I use, but I registered the device using the primary account, which is the one signed on using the Alexa app and is the one showing this Echo Dot as one of "My Devices".
I've tried completely resetting the Echo Dot several times now, but it still won't sync properly with House Band. I'm wondering if a bad credential is saved in your database? I'm not sure what else I can try on my end. I've reset the device completely twice and I get the same result each time.
The only other thing I can think of is that that device is faulty?
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Misterboy's issue was resolved.
It was an issue with separate Amazon accounts/profiles.
I'm posting this here in case others have a similar issue.
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You might look here for some help:
https://portforward.com/help/doublerouterportforwarding.htm
That's a nice read. Thanks. But isn't my scenario where the ISP is doing Carrier-grade NAT. Here is a description from Wikipedia...
Carrier-grade NAT usually prevents the ISP customers from using port forwarding, because the network address translation (NAT) is usually implemented by mapping ports of the NAT devices in the network to other ports in the external interface. This is done so the router will be able to map the responses to the correct device; in carrier-grade NAT networks, even though the router at the consumer end might be configured for port forwarding, the "master router" of the ISP, which runs the CGN, will block this port forwarding because the actual port would not be the port configured by the consumer.[6] In order to overcome the former disadvantage, the Port Control Protocol (PCP) has been standarized in the RFC 6887.
Edit: Interesting. Just re-reading this description I see that a protocol (PCP) has been invented to address this issue. I guess I will do some research on that. I presume the ISP needs to have this protocol implemented and probably the router needs to have PCP support as well.
Chris
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Chiming in to say I got the
DOT + BubbleUPnP + JRiver MC 22 and Chromecast Audio device all worked tonight.
Super straight forward with the bubble part
A few minor issues in asking Alexa to play "play all songs by acdc" or similar, it's like it was reaching out to amazon prime and maybe came out of the house band skilll. Asking it "Alexa, tell house band to ..." seemed to work.
Only maybe deal breaker for me is that my JRiver Server is on 192.168.X.0/24 and my wireless network is 192.168.Y.0/24
No matter what I did, I coudn't get it to work (multicast mapping, etc etc) so I tested giving the wireless clients an IP on the X network (matching the server) and it seems the DLNA broadcast local stuff works.
But I'm not going to be putting this (or any device) on that network, even with access-lists's/port security.
Thanks for a good solution, i'll be trying to figure out a better way that I can use it.
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@sarkonovich
Got my Dot up and running over holiday, and very much enjoying your hard work integrating MC22, Alexa through House Band.
I am using combination of House Band and JRemote to run MC22, and find that loading playlists, skipping tracks and finding files is easier with House Band. Its also fun to have House Band read off the various versions of a song available and then respond to your refined choice.
I'm running a Bryston amp with MC22 acting as preamp, speakers in living room, Echo DOT in the kitchen. Controlling volume with JRemote is more granular as volume gradiations can be set to any volume (10, 15, 28, 47 and 90 too frequently until phone rings or wife comes home) using the slider in JRemote pretty quickly, but hands-free House Band is preferable when busy in the kitchen.
Is finer volume tuning, rather than 10% gradiations, planned or possible for a future release of House Band? Nice to be able to turn down to a precise volume quickly with House Band.
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@Knick
A couple of people have asked me about that. It's easy to do, of course. It's all a trade off, figuring out how to keep adding features to a voice interface without making it seem like there's a list of commands that need to be memorized.
I guess I could use the phrases Louder/softer[quieter] and Much louder/much softer[quieter]. More volume and much more volume, etc.
Or, are you just asking for, something like, "Volume 27"
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@Knick
A couple of people have asked me about that. It's easy to do, of course. It's all a trade off, figuring out how to keep adding features to a voice interface without making it seem like there's a list of commands that need to be memorized.
I guess I could use the phrases Louder/softer[quieter] and Much louder/much softer[quieter]. More volume and much more volume, etc.
Or, are you just asking for, something like, "Volume 27"
Kind of hoping for more along the lines of a specific gradient between 1 and 100, like "Volume 27". Know that may not fit everyones needs, but it does mine.
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Hello! I have a couple of House Band questions.
First, if I launch House Band and ask it to change zones to (for example) Living Room Player, it tells me that there is no such zone. If I ask what zones do I have, it lists my JRiver zones, including Living Room Player. So, I'm not sure why I get this behavior.
Second, is there a way to keep Alexa awake, so to speak, for House Band? It seems that I have to re-launch House Band constantly if I want to change tracks or albums.
Thanks for the help and happy new year! Cheers. JCR
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@jrobbins
Thanks for the feedback. I would suggest changing the zone name to just "Living Room."
I jjust changed my zone name to "Living Room Player", and got the behavior you mentioned. In particular, Alexa didn't hear the word "Player" so was looking for a zone named "Living Room."
I'll try to fix this on the next release.
Unfortunately, all commands have to be proceeded by "Ask HouseBand to...."
Most 3rd party Alexa "skills" have an invocation name. (There are a couple of exceptions.) To use the skill, you have to use it's invocation name.
This is a big complaint among users, and Amazon says that it's working on solutions. For example, you might be able to pick "default" skills. But for the foreseeable future, this is the way it works. (It's the same on Google Home, I believe.)
Steve
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We'll help out. I'm jimh at jriver. Just let me know what you need.
JRiver needs to tell us what equipment this would run on - I myself want to use it with NAS - but would needadvise as to which one will run JRiver software (this seems to be model dependent and hard to get answers about ) -
It is an exciting possibility to me, and a "package" list, i.e., buy this and this and this and it will work, would put it the hands of those who normally avoid this level of interest.
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House Band works with JRiver Media Center, so anything that JRiver supports will work. Any NAS will work if you import the files into MC. MC must be running though.
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Hello! I have a couple of House Band questions.
First, if I launch House Band and ask it to change zones to (for example) Living Room Player, it tells me that there is no such zone. If I ask what zones do I have, it lists my JRiver zones, including Living Room Player. So, I'm not sure why I get this behavior.
Second, is there a way to keep Alexa awake, so to speak, for House Band? It seems that I have to re-launch House Band constantly if I want to change tracks or albums.
Thanks for the help and happy new year! Cheers. JCR
Sounds like a deal breaker to me
Sent from my EVA-L19 using Tapatalk
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Sent from my EVA-L19 using Tapatalk
Please remove the ad. It's under settings for signature in Tapatalk.
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Ok
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Thanks.
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Sounds like a deal breaker to me
Just to be clear, this just means that you can't just say. e.g., "Play Madonna." You have to say, "Tell House Band to play Madonna."
You need this to make clear just how you want to hear Madonna. For example, "Play Madonna on Spotify" or "Play Madonna from Amazon Prime."
It works the same for Google Home and, I'd imagine, all these voice assistants for the foreseeable future.
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House Band works with JRiver Media Center, so anything that JRiver supports will work. Any NAS will work if you import the files into MC. MC must be running though.
this is great news...
would that include the qnap ts-231?
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Not sure if I'm in the right place , the skill is awesome. Surely there should be some snappy comeback for Alexa tell house band to turn volume to "11". Shuffle all would be cool as well.
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@markzaar
That's a good idea! The new version is in Amazon's hands and should be certified any time.
I did add "shuffle" to playlists, so you can say, "shuffle my [playlist name] playlist
Just make a playlists with all tracks and there you go.
I'll think about adding a response to 11... :)
Steve
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A question. I have a playlist called Channel R. Alexa hears this as Channel Are and can't find it. Short of renaming the playlist (it has sentimental vaue), is there a workaround or any way to fix this?
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@rn701
Well, maybe. Possibly.
I do some work on my end to abstract away from the actual spelling that Amazon gives me: both playlist names and playlist requests are converted to metaphone before searching). However, R and Are still have different metaphone equivalents (R and AR, respectively), so your search fails.
I could look into more aggressive matching algorithms....
For now, I suppose you could create another playlist called Channel Are, and pretend that you are listening to the original playlist. They're gonna sound the same ;)
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Hi,
I have been using this for a while in the UK, I had a dot shipped over from the US by a friend, however even thought I have not changed anything I think Amazon have done something in the back end and now, although the skill is listed and enabled in my Alexa account, the dot cannot find it.
Is anyone else in the UK still able to use House Band, or does Amazons odd location policy mean that this skill meeds to be certified for the UK, and if so please, please can this awesome skill be certified for the UK
Thanks
Neil
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@neilglower
The skill should be released in the UK any day now, I'd think.
Steve
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@markzaar
The new version is in Amazon's hands and should be certified any time.
I did add "shuffle" to playlists, so you can say, "shuffle my [playlist name] playlist
Yay! Just wanted to thank you for continuing to improve this most excellent skill!
I'll think about adding a response to 11... :) [The Warp engines canna' take it, Captain!]
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Nay it's the dilithium crystals overheating..
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While waiting for the UK guys to be able to download, maybe off point - but done this, and I can now control as I like. Not too much work but total control over my 6 zones etc without too much work, IE using variables "Play", "Zone", etc. Still dont understand why Amazon are playing up. I brought an echo for this only reason, to find that I live in the wrong area (UK)?
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@carlgaton
Not quite sure what the take away from this is. But if you are having any specific difficulties, or certain things aren't working as expected, please feel free to email me at sarkonovich at gmail dot com.
Steve
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Forgot To Paste Link:
http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/17752-capture-what-echo-hears-into-a-variable/
While waiting for the UK guys to be able to download, maybe off point - but done this, and I can now control as I like. Not too much work but total control over my 6 zones etc without too much work, IE using variables "Play", "Zone", etc. Still dont understand why Amazon are playing up. I brought an echo for this only reason, to find that I live in the wrong area (UK)?
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Oops. Alexa says she can't access house ban. Disabled skill, reenabled, and tried to link account. When I enter the media key, I get 'internal server error.'
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Yeah, I have to fix the internal server error. But I can't do anything with it right now.
But, this just means that house band can't reach your server for some reason. Either it's password protected, or not running, or your not forwarding the port (from the right IP address.)
The easiest thing to do is check here:
http://jriver.com/webgizmo.html
If you can access your library using the "connect from outside my network" option, you should be good to go.
If you *can* do that, and are still getting an error, let me know!
Steve
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Thanks. Tried the webgizmo test and it worked. Tried to link my account in alexa again, got this:
Linking Failed. Cannot reach JRiver Media Center.
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email me at sarkonovich at gmail dot com....we can figure it out.
Let me know if the full message was:
"Linking Failed. Cannot reach JRiver Media Center.
Your Library Server is not accessible from outside your home network. Please ensure that your server is running and accessible from outside your home network.
You might need to enable port forwarding on your router."
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Yes that was the full message. Will email. Thanks for your help.
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Hi I am trying to get Amazon Echo and house band working but seem to have a problem. Everthing is set up my port forwarding is working and Alexa can enable house band but when I tell her to play music she says" I cant seem to reach your server”. All is working well at my end I even tried webgizmo and even that sees my server is there anything else I need to be doing. I briefly got it to work yesterday but it has stopped completely now.
Regards Paul Sheridan
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Paul,
Yes, there is a problem with IPv6 addresses. I'm guessing that's what it is. I'm going to try to fix that today.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Steve
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Okay. All should be well again!
Steve
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Hmm... I don't think all is well. I'm able to connect via Gizmo on the Android but I'm still unable to connect this morning using Alexa. She gives me the standard message about checking port forwarding.
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@dmadcat,
Make sure that you can connect using the "outside my network" option. Assuming you can, disable and then re-enable the skill. If you still can't connect please email me at sarkonovich at gmail dot com.
Steve
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This worked from the very first day I set it up. (Using JR 22.0.54 on a MAC.) But, about two days ago it stopped working. I keep getting "Sorry, I'm having trouble accessing your Houseband Skill right now." I un-linked the skill and re-linked it to no avail (and no errors during the process.) I also verified Gizmo DOES work accessing my library by using the "connect from outside my network" option. Also, verified router port forwarding 52199 still points to the Mac computer. I guess that was just a double check since Gizmo CAN access from outside my network.
Any help would be appreciated. This was working so well I really miss it!
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@avpman
So, it turns out that *this* is the problem many people have been having. And there's nothing I can do about it. It's on Amazon's side.
Out of curiosity, are you a UK user?
I would go to the "Help & Feedback" section of the Alexa app, and write/call Amazon. I'll try to get in touch with Amazon, too.
Steve
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@avpman
So, it turns out that *this* is the problem many people have been having. And there's nothing I can do about it. It's on Amazon's side.
Out of curiosity, are you a UK user?
I would go to the "Help & Feedback" section of the Alexa app, and write/call Amazon. I'll try to get in touch with Amazon, too.
Steve
Steve, I'm in USA. I just got on the phone with Amazon and when he asked me to repeat the error Alexa was saying, I triggered her so the tech could hear it for himself and she launched Houseband! Go figure... At least now I know how to call for help. Thanks for the direction!
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Great! I'm glad it's working for you.
I still think something is amiss, though....but I'll keep my fingers crossed!
Steve
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Great! I'm glad it's working for you.
I still think something is amiss, though....but I'll keep my fingers crossed!
Steve
I agree, it was definitely down for at least the last two days. Thanks again for providing me with a path for future help.
My next skill to set up is Homeseer so I can have Alexa control my home audio (via HAI Omni) which is linked to JRiver!
Best,
Jim
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Any chance someone from JRiver could get in touch with me? I have a question about best practices, and the relation between
http://webplay.jriver.com/libraryserver/lookup?id=[access code]"
and
http://#[returned ip]:[returned port]/MCWS/v1/Authenticate
Thanks!
Steve
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Yeah, JRiver, please do - this is holding up my purchase of a JMC master licence ;)
I'm looking forward to using Houseband here in the UK so I'll have voice control of the playback of hires music I have on my NAS, played thru my Linn SneakyDS. I've even gone to the bother of buying a Raspberry Pi to host it so I don't need my PC on all the time - it'll just join the rest of the 'hubs' I have for home/AV control.
Fingers crossed Amazon UK certify the skill soon and any issues are quickly resolved.
Keep up the good work :)
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Just to let you know all seems to be working well here in today in Ireland. House band is working flawlessly all day. Whatever Amazon did overnight seems to have done the trick. Thanks for all your help on this Steven. Regards
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Also wanted to report that it is working fine for me for a couple of days now after the fix for ipv6 or something. Thanks!
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Strange, perhaps boilerplate response when I used feedback in the Alexa app to when House Band might be certified here in the UK:
"I'd like to bring this to your notice that this skill is soon going to be available in UK. It is because the device has been recently launched in UK and has a few geographical and licensing issues. Please be assured that these features are soon going to be launched in UK"
Device? Geographical and licence issues? Nonsense?
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I have no idea what that's about. First I've heard of 'geographical' and 'licensing' issues.
I can say, though, that getting it through certification has been a royal pain in the ass! :)
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I can say, though, that getting it through certification has been a royal pain in the ass! :)
Any idea when it will be available in the UK. Is is it still being certified?
John
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Any idea when it will be available in the UK. Is is it still being certified?
John
It would appear so: my post above is their reply just a day or so ago, even though I don't think they knew what they were answering...
** update: just asked again thru the Alexa app feedback and was told there are no plans to add the House Band skill and that they'd pass the request to the development team. They clearly don't have a clue, so we'll just have to wait patiently and check back here regularly...
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Yes, it is. I know they were testing it last night. I've given up saying "any day now"...but soon.
Steve
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Yes, it is. I know they were testing it last night. I've given up saying "any day now"...but soon.
Steve
Thanks for the update - I'll ignore the chocolate teapot that is Alexa feedback ;)
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Hey Steve,
we have already talked on your youtube channel about a german translation.
If you want me to translate english to german, feel free to send me the lines you need and i can do it. :)
How is your porting to google home doing?
best regards,
Sebastian
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Sebastian,
I will get in touch with you. Thank you! (You know, it's probably 1,000 lines of translation?)
Actually getting the German version out will probably be this summer, though. Between getting the new versions certified and the Google home project (and actually having a day job), I'm HouseBand-ed out!
But soon. And the Google port will be soon-ish, too.
Steve
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It's in the Uk skills store - off for a play :)
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Linked on the second attempt and now playing Bob Seger by voice command. Many thanks, keep up the great work :)
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@brantome.
Ah, good.
I'm wondering how laggy it seems to you? Or if you get any "the requested skill took too long to respond." Someone at Amazon told me the performance was slow, likely because the server is in the US.
The main differences you should notice from the 1st version is:
Improved music searches
Improved Video Search. You can now saw, Play the movie/video/series, including season and episode. "Play the series Seinfeld, season 1, episode 3.
Improved (but still wanting) classical search. If you ask for music by a classical composer it should automatically search Composer tags (not Artist tags.) You can force a search for composer by saying, "Play the composer..."
You can shuffle playlists ("Shuffle my playlist...")
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tbh, spent more time listening to the music :D
It was a bit laggy though now that you mention it, plus I had great difficulty in asking it for help about tag searches - some very strange mis-interpretations. I thought the server would be in Ireland which shouldn't cause a problem for me here in Scotland.
Still getting the hang of JRiver (want to restrict playback to flac files for example) so that's not helping either. Plus I need to figure out how best to have my Dot responding while I'm playing music thru the same amp - a bluetooth speaker for it in those circumstances might help, as well as the voice remote I'm getting tomorrow
Will try to get more time over the weekend but it's been good so far.
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I'll look into getting a server in Ireland. We'll see.
I think the 'tag search' feature has to be considered very beta. I agree the voice recognition (on non-recognition) on that part is very touch and go. I'll work on trying to improve that on the next go 'round.
Feel free to write me at sarkonovich at gmail dot com for any suggestions/bug reports, etc. It's a whole new interaction model, and a lot of new code, so I'll ironing things out...
Thanks,
Steve
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1000 lines sounds really much ;D
But hey it's worth it. So don't worry. I will take the time for it.
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Lag in the Uk is about four or five seconds - sufferable if you just want to kick off a playlist, but not brilliant if you want to pause, skip etc
I thought one of the aspects for certification was to get the skill hosted on a European server, or is it the JRiver integration aspect that means it has to visit a USA server as well each time a command is processed?
Playing with smartlists just now and pleased at how House Band isn't overly fussy about having to specify the full name, just enough to identify it...
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Shuffle playlist is working great. Thanks!
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@brantome
Yeah, 4-5 seconds is pretty laggy. I live in Oregon (where the server is) and often play/pause commands execute *before* Alexa starts speaking.
HouseBand could be hosted in the UK. I would just need to setup another server in the UK for that.
On a side note, the UK certification didn't have anything to do with server location. The program had to be rewritten slightly since Amazon has slightly different requirements for the UK. And I took that opportunity to rewrite a lot of the program. (The recertification process itself took about a month.)
It looks like -- absent some AWS wizardry that I'll look into -- getting a UK server will require another round of certification.
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Thanks, I can live with it as it is just now as I get to grips with JMC anyway. I guess you mean another server on AWS, hopefully not your own physical server...
Earlier in the thread, it was suggested that JRiver might be able to help you out - I hope they are as it was on the back of House Band I got interested in JMC again, but that's between you and them :)
Till I got my Echo and Dot, I was happy enough using mininserver on my synology NAS and Linn's own control app for playback to my SneakyDS, so you're helping bring in revenue for JRiver...
Just slowly building my library on my Raspberry Pi - you getting re-certification might be quicker!
Cheers
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@brantome,
Yes, another AWS server.
And JRiver is has been very supportive of the project all the way through!
Best,
Steve
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Hi, Finally House Band for the UK. Been using for a couple of days and 1st off just a couple of comments;
Play/Resume command will not play if the zone has been stopped by another application. Ie Webgizmo or JRiver App.
Is there a command to stop all zones playing at once. I often have more than 1 zone playing with different music, would be brill if i could say "Stop everything"
Keep up the good work
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Hi
now that this skill is available for the UK is there a chance to get it for the continent too, i.e. Germany? I'd be happy to help to get it going.
Does it need to be translated besides the procedures to implement it in Amazon?
Regards
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Hi Steve,
Just want to say thank you for all your hard work bringing House Band to the UK. No mean feat I'm sure. Still learning the commands but so far so good. Yeah it can be a wee bit laggy but I can live with that. The fact it understands my Scottish accent is great. Not a lot of voice recognition do. Just ask a Scot to say Purple Burglar Alarm and prepare to piss yer self ☺️.
Anyway, big thank you. Keep up the good work.
John
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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Trying to play or shuffle a playlist is just getting me the error "sorry, I'm having trouble accessing your House Bad skill right now". The Alexa app history correctly shows the request - any ideas? Thanks
PS is there any additional logging that can be switched on?
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@brantome,
That's an Amazon error. If you get that, it means that the skill isn't even getting the request from Amazon, so there's nothing for me to log.
Are you getting that error only for those commands?
The only errors you get from the skill itself are:
1. "There was a problem with the requested skill response." - That's a bug in the code. Hopefully there aren't any of those
2. "It took too long for the skill to response" - The request was made but Amazon didn't get any response. That could be because the server is just down, or the lag was too great (~10 seconds.)
I would write Amazon about this error, especially if it doesn't go away soon. Go to the "Help and Feedback" section in the Alexa app.
Sorry about that.
Steve
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@carlgarton
Hmm. I don't think I've ever run into that, and just tried it here and all seems okay.
All the control commands (play/pause/volume/skip, etc) act on the current zone.
I'm guessing that what's happening -- let me know if this is possible! -- is that HouseBand is controlling a different zone than you're listening to. So, it's pausing/resuming Zone 2, you're listening to Zone1, and so nothing seems to be happening.
You can ask, "What's my current Zone" to get information on that zone.
Unfortunately, there isn't a "Pause" / "Resume all" command. I'll look into whether there's a good way to add that in without recertification. Otherwise, I'll add it to the next "release."
Please let me know if it's a zone issue
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@amz
Thanks for the offer to translate! Yes, I imagine this is the bulk of the work, may the only work, that need to be done. I haven't really looked into what it takes to get a DE skill certified. (I don't even know if the responses have to be in German, or if it just needs to understand German requests.)
So I'll I can say is "we'll see" about a German release. In all honestly, it likely won't happen till summer.
First comes a google home release....
Steve
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@WeeHappyPixie
Thanks for the kinds words. And thanks for writing them, so I can understand what you're saying!
Steve
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@WeeHappyPixie
Thanks for the kinds words. And thanks for writing them, so I can understand what you're saying!
Steve
Ditto on the thanks Steve! I've really been enjoying using Houseband to integrate my JRiver setup. I just bought the Homeseer ZEE appliance and I'm in process of integrating Alexa with my Omni Home Automation system as well for lighting, etc. The two skills compliment one another very well. Immense thanks for all your hard work!
I have to say, the JR Skill is worth paying for to insure continued support and development efforts. I'm not wealthy and can't afford to throw money around. But I'm willing to pay something to insure continued sustainability of the skill! It has really contributed significant value to the JR product.
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@brantome,
That's an Amazon error. If you get that, it means that the skill isn't even getting the request from Amazon, so there's nothing for me to log.
Are you getting that error only for those commands?
The only errors you get from the skill itself are:
1. "There was a problem with the requested skill response." - That's a bug in the code. Hopefully there aren't any of those
2. "It took too long for the skill to response" - The request was made but Amazon didn't get any response. That could be because the server is just down, or the lag was too great (~10 seconds.)
I would write Amazon about this error, especially if it doesn't go away soon. Go to the "Help and Feedback" section in the Alexa app.
Sorry about that.
Steve
The experience I've had so far with Amazon tech support over Alexa issues has been very good. They have a phone number on the app you can call and talk to someone directly. Response time has been excellent. It's a lot easier to diagnose talking with someone one on one.
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@sarkonovich
Sure, will do
I can ask Houseband to create a playlist by composer x, but sometimes that can throw up a "sorry, there's been a problem" error with different composers - and even at times, the same one that worked previously.
I also get (and can repeat) the "sorry, I'm having trouble accessing your House Band skill right now" that I get when I ask for a playlist to play, when I ask it to play tracks by composer Beethoven. It reads out the 4 matching pieces (at length), and when I reply 'play all', it lists three on the JMC screen and gives the "trouble accessing" error.
Is there any commonality in the requests that are failing from a Houseband/JMC POV? Is something timing out somewhere?
I'll let you know how I get on with Amazon - I've a feeling (or am hoping) that this might resolve itself overnight as seemed to happen a week or two back in this thread
Many thanks
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@brantome
Write me at sarkonovich @ gmail dot com
The classical music search is still wonky, for sure. But I'm pretty sure I know the ways it's wonky.
I have a few questions to ask about your setup, and probably better to do it via email.
Steve
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I can ask Houseband to create a playlist by composer x, but sometimes that can throw up a "sorry, there's been a problem" error with different composers - and even at times, the same one that worked previously.
Yep. I can repeat this. The answer (for now) is not to say "the composer"...just say, "Create a playlist based on Beethoven."
It's just an utterance that I hadn't thought of and, sort of oddly, not one that Alexa can figure out given the ones that I had thought of. The fix for this sort of error requires Amazon's approval, so nothing I can do immediately.
Thanks for the report!
Steve
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I have to say, the JR Skill is worth paying for to insure continued support and development efforts. I'm not wealthy and can't afford to throw money around. But I'm willing to pay something to insure continued sustainability of the skill! It has really contributed significant value to the JR product.
At some point in the future, depending, there might be small charge. But not until I think it's really solid. For the foreseeable future, I kinda think of it as me foisting beta software on users to test for me! So, thank you.
Steve
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Yep. I can repeat this. The answer (for now) is not to say "the composer"...just say, "Create a playlist based on Beethoven."
It's just an utterance that I hadn't thought of and, sort of oddly, not one that Alexa can figure out given the ones that I had thought of. The fix for this sort of error requires Amazon's approval, so nothing I can do immediately.
Thanks for the report!
Steve
No, thank you for identifying the issue/ work round. Think what I was trying to do was specify that I wanted a composer tag match rather than an artist one, albeit clumsily.
I'll have another play with it today. Cheers
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At some point in the future, depending, there might be small charge. But not until I think it's really solid. For the foreseeable future, I kinda think of it as me foisting beta software on users to test for me! So, thank you.
I think you could charge something now. You're getting a lot of very positive feedback. In my opinion, it's worth $10 when it's solid, but it's worth at least $5 now.
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@brantome
I see. So, there's a few ways to do what you want.
1. Create a Playdoctor Playlist.
These playlists will not limit the "seed" to any particular tag. So:
"Create a Beethoven playlist"
"Make a playlist based on 'Beethoven'"
etc., will just use "Beethoven" as the key word. I'm assuming that this means that "Roll over Beethoven" by Chuck Berry could very well show up in in.
2. Do a tag search
"Play music with the tag composer beethoven"
"Play all music with the following tags: composer equals beethoven"
I actually think this is what you want.
I need to work on more/different utterances to make this search more natural. Also, it is a bit borked for now.
3. Search for all your music by Beethoven (and play all of it.)
"Play music by the composer Beethoven"
"Play music by Beethoven"
and then say, "play all" if you are given a list of what you have (or are told that you have too much to list.)
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@sarkonovich
Thanks for that - as I think I said, I don't have a great deal of classical stuff, but I think I must have just read your help file and somehow classical tag searches was the first thing to come to mind...
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So is there a way to start the playlist from where you left off or even better would be able to start it from the sequential #. Every time I start a playlist it always starts from the beginning. Am I doing something wrong?
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@TAO1857
Is that a function/ drawback of JMC or House Band? Does it do the same in both?
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well in MC I of course click on where I left off. I know this because I have last played as a field I can see. So I don't know how to answer your question. sorry
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@TAO1857
Well, you're not doing something wrong. Both "play" and "shuffle" playlist commands just load up that playlist from the beginning.
It's a function/drawback of JMC insofar as the PlayPlaylist command itself has no parameters for resuming from previous position.
However, that's not to say that there isn't a way for me to manually save the position and use that next time you ask for the playlist. I've never thought of it or looked int MCWS to see if there's a way of doing this.
Steve
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I did find a work a round for it....I open the playlist on PC look for where i want to start at and have Alexa start there and she just keeps going down the line....
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Good. And of course, you can alway pause and resume from where ever you stopped in a playlist.
I thought you were looking to play part of a playlist, go on to play other stuff, and then next time you asked to play that playlist, it would pick up where you left off.
Steve
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I thought you were looking to play part of a playlist, go on to play other stuff, and then next time you asked to play that playlist, it would pick up where you left off.
Steve
I rarely play full albums any more so I like the dsp effect of volume leveling for playlists.
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So I'll I can say is "we'll see" about a German release. In all honestly, it likely won't happen till summer.
It would be great!
BR
Dirk from Hannover
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Just for info, Amazon has just started accepting orders for Alexa devices in the "DACH" German speaking countries..
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Just for info, Amazon has just started accepting orders for Alexa devices in the "DACH" German speaking countries..
More accurately, they actually ship now. Mine should be here tomorrow.
Its a shame I can't just talk english to the thing and use the House Band skill that way, though.
Anything we could help with to get a German skill going?
While I'm here, I use Theater View a lot for movies and tv shows, it would be neat to be able to navigate around in that with voice commands.
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In all honesty, I wasn't really going to look at this until summer.
But what I can do this week is put up some of the larger translation jobs - skill description, help text, utterance samples - up on Github or something, and anyone who wants to can take a crack at starting the translation.
I haven't looked at the documentation to see if the requirements are any different than USA or UK versions, but I don't think so.
I'll post back here when that's done!
Steve
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Hi Steve, would you be able to post a list of all phrases supported? I guess that the list gets longer as you add functionality but a current snapshot would be much appreciated.
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Yes, I'll try to post that.
If you ask for help, there are now various topics you can get help with. Those topics all contain central examples that are sent to a card in the Alexa app (though, "tag search" does not work well currently.)
Steve
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If you ask for help, there are now various topics you can get help with. Those topics all contain central examples that are sent to a card in the Alexa app (though, "tag search" does not work well currently.)
Thanks for the tip about "help". At least that command works. However none of the commands described in the help syntax work. Is there some way to debug what is going wrong?
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I think the issue may be due to server authentication. I imagine that the MC token expires after some time. So there needs to be some way of using a login / password combination.
Actually Using a token is basically the same a no security at all.
In parallel I will do one tests with my HTTPS proxy server
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Thanks for the tip about "help". At least that command works. However none of the commands described in the help syntax work. Is there some way to debug what is going wrong?
Did you get this figured out? Was it an authentication problem? By "don't work" do you mean they don't work as well as you hoped or didn't work at all....
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Actually Using a token is basically the same a no security at all.
I followed the procedures outlined here:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Web_Service_Connection
Amazon wouldn't certify with using username/password without me setting up a separate website/oauth server. You can, of course, password protect the server after account linking (but authentication is still done with a token).
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Authenticate
Call the web service function: MCWS/v1/Authenticate
Provide the saved username and password if you have one.
If authentication does not succeeed, ask the user for their username and password. Then repeat.
Store the token returned and include it in all future calls.
Steve, how do get the security token for the first time? When you call MCWS/v1/Authenticate as above, you surely need to provide it with a login and a password. So where do get them from? Your Skill login page asks for the Access key but not for any authentication credentials..
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Actually, the MCWS will give the token if the server isn't password protected. After HouseBand receives the token, you can password protect the server.
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So you have to have the login and password previously stored in MC, (even though Authentication is off), in order to generate the correct token initially, and you cannot enter or edit the login/password set after you have paired the Skill with MC.
I would be interested to hear from someone at JRiver whether the token is time variant. I would expect it to be something like a hash of the login, password, and some date/time variable.
OTOH, if this so called "security" is really as rudimentary and compromised as it appears to be, then perhaps JRiver can advise why one would bother about using it at all...
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Tokens are fully randomly generated, independent of your username/password, but they do get tracked on the server and expire. They are designed as a temporary authentication mechanism to avoid sending user/pass with every single request (which would also work if you really wanted to), not as a permanent login for an app. Apps should use the username/password to request a new token dynamically.
If you have your MC accessible to the internet without any password, then only you are to blame for compromising its security, really.
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Ok thanks Hendrik for the info.
That means that the Houseband Skill must have a possibility for the user to enter (and store) a login plus password. Otherwise you would have to repeatedly disable and re enable the Skill every time that the token expires.
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It means that when the token expires, you'll have to remove authentication from the server and then launch the skill so it can get the new token. You can then re-enable authentication. There's no need to disable/re-enable the skill. (Anyway, that would also require you to disable authentication to grab the new token.)
Enabling the skill lets you provide your access code. As far as I know, that doesn't change.
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Hi Steve,
I am concerned to improve the security of your Skill, so I've been logging the Http transactions sent from Houseband to MC to see what's going on. I noticed that you are being very verbose in the use of the MCWS/v1/Authenticate command. In one log you issued that command 18 times in 90 seconds. Which seems a bit wasteful..
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I'll take a look at why it's calling that so much.
Currently I do not store the token, so it's requested every "session", that is, every time the skill is invoked. It needn't be requesting a token if the session is remaining open between requests, e.g., when the user is answering a query from the skill ("What should I play?")
I'm curious if you think it's a security concern.
As far as I know, I can either just send the auth token along with either request, or provide username/password in the header, with the token being the preferred method. And that's all there is to MCWS security. But
Steve
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I'm curious if you think it's a security concern.
No. But it seems a bit wasteful.
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It should be a bit cleaner now....
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Just wanted to let you know, the commands "Ask House Band what's playing" or "Ask House Band what song is this" no longer seem to work when my MC server is password protected. Alexa tells me she's having trouble accessing my House Band skill right now. It works fine if I turn off password protection. All other functions seem to be OK. Thanks.
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@kidtwist
Okay. It's fixed. Thanks for letting me know!
Steve
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I have been using this skill on and off for a couple of months now. Whilst the wow effect is quite cool with my friends, it is unfortunately not usable as a real user interface for MC.
The problem is that the word recognition is appallingly bad. My library comprises about 15k tracks, and with all the track titles, album names, artist & composer names etc., I suppose there is a vocabulary of the order of 100k phrases that the skill must be able to understand. And apparently Amazon is just not up to that yet.
I was thinking about how to improve that. In theory, if one could deliver the meta data set from ones MC library to Amazon in advance, then the speech recognizer could use that as a basis for improving its hit rate.
I wonder if Amazon is thinking about such a feature extension. Any thoughts anyone?
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@kidtwist
Okay. It's fixed. Thanks for letting me know!
Steve
Thanks!
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@AndrewFG
Hmm. Just my personal experience is that the recognition isn't "appallingly bad", though it isn't perfect, and is inconsistent. But generally, I can get what I want with not trouble. (For the most part, for me, the difficulties have to do with foreign names (so for classical music, yeah, it's not good).
But, obviously, your mile might (and does) vary.
However, simply adding the metadata set from your library likely won't help. The reason is that once the utterance samples get numerous enough, adding more does not help the recognition. I can't remember how many utterance samples I had for the early versions of HouseBand - but thousands. Adding more didn't help. The best recognition comes when there are few samples, and the user speaks on of them.
More and more Amazon is moving away from the model where the developer provides samples towards a model where the developer just lets Amazon know what *kind* of utterance it is (e.g., mentioning a pop artist, or the name of a US city), and then handles more and more on their end.
But I think the accuracy will continue to improve.
What would help more is not if the current tags could get uploaded to Amazon (because adding a tag like "10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄" -- a track from the recent Bon Iver album -- won't help anything.) What would be better is if music started including voice accessible tags.
I was thinking of trying to write a MC script convert tags to their metaphone equivalents automatically, create new fields for those tags, and then have HouseBand search those tags. I think this would make a huge improvement.
Steve
Steve
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Hi, since it seems that House Band is not available in Germany, I started to develop an own skill (in German and Swiss-German). I created a small JRiver Client API and a basic skill which is capable of playing music by queries and asking which Albums to play (play, pause, next... is also available). I will put all the code to Github next week (I need the weekend to polish the code )... and would be happy to find some helping hands for more functionality and more languages.... (Java code) currently I'm not sure if I will publish the Skill at Amazon, since I don't know what costs to expect... But one question to the creator of House band... is it opensource? if not... why? Is it possible that you publish your Utterance (what an ugly name) file?
Thx
Andy
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Can you configure House Band to play out of the Dot or Echo speakers that the (play something) command was giving from?
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Hi, since it seems that House Band is not available in Germany, I started to develop an own skill (in German and Swiss-German). I created a small JRiver Client API and a basic skill which is capable of playing music by queries and asking which Albums to play (play, pause, next... is also available). I will put all the code to Github next week (I need the weekend to polish the code )... and would be happy to find some helping hands for more functionality and more languages.... (Java code) currently I'm not sure if I will publish the Skill at Amazon, since I don't know what costs to expect... But one question to the creator of House band... is it opensource? if not... why? Is it possible that you publish your Utterance (what an ugly name) file?
Thx
Andy
Hello!
Currently, it's not open source but it might be in the future. I am happy to put the utterance file up on GitHub. I've been meaning to do that anyway for help getting it translated to German. A german version is happening, but I'm too busy for the next month or so to do it. After that, it's coming.
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I see you can use this to play music via the Echo by using a bluetooth stream, but is it technically possible to stream music to the Echo over WiFi? I've seen in the API they introduced streaming of audio data, but I'm not sure how flexible this is and I'm not convinced I'd get a bluetooth audio streaming working reliably on a R-PI head.
The mean reason for this just having a single audio source for both alexa and audio such that it can drop the volume of the audio when listening for instructions etc...
In this case audio quality is just fine, it's just for general music in the kitchen. I'm aware you can upload tracks to amazon, but when you have thousands already sitting on a media server next to the device, it seems crazy to have to upload and re-stream everything!
Edit:
Specifically, the new API's added in "New Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) Feature: Audio Streaming in Alexa Skills". You'd need the head to provide a streamed WAV as an audio output and play this on the Echo.
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The real difficulty with this is that for audio streaming directly to an Alexa device, the audio file must be hosted on an HTTPS site, and be (I think) publicly accessible. So, you'd need to be able to access the file with a simple call like:
https://my-audio-hosting-site.com/audio/sample-song.mp3
Obviously, JRiver doesn't make your files accessible like that. I don't know what would be required to write a skill that would stream your own music library directly to Alexa, but I suspect it would not be easy. And it wouldn't be a skill that was publishable - it would have to just be a private skill.
Steve
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The real difficulty with this is that for audio streaming directly to an Alexa device, the audio file must be hosted on an HTTPS site, and be (I think) publicly accessible. So, you'd need to be able to access the file with a simple call like:
https://my-audio-hosting-site.com/audio/sample-song.mp3
Obviously, JRiver doesn't make your files accessible like that. I don't know what would be required to write a skill that would stream your own music library directly to Alexa, but I suspect it would not be easy. And it wouldn't be a skill that was publishable - it would have to just be a private skill.
Steve
Apparently, if you wrap the http url in a .m3u file served from https, it will work.
I'm currently building the equivalent skill for controlling Squeezebox devices (www.hab-tunes.com (http://www.hab-tunes.com)) and while I haven't tried this yet, i'll be doing so fairly soon and will let you know. It would be even better if you could include a local network address - we'll see!
Peter
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@meep
Yes! Let me know how this works out. I'd be most interested if there were some way to do this for a public skill. (Personally, I'm happy to just use Spotify, etc., to stream music through the Echo.)
Steve
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Does this work in the UK? Just bought an Echo for this feature. Cheers
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Sorry just saw on previous page there is a UK version.
Thanks :)
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I just bought an Echo dot and am trying for 2 days to get House Band to set up. When I submit my access code this is what I get:
Linking Failed. Cannot reach JRiver Media Center at http://71.88.54.147:52199 or http://71-88-54-147.dhcp.nwtn.ct.charter.com:52199 Your Library Server is not accessible from outside your home network. Please ensure that your server is running and accessible from outside your home network.
You might need to enable port forwarding on your router.
Instructions for enabling port forwarding can be found here: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Network_Access
I have a NetGear Nighthawk R8000 router and we haved tried everything to enable port forwarding but cannot get it to work
Please help ?
Thanks
Tom
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If you're on the same network, then you don't need port forwarding. There may be a firewall problem.
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I have the firewall turned off On my Mac . Is there also a firewall on the router?
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I can't find any other program or application that would have a firewall
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I couple basic things just to double check:
Make sure you're forwarding the port for the correct IP address, i.e., the address of the device running Media Center.
Also, make sure that you're forwarding the right port, e.g., you didn't change the default port of 52199.
Steve
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Hi
I cannot seem to be able to link the skill to my Media Server at all. Port forwarding is working and I can see my library from an external location:
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:52199/Panel/
I get no errors at all on the Alexa App on my phone; I enter the 6-digit code and it simply reverts back to the "house band" skill page.
How can I see where the issue lies?
I am in the UK. Perhaps this is why?
Cheers
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I really should wait before posting....
Note it did not work on my phone but I could successfully link the account using Edge on Windows 10 (after logging in to my Amazon Account).
Perhaps just an incompatible browser on my Android device.
Sorry!
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Hi Steve
Here's what I've got. I'm trying to create an open port through our netgear router. In the port forwarding tab I can only specify an internal port, an external port and an internal ip address. What should I put in them? I run MC on my Mac. I use Gizmo on an android tablet and I play my music through a Bel Canto RefStream which sits on my network with it's own IP address.
Thanks
Tom
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Ok I got it up and running. So far it does not recognize songs very well and it wont play playlists. Ill search through this thread. pretty sure there are some answers for that.
Do I have to say "open house band " before each command?
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There are some instructions here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=15326.msg717359#msg717359
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Ok I got it up and running. So far it does not recognize songs very well and it wont play playlists. Ill search through this thread. pretty sure there are some answers for that.
Do I have to say "open house band " before each command?
In short, yes. But I think it's easier to say, "tell house band to play..."
Feel free to pm if you are having troubles with particular artists/playlists.
For playlists, recall that they should be named something "voice-recognizable". A playlist called "d-best" songs or something like that is going to be hard to recognize. (Though HouseBand does look up playlists roughly phonetically.)
Steve
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Thanks Steve.
I worked with Alexa a lot today and had better luck. It seems the more she learns your voice the better she gets. I'll mess with it for a few days and then let you know what's still not working. Today some of the playlists were recognized. Some songs she just couldn't get no matter how many times I tried but maybe in a few days that will get better. I used the Alexa voice training program and that seemed to help too.
Tom
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I recently purchased Echo, tried to Link Account using House band but got the linking Failed message. Have tried reading through all of the posting about port forwarding; accessed my router (ASUS RT-AC68U) but not sure I have done it correctly? What goes in each of the fields: Service Name (?), Port Range (?), Local IP (internal I assume) Local Port (52199), Protocol (?)
I have tried multiple times with same effect; using Norton Security Suite disabling Firewall (temp) with same errors! I am a novice so this is beyond my knowledge of networking; really need a step-by-step; a "Setup for DUMMIES" as it were. Can someone help!
Randy
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Just tried this out and it works sometimes. I am finding that MC 22 freezes a lot and just says 'waiting' until I kill the process in task manager and restart. MC has not frozen in ages for me until now. It seems to do it when Alexa can't initially find something and then after a few more tries it works. If I get it right the first time, MC seems to play reliably.
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I'm not having any luck getting this set up on my Mac Mini Server. I've tried port forwarding using 99.1.47.2 which is my external IP and 52199 as the port to both local Mac Mini IPs setting both TCP and UDP connections to forward any external use of port 52199 to the MAC IP address.. I've checked and I can link to my JRiver MC 22 server on the Mac via the local network with JRemote but not via the internet. I've turned off the Mac firewall and still no luck. Since this is a Mac I don't have to worry about the Windows specific issues.
Any suggestions? I'm running an AT&T U-Verse router (2-Wire) and it doesn't appear it's restricting access to specific MAC addresses. I've also made sure to restart the router.
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How do zones work with house band and JRemote? I can tell JRemote to switch to a zone and play music on it. It if I then tell house band to play different music, it plays it on a different zone.
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I'm not having any luck getting this set up on my Mac Mini Server. I've tried port forwarding using 99.1.47.2 which is my external IP and 52199 as the port to both local Mac Mini IPs setting both TCP and UDP connections to forward any external use of port 52199 to the MAC IP address.. I've checked and I can link to my JRiver MC 22 server on the Mac via the local network with JRemote but not via the internet. I've turned off the Mac firewall and still no luck. Since this is a Mac I don't have to worry about the Windows specific issues.
Any suggestions? I'm running an AT&T U-Verse router (2-Wire) and it doesn't appear it's restricting access to specific MAC addresses. I've also made sure to restart the router.
This might help:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Network_Access
It appears from your description that you're trying to set up access from the Internet (outside your LAN). Is that correct? No router changes would be required if you're connecting from your LAN only.
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No matter what I try, I cannot get House Band to recognize 'pharcyde'. I have tried renaming the artist and playlists to 'far side' 'farside' 'pharside' etc.. and it still doesn't work. If I just ask Alexa to play pharcyde, without house band invocation, Alexa plays from Amazon correctly.
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Funny, I put on the pharcyde on Alexa last week no issues.
I think it did get mixed with some other punk or ska band named Far Side
Sent from my EVA-L19 using Tapatalk
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No matter what I try, I cannot get House Band to recognize 'pharcyde'. I have tried renaming the artist and playlists to 'far side' 'farside' 'pharside' etc.. and it still doesn't work. If I just ask Alexa to play pharcyde, without house band invocation, Alexa plays from Amazon correctly.
I'll note this and add it explicitly to the list of artists next time update (should be in the next month or so.)
You might want to say something like, "ask houseband to play music by pharcyde" or "the band pharcyde." This actually seems to help Amazon's voice recognition by giving it a context.
Alexa's voice recognition is, for the most part, out of the control of developers. But it's clear that it depends heavily on context.
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How do zones work with house band and JRemote? I can tell JRemote to switch to a zone and play music on it. It if I then tell house band to play different music, it plays it on a different zone.
HouseBand just uses MCWS requests. To set the zone it looks up the zone id by name and sends a set zone command:
[server_address]/Playback/SetZone?Zone=[id]&ZoneType=ID&Token=[server_token]
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Right, but my issue is during playback, not setting the zone. Zone switching works fine when I tell house band to switch. The issue is that, for example today even, I was playing music through a specific zone and when I asked house band to change the volume, nothing happened. So I then asked house band to change the zone to the current one already playing, and then when I asked it to change the volume, it worked properly. It seems like house band is getting confused with what the active zone is. Can that be fixed?
Also I've had some other issues with not recognizing certain artists and words. Examples:
1) AC/DC - no matter how I spell it in JRiver, house band won't recognize it.
2) Dave Matthews Band - I've tried even just doing Dave Matthews and it still won't work.
3) Listen to the music - I have a playlist titled this and house band only recognizes the word 'listen'
When I initially installed house band as a skill I was able to see cards in the Alexa app and could tell it if she heard me properly or not. Now I don't see those cards pop up at all. I've tried disabling and renabling the skill, but that did not help. I've also done quite a bit of voice training. Alexa for the most part recognizes most music related commands I play through amazon music, but many similar commands are not recognized by house band.
I'm happy to discuss via PM and happy to donate if that would help! I really like where house band is headed if I can overcome these issues. Thanks for your help!
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@datdude
Thanks for the feedback. I will re-enable the feedback cards. In the last round of certification Amazon told me to remove them because they contained "code references." This was because I returned the actual search string and it had square-brackets. I fought with them about this for a bit, but it was easier to just get rid of it. I'll put it back....and see if they notice.
I'll take a look at these other things and let you know if I can find some helpful tips.
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Rad, thank you, sir! ;D
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@datdude
I went back to check on these things and this is what I found.
Currently, you should be getting a card in the app whenever a search fails (so you can see what happened) and whenever the search returns multiple results. I didn't change anything, that is the current behavior
I can play AC/DC with the request: Play songs by AC/DC. Occasionally it hears "a CDC", but it usually works.
You're right about the zone behavior. Maybe there is a better way to do it. But there could be several active zones and controllers, e.g., someone is listening to something on the phone with Gizmo and someone else through the stereo controlling it with the laptop. Alexa is just another controller....
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Currently, you should be getting a card in the app whenever a search fails (so you can see what happened) and whenever the search returns multiple results.
I am now seeing cards for multiple results, but not for when alexa says "i couldn't find...".
I can play AC/DC with the request: Play songs by AC/DC. Occasionally it hears "a CDC", but it usually works.
When asking to play 'songs' by AC/DC, house band finds multiple results, but when asking to play the playlist 'AC/DC', house band says it cannot find it. I have many playlists setup that only play certain songs by each artist, and house band plays most of them, except for a few.
But there could be several active zones and controllers, e.g., someone is listening to something on the phone with Gizmo and someone else through the stereo controlling it with the laptop. Alexa is just another controller....
Interesting. So JRemote is a controller, and there is a setting to tell it to follow the server. Could that be the default behavior for house band? Maybe others wouldn't like that though... Is there a setting in MC to tell all controllers to follow server zone changes?
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I am now seeing cards for multiple results, but not for when alexa says "i couldn't find...".
Hmm. So, if you ask for a band that you don't have any music for ("Alexa, play songs by motorhead") you don't get a card like this:
Search String(s) Used:
[album artist (auto)]=Motörhead
That's a result I just copied and pasted from a search I knew would turn up nothing.
When asking to play 'songs' by AC/DC, house band finds multiple results, but when asking to play the playlist 'AC/DC', house band says it cannot find it. I have many playlists setup that only play certain songs by each artist, and house band plays most of them, except for a few.
Let me look into that. So, if I create an AC/DC playlist and ask for it, HouseBand can't find it. If I look in request history of the Alexa App, it shows that the request was understood correctly ("Play my ac/dc playlist.") So, that looks like a HouseBand problem.
Interesting. So JRemote is a controller, and there is a setting to tell it to follow the server. Could that be the default behavior for house band? Maybe others wouldn't like that though... Is there a setting in MC to tell all controllers to follow server zone changes?
I'll look into that.
I just turned in my grades for the end of the year, so I can turn my attention to this once again, including maybe, getting the German version going and finishing the port to Google Home.
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So, if you ask for a band that you don't have any music for ("Alexa, play songs by motorhead") you don't get a card like this:
Search String(s) Used:
[album artist (auto)]=Motörhead
That scenario works. I was just trying playlists, and using the AC/DC example, no card is shown.
Thanks for looking into the other issues! Good luck in getting your other projects done!
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That scenario works. I was just trying playlists, and using the AC/DC example, no card is shown.
Thanks for looking into the other issues! Good luck in getting your other projects done!
Yeah, I never implemented cards for playlists. Weirdly (well, not that weird) recognition of band/artist names is worse for playlists than songs/albums. My theory, without much evidence, is that the recognition depends a lot on context, so if you say "Play songs by..." the Amazon AI is more likely to return, e.g., AC/DC. If you say, "Tell me about AC/DC" it might be more likely to guess you said, "a CDC" or something like that. Asking for a playlist doesn't seem trigger a "music" context.
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All,
Now that summer is here, I want to take another run at improving HouseBand.
I would love it if people who have specific, repeatable problems with the app pm me and let me know. In order of importance, I'd love feedback on:
1. Features that should work but don't, at least, not reliably -- *other* than recognition problems
2. Recognition problems! (Band/Artist/Composer names that you think really should work, but don't, i.e., not the symbol for the musician formerly known as prince, or Sigur Ros song names....)
3. New Feature requests.
Recently, Amazon has introduced real Beta Testing for skills, so I wouldn't mind if people want to be guinea pigs and Beta Test the new version once it comes around.
PM me if you can help out!
Thanks,
Steve
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Sorry for being stupid, but trying to understand how this works before trying to install. It appears that the connection between the computer and the Echo has to be over bluetooth, and will not work over wifi? That certainly means much lower quality, and I don't see an advantage over just connecting my phone with the Echo.
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Yes, the skill isn't really meant to play music through the Echo. You can do that via any number of streaming services.
It's a voice interface for JRiver Media Center.
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Steve, take a look over on the beta forum; at the top of the forum, there is a new feature planned for MC23 that will a) interest you, and b) you will want to support..
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@AndreFG
I see it. Thanks!
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Did something happen to house band on the backend? As of a few days ago house band stopped responding to pretty much any command for me.
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Nope. Nothing.
I just gave it three quick searches/commands, and it worked.
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I disabled the skill and then linked it back up and everything is working again. Any particular reasons why that might happen so I can avoid that in the future?
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@datadude,
It has nothing to do with my end. I've heard complaints before on the developer's forum that the echo can start getting bad at recognizing it's wake word, and a power cycle on the device helps.
But, I can't explain this. (Also, Amazon is constantly tinkering with the voice-recognition model, so recognition might change without me doing anything.)
I haven't touched the code in quite a while....
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Ok. No worries, it's working perfectly now!
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The real difficulty with this is that for audio streaming directly to an Alexa device, the audio file must be hosted on an HTTPS site, and be (I think) publicly accessible. So, you'd need to be able to access the file with a simple call like:
https://my-audio-hosting-site.com/audio/sample-song.mp3
Obviously, JRiver doesn't make your files accessible like that. I don't know what would be required to write a skill that would stream your own music library directly to Alexa, but I suspect it would not be easy. And it wouldn't be a skill that was publishable - it would have to just be a private skill.
Steve
Hi, have you seen this? Seems to play media directly to your Echo from local files/ iTunes library...
https://www.mymediaalexa.com/
Cheers
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Just reporting two issues (not sure if they've already been mentioned), regarding playing TV shows, but possibly in all formats since it appears to be a query issue.
1) The queries don't like leading zeroes.
2) If a number is in the show, it the query uses a numeral instead of text and fails.
In the case of a show like 'One Piece', there are 19 seasons and close to 800 episodes (and growing). I tend to keep the tags of the show like:
Series = One Piece
Season = 01,02,03...19
Episode = 001,002,003...800
Title = "text"
As an example, when I have "Alexa, ask House Band to play episode forty seven season one of One Piece", the search string is:
[episode]=[47" [media sub type]=[tv show] [series]=[1 piece" [season]=[1"
This fails because the episode is numbered 047 and the season is 01 and the series is One Piece.
When I remove the leading zeroes (tested with a different show because of the 1 vs One issue), it does work properly.
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@Vissian
Thanks. I'll take a look.
Steve
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@brantome
Thanks! I'll take a look!
Steve
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Steve / brantome
It sure does seem possible to play local tunes to any nearby Alexa device via the 'My Media' skill. I tried it from several different rooms with echos or dots in them and it played to that room without any difficulty (or configuration). I just installed My Media last night. It took over 12 hours to index 110K files, but it got through them and mostly works as advertised - It IS nice to be in any room with an echo and just say 'Alexa, ask My Media to play some Tom Petty'. It works well for albums & genres as well.
Unfortunately, it fails when asked for a particular song and only does itunes playlists, so pretty limited functionality. They did get the 'hard' part working well, though, so I'm hopeful that House Band might eventually learn this trick...
Steve - you should really put a "tip jar" up so we can encourage you :)
Wm.
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William-NM / Brantome
I downloaded it and it does work well! Maybe I'll poke around and see if there is an easy way to use MC to do the same thing.
Steve
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Feature request.
I'd love it if you could queue up a "connected media" website via voice. I've loaded in several pandora stations each as their own option in the connected media tree.
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Looks good!
Is there a plan to translate it to German?
I use the German skill store and house band is not available there.
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I have two Echo dots. I have downloaded JRiver Media Centre to my PC and it looks great. I only want it for mp3 files. I have downloaded the My Media Center onto my PC. I have set up the House Band and the My Media skills on the Alexa skills page. What I need now is how to get Alexa to select the music and play it on the Dot and not my PC. Can someone please help me.
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I have two Echo dots. I have downloaded JRiver Media Centre to my PC and it looks great. I only want it for mp3 files. I have downloaded the My Media Center onto my PC. I have set up the House Band and the My Media skills on the Alexa skills page. What I need now is how to get Alexa to select the music and play it on the Dot and not my PC. Can someone please help me.
That is not what House Band was designed to do. It is designed to play the media from your PC not to stream to your Dots.
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Thanks Moe, that has cleared up one issue. Can I use the My Media skill to play JRiver Media Center on my Echo Dot. If so can you please give me some guidance on how to set it up. I have activated the My Media skill on Alexa and have downloaded My Media on to my PC. The My Media on my PC appears to be doing a similar job to JRiver Media Centre but it does not appear to let me set up my own meta tags for the files. It looks as if JRiver would be better for my project if I can get it to play on my Echo Dot.
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Sorry, I have no experience with the My Media skill.
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Do you think you'll ever add integration with Amazon Echo Show (https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-MW46WB-Introducing-Echo-Show/dp/B01J24C0TI)? I would LOVE to be able to display album art, artist, song, album, etc. on the Show while listening to music.
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Moe,
Yes, I think I will. I've updated some other skills for the show, so I HouseBand will happen.
What I'd really like to do is use the Show's touch screen to select from a list when there are multiple results, change zones, etc.
Steve
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Sounds great!
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Is there a plan to translate it to German?
I use the German skill store and house band is not available there.
A German translation would be appreciated. I saw the release was planned for after summer.
I'm sure everyone here would be happy to help.
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I'm sorry....I was optimistic.
I am currently involved in a German release for another skill of mine (Big Sky - try it! You'll like it!). And it's a lot of work, all my fault, because I didn't write it with localization in mind. However, I am going to take what I learn from that and try to get to HouseBand.
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Hi Guys,
I must say I was very chuffed to find out that my JRiver media centre could work with my Amazon Dot.
Clearly you've done a lot of hard work to get it working, I take my hat off to you, sir(s).
One tiny question on the "link account" mechanism:
I'm not awfully keen on opening ports on my firewall, especially when both the Dot and the MC are on the same LAN, and my ISP insists on changing my outside IP Address on a regular basis. So there's a security issue and a performance one if the music has to go through the firewall & router & then back in again (even if that would work, which I doubt).
Can't it find it on the local LAN? / Is that port forwarding a permanent setting? / Does it stop working every time BT change my IP Address?
Oops that's three Q's - sorry ;-)
Thanks in advance.
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Hello @elsalvador99
Unfortunately, you do need to open the port to access your Media Center from outside your network. Though both the Dot and JR MC are on the same network, the HouseBand skill is not. It's hosted in the cloud, so it needs a way to get information to/from the dot.
However, you will not lose access every time your ISP changes your IP address. The 6-letter access code is used to locate your personal Media Server. As long as the relevant port is open, you don't have to worry about the WAN IP address.
However, if you password protect your server, then HouseBand uses an authentication token used to gain access to your server. That token eventually expires (though I don't know after how long.) In that case, you do have to re-link HouseBand to Media Center so it can get the new access token.
Thanks for the kind words about HouseBand!
Steve
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Hi Steve,
Ooh, that's really interesting.
Let me explore some of those details...
Dot can find houseband easily, regardless of outside IP Addr, but Houseband has to connect to JriverMC, so needs the ports forwarded.
ISP changes the IP Address, so the source IP of the Dot probably tells Houseband the new IP & therefore HB knows where to go back to...is that correct?
Is/are there a (number of?) hostnames for the houseband cloud servers so I can put some semblence of protection on my firewall?
ie "allow port forwarding but only from these source addresses/network"?
I'm pretty nervous about blanket port forwarding for anyone since the Synology cloud storage "security updates" (to stop ransomware breeches apparently).
My firewall's constantly being port scanned, so something is always waiting to try to take advantage. Even if it's not able to break in, it's still hitting my PC.
Thanks - really interesting stuff.
SDD
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Hi Steve,
Did some experimenting (packet captures etc).
Success! Looks like it's worked.
The firewall rule was quite obvious, silly me!
For reference:
source address = sarkonovich-2.elasticbeanstalk.com
source port = any
dest port = tcp-52199
dest IP = <your-jriver-mc>
That's (almost) as secure as it can be, but it's way good enough for 99.9% of peeps.
I was surprised that the MC played the album, rather than the dot - as I'd expected, but it's an excellent start!
Thanks for all the efforts, much appreciated.
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I'm glad that's all figured out!
Note, though, that if you limit the source address to just the one associated with HouseBand, you won't be able to use Gizmo or the other JRiver apps remotely. (For example, I use JRiver Gizmo to stream my music to my phone when I'm driving.)
Steve
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Hi I have the House Bound skill up and running since the start and it seems to be getting better with Alexa. But trying to get JRiver Gizmo to work outside my network is proving to be more problematic. I have opened a port on my router for houseband 51299 gizmo works perfectly in my own network but when I switch off wifi on my phone and enable 4g on my phone it says error communicating with server. I have tried all that JRiver has laid out about networking on their wiki. Cant seem to get beyond this. I would love to be able to use this in my car any ideas?.
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I'm not sure why, but the House Band skill is not working for me. It shows it playing on the server side, but is completely silent on the echo. Maybe it needs certain settings for the dlna streaming to work?
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I don't think it will play on the Echo. It controls MC.
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I don't think it will play on the Echo. It controls MC.
Oh, that's disappointing. I thought it played on the echo, especially since nothing came out of my speakers when it started playing (maybe my headphones were plugged in).
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Hi Steve
Not sure whether or not it has been covered in this thread, but I'm having trouble getting the music to play through different zones using voice commands. If I ask Alexa what my zones are she tells me no problem. If I then ask her to change zone she says she cant find any of my zones. The only way I can get my music to play in a specific zone is to select it in JRiver on the PC then ask houseband to play music. Only then will the music play through that zone
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Try the Zoneswitch topic on our wiki. It may be useful.
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ok thanks, I'll have a look
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Thanks for this skill, a real treat.
Question: what would be the fastest way to "Play (shuffled)" a specific view or the entire library?
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Sarkonovich, I was just wondering if you've started doing anything with the Echo Show. I've got a Show now and would so love for House Band to display cover art and other stuff.
House Band is easily my most used skill on my Echo.
Cheers
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Love this skill. Nice work.
Any plans for a Google Home version?
(Sorry if already asked.)
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ok thanks, I'll have a look
@Reckit,
Sorry, I've been off these boards for awhile. If you're still having trouble with switching zones, send me an email at sarkonovich at gmail dot com
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Love this skill. Nice work.
Any plans for a Google Home version?
(Sorry if already asked.)
A while back I started work on it....and got pretty far. But really, in the limited time I have to spend on this (which has been no time lately), I will continue to work on Alexa.
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Sarkonovich, I was just wondering if you've started doing anything with the Echo Show. I've got a Show now and would so love for House Band to display cover art and other stuff.
House Band is easily my most used skill on my Echo.
Cheers
@Moe,
Well, Show support is on high on the list, once I get the time to dive back in.
Cover art, select by touch, etc.
First, though, is support for https.
Second, figure out if https support can be leveraged into playing through an Echo device.
Third, better recognition...etc.
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A while back I started work on it....and got pretty far. But really, in the limited time I have to spend on this (which has been no time lately), I will continue to work on Alexa.
I hear you. Have an amusing workaround for playlists. I set up a google home shortcut named [playlist name] with the action "repeat after me alexa tell house band to shuffle playlist [playlist name]"
Works like a champ. Thanks again for the awesome House Band skill. Nice work.
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Does House Band work with older versions of MC (20.113)? Or, do you need to have a newer version?
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Does House Band work with older versions of MC (20.113)? Or, do you need to have a newer version?
Hello! I read some of the background you left on the other thread. Do you have multiple profiles for the Echo device? This sounds like an issue where it is linked in the app with one profile, but the device is using another.
It should work fine with older versions, I'd think.
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My wife has a profile. I installed the echo app on my phone (as well). The House Band app is on my phone (and not on her app). It is "her" Echo (in so much that she has to approve users, etc.). It appears to be letting me in, links, says success, and then repeats (the server is running fine w/ gizmo, etc.).
Are you saying she needs to install it on her end?
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My wife has a profile. I installed the echo app on my phone (as well). The House Band app is on my phone (and not on her app). It is "her" Echo (in so much that she has to approve users, etc.). It appears to be letting me in, links, says success, and then repeats (the server is running fine w/ gizmo, etc.).
Are you saying she needs to install it on her end?
You can check if you have multiple profiles by saying to the device, "Alexa, switch profiles." If you only have one, she'll say: "this device has only one registered account."
The app you are using for account linking needs to be logged into the same Amazon account that is associated with the (active profile) of the Alexa device. If you and your wife have separate Amazon accounts, that could be the problem.
The idea is that different people can use the same device, and have different skills enabled, different options, etc. Alexa is now smart enough to figure out who is talking. So, if you say, "what's my flash briefing" and another user (with a different profile) says the same thing, you will each get the custom flash briefing that you set up.
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I'm getting really excited about this, so much so that I've bought a Harmony Hub so that Alexa can switch everything on and off for me and that's all working brilliantly.
I've installed the Harmony and the House Band skill, all I need now is an Echo which are completely sold out in the Uk!
Not available until Jan 8th. They must've sold like the proverbial hot cakes here for Christmas. Must be one of the best gifts ever for £35.....
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Sarkonovich,
I have read this thread from beginning to end in an effort to get up to speed with your development of the House Band skill for Alexa. My hat is off to you. Very impressive!
I just received an Echo Dot and have only scratched the surface of its abilities. I want to put a Dot in each room in my home and use the Dots for home automation for lights, HVAC, security system and whatever else I can automate with the Dot.
I have been using MC18 for whole house audio for years on a single Zone throughout my home. I have been using Gizmo or Bubble to control the music via my Android phone or tablet and I have volume controls in each room to control the volume. I am really trying to wrap my head around how I can use the Dot to control music playback through MC18 and the whole house audio system. One Zone throughout the house is somewhat easy to figure out, but I want a Zone for each Dot in each room. How do we do this?
Alexa uses Groups as I am sure you are aware to do this for music that is streamed through the Dot. Is there a way to link MC18 Zones with Alexa Groups? I know the people on the JRiver forum community have thrown a lot of requests for features at you and you have been very gracious in trying to be accommodating. I would like to pick your brain to figure out how to marry JRiver MC and Alexa as a multi-zone whole house audio solution.
What are your thoughts?
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Alexa uses Groups as I am sure you are aware to do this for music that is streamed through the Dot. Is there a way to link MC18 Zones with Alexa Groups?
I don't think there is any way to link MC zones to groups. (Maybe if you had those new Sonos + Alexa speakers....?) No Amazon Alexa devices can be used as a zone, since they are not DLNA devices.
The only way to get HouseBand to play through an Amazon Alexa device is to connect the device via bluetooth (e.g., if you are using MC to play music through your computer, or phone, you could then connect your phone to the Echo via bluetooth.)
That's my understanding, but there might be some creative way that I'm over looking...
Steve
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Thank you Steve for this wonderful skill. I have been using House Band for a almost a week and here are some facts, issues and suggestions (in the spirit of community assistance and cooperation). Happy New Year!
Facts:
1 - My high res music collection is comprised of about 2,500 albums (26,000 songs), all properly indexed in MediaMonkey, Pioneer VSX-830 receiver, generic (XGODY) streamer with Kodi.
2 - In a vast majority of the cases House Band responds correctly and is a joy to use (as is JR MC), the more I use it the better I can get it to recognise my commands correctly and achieve positive results.
3 - Port forwarding was a bit of a struggle probably due to my outdated cable router that is not delivering the goods, placing my MC PC in the DMZ solved the problem for now (don't flame me, I have a strong firewall and as I said it is temporary).
4 - I am still figuring out how to successfully migrate my MediaMonkey library to MC, in the meantime I launch MM and load its library into MC, this works well.
5 - Kodi integration is as easy as setting up Kodi for UPNP remote control and then it appears as a player/zone in MC.
Issues:
1 - House Band would not recognize my Kodi zone until I changed the name to lowercase kodi.
2 - If I speak in a relaxed manner when requesting a zone change then for a vast majority of the cases it will not respond. If I speak quickly then for a vast majority of the cases it will respond correctly.
3 - In general it seems like House Band is a bit impatient compared to other skills I use, in House Band I always feel compelled to speak fast and fluently in order to get good results. One would think that the recognition would be better if you speak slower and with the correct articulation, but it looks like the opposite for now.
4 - Both the receiver and Kodi do not support the usage of both House Band and manual DLNA control in the same session (as is the case with Gizmo). Many times it would be more comfortable to be able to use both of them freely. For me this is important because my receiver does not support gapless DLNA push, I would like to pull gapless albums with my remote and play them gapless (like Sgt. Pepper), but using one method cancels out the other.
5 - Leading album-side and track numbers in song names is a huge issue (A2 With a little help from my friends, B1 Within you without you), for these cases it will not recognize the song names at all. A fuzzy keyword or track name search is required, if I request "the track Within you without you by the artist the Beatles" then it should recognise that most of the result qualifies the song as meeting the criteria (I would prefer getting multiple results then no result at all).
6 - The fuzzy search is also good for other cases, like when I request "play the album baby by the artist yello", I get no results because the band yello is not spelled like the color, again a search like this should result in the correct action.
7 - Pausing video playback requires the command "stop the music", not that bad but a bit weird.
Suggestions:
1 - If possible help solve the gapless push issue (receivers that can not play gapless between tracks from a DLNA push). For myself and others this is a major setback (actually considering replacing my receiver). Maybe JR can help work around this by allowing for an unused tag to be filled with the text "gapless" in order to indicate this kind of required playback. Then when an album is requested that has this tag they can fool the DLNA client to except one continuous gapless sequence of songs.
2 - Selecting between multiple results is difficult most of the time. I have quite a few multiple album versions and some of the names are long and beyond the actual album name (version technical info and such...). It would help a lot if the results can be numbered, like "choice one - Sgt. Pepper Blu-ray by the artist the beatles", "choice two - Sgt. Pepper vinyl by the artist the beatles", then I can say "select choice two" instead of remembering keywords and how to pronounce them like SACD, of MoFi.
3 - Ask JR to create a read only version of Gizmo, for now if you do anything with Gizmo or even launch it then it at some point it will take control and block the House Band usage. Who needs Amazon Show, with a read only Gizmo version you can dynamically see the album cover and song info using a tablet. Also sometimes you do not want to recall a song or album from your head but rather be inspired, flipping through album covers can help you find the next request (also helpful in cases where the recognition fails and you want to check out the correct wording for a song or album, or if you don't remember the exact name of a specific song on an album).
5 - Kodi does not remember where I left off while watching a TV series or episode after exiting exiting the player, not the position and not the episode. I presume MC can help and keep track of this in the background. If I want to watch episode 4 of season 4 of black mirror (my episodes are typically marked S4E4), then I need to say "play the TV show black mirror" and then "skip this song" four times (unless I am doing something wrong).
6 - Playing a single song is great, but sometimes you want to hear a song and the rest of the album from there onward, in this case I can request "play the sequence maxine by the artist donald fagen" so House Band will play the song Maxine and after that the rest of the album.
Thanks Again.
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Issues:
1 - House Band would not recognize my Kodi zone until I changed the name to lowercase kodi.
2 - If I speak in a relaxed manner when requesting a zone change then for a vast majority of the cases it will not respond. If I speak quickly then for a vast majority of the cases it will respond correctly.
3 - In general it seems like House Band is a bit impatient compared to other skills I use, in House Band I always feel compelled to speak fast and fluently in order to get good results. One would think that the recognition would be better if you speak slower and with the correct articulation, but it looks like the opposite for now.
4 - Both the receiver and Kodi do not support the usage of both House Band and manual DLNA control in the same session (as is the case with Gizmo). Many times it would be more comfortable to be able to use both of them freely. For me this is important because my receiver does not support gapless DLNA push, I would like to pull gapless albums with my remote and play them gapless (like Sgt. Pepper), but using one method cancels out the other.
5 - Leading album-side and track numbers in song names is a huge issue (A2 With a little help from my friends, B1 Within you without you), for these cases it will not recognize the song names at all. A fuzzy keyword or track name search is required, if I request "the track Within you without you by the artist the Beatles" then it should recognise that most of the result qualifies the song as meeting the criteria (I would prefer getting multiple results then no result at all).
6 - The fuzzy search is also good for other cases, like when I request "play the album baby by the artist yello", I get no results because the band yello is not spelled like the color, again a search like this should result in the correct action.
7 - Pausing video playback requires the command "stop the music", not that bad but a bit weird.
Thanks for the kind words about the skill.
Here's a few comments (almost all of them unhelpful!) about the issues you raise.
1. Zone searches are case insensitive. (For example, my zones are "Player" and "LIVING ROOM"). I'd guess that Amazon hears Kodi as Cody. But not sure why changing to lower case would change anything. I'll take a look.
2. & 3. Hmm. These are all about Amazon. I've actually found that speaking normally, at whatever speed, seems to yield the best results.
5. House band does use a lot of fuzzy matching - though one of the things I'd like to return to is seeing if I can fine tune this a bit. However! All the fuzzy matching occurs when some initial results are delivered. So, if HouseBand gets several matches ("I've found 5 matching items")...from that point on everything is fuzzy matched in various ways.
My own biggest frustration with HouseBand has to do with the search (especially classical, which it doesn't do well at all.)
Currently, HouseBand just sends a search string that returns all matches that *start with* with the string (in the MCWS search language, they are of the form, e.g. [Name]=[title that starts with title HouseBand tries to deal intelligently with names that begin with numbers and symbols, but yeah - if the tracks start with A1 or B2, it won't find them.
For now, however, you can do a "string search." If you say, "Play Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" instead of "Play the album....." or "play the track...." it will perform an open ended search [Name]=will match anything with these words
Steve
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Hi sarkonovich
Just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work on this skill. I've been learning how it works with a Harmony Hub, Echo Dot and my music system since Christmas. I have massively impressed myself and a good number of friends with what it can do in conjunction with JRiver.
I went into this expecting to be underwhelmed and frustrated like so many "toys" these days that barely work, but this is different. It really is truly amazing and any issues I have are due to difficult naming of some of my albums, such as having multiple versions of the same album at different bit rates (and prefixing HD192.24 and the like). I already see how to deal with that.
So a genuine thanks for your efforts to take us all in to the future. I believe you are being assisted by the developers of JRiver and I for one would like to also "buy you a drink" as we say here in the UK. Please let us know how we can make a donation just to say thanks for your hard work.
This really is a huge leap forward for JRiver and I urge anyone thinking of having a go with this to do so without delay!
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Hi sarkonovich
Just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work on this skill. I've been learning how it works with a Harmony Hub, Echo Dot and my music system since Christmas. I have massively impressed myself and a good number of friends with what it can do in conjunction with JRiver.
Thanks for the nice words! I'm glad you're liking it.
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Quick question sure it has been asked, but I need to use something other than 52199 as I am using that for another pc with jriver. My pc connected to home media is 52188. How do I change to use 52188 instead of 52199?
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I do not want to change to 52199 so want to use 52188
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In the Media Network settings, you can change the port.
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Hey Jim
Your talking JRiver Network. My point is I want the dot to recognize 52188 as the port instead of 52199. Is that possible? or am I missing something?
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I believe it's the MC port. You could try it.
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Hey Jim
Your talking JRiver Network. My point is I want the dot to recognize 52188 as the port instead of 52199. Is that possible? or am I missing something?
HouseBand should recognize it without any input on your part.
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I got it working, thanks, Jim. I need to play around with it some.
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Thanks sarkonovich. Looks good, trying to adjust, will work on it.
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Sarkonvich
Houseband is a fantastic skill for the dot.
Questions:
Is there one location that contains all the commands?
I have a need to add multiple playlists to playing now and have it shuffled.
I know you can change to another zone, etc. but the controls of playing and knowing where you are and what is in the que, etc.
Learning how to say the command to the skill has been a challenge.
I have lots of music and lots of playlists. I have learned that simple named playlists are the only way to go.
This skill could really use a lot of development as you have only scratched the surface of its capability.
You should consider charging for it so as to have the resources for additional development on the skill.
Thanks for your hard work.
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Looking to find a bit more detail instruction on how to link basic for dummies ;D
I get the message:
Linking Failed. Cannot reach JRiver Media Center at http://184.176.30.69:52199 or http://h184.176.30.69.ip.windstream.net:52199 Your Library Server is not accessible from outside your home network. Please ensure that your server is running and accessible from outside your home network.
You might need to enable port forwarding on your router.
Instructions for enabling port forwarding can be found here: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Network_Access
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Sarkonvich
Houseband is a fantastic skill for the dot.
Questions:
Is there one location that contains all the commands?
I have a need to add multiple playlists to playing now and have it shuffled.
I know you can change to another zone, etc. but the controls of playing and knowing where you are and what is in the que, etc.
Learning how to say the command to the skill has been a challenge.
I have lots of music and lots of playlists. I have learned that simple named playlists are the only way to go.
This skill could really use a lot of development as you have only scratched the surface of its capability.
You should consider charging for it so as to have the resources for additional development on the skill.
Thanks for your hard work.
So, the description of the skill in the Alexa app actually has a pretty complete list, though I guess it's not exhaustive. Also, if you say help in the skill, there are several categories of help, and I think they all send a list of relevant commands to a card in the Alexa app. (Honestly, it's been a while since I looked at that part of the code.)
You can add playlists: "Add my [playlist name] playlist"
(Basically, if you say "add" and "playlist" in the same sentence, it should try to add the playlist)
You can shuffle playlists: "Shuffle my [playlist name] playlist."
(Basically, if you say "shuffle" and "playlist" in the same sentence, it should shuffle the playlist)
But there is no way now to add a shuffled playlist, or shuffle what's currently playing. (A "shuffle this" command would be pretty easy to add.)
I agree that the skill could be developed a lot. Not only adding features, but improving basic (search) features. I do mean to get to it! And I would charge, maybe will at some point, but at this point it's just a pet project!
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Thanks for the update.
I believe it is a good app and one that lots of people will use.
Thanks for putting the time in on it.
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Looking to find a bit more detail instruction on how to link basic for dummies ;D
I get the message:
Linking Failed. Cannot reach JRiver Media Center at http://184.176.30.69:52199 or http://h184.176.30.69.ip.windstream.net:52199 Your Library Server is not accessible from outside your home network. Please ensure that your server is running and accessible from outside your home network.
You might need to enable port forwarding on your router.
Instructions for enabling port forwarding can be found here: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Network_Access
So, maybe you can say more about what's unclear?
Here is another resource about port-forwarding, that has router specific instructions for lots of models:
https://portforward.com/
(No need to buy anything from that site! Just follow their guides....)
In general, if you can connect to your server from this website, HouseBand should work:
https://jriver.com/webgizmo.html
Enter your access key, and leave the default option ('connect from outside my network')
If you're still having trouble, please let me know!
Steve
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I am able to connect at https://jriver.com/webgizmo.html
but only "from inside network." What do I need to do?
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I am able to connect at https://jriver.com/webgizmo.html
but only "from inside network." What do I need to do?
Its port forwarding again. In your router set up you need to set port 52199 to be routed to the ip address of the machine running MC.
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Got it, thanks.
Working now, but it's very clumsy. If I ask for some music, then it plays, but I can't get it to stop with voice commands.
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Got it, thanks.
Working now, but it's very clumsy. If I ask for some music, then it plays, but I can't get it to stop with voice commands.
That's not expected behavior, obviously. (Though I've noticed it occasionally on my set up.) All these should work:
"Tell house band to pause"
"Tell house band to stop"
"Tell house band to stop the music"
"Tell house band to pause the music"
"Alexa, open house band.".....then "Stop/pause/etc"
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I'm playing around with it. It does well with an artist, creating a mix just by asking to "play [artist x]." And I can get it to play an album, but sometimes I have multiple versions of the same album by the same artist, so that's difficult: it just loads all tracks without distinguishing. I guess that's to be expected. I haven't been able to get it to tell me what albums I have by a certain artist. Maybe I have too many.
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I'm playing around with it. It does well with an artist, creating a mix just by asking to "play [artist x]." And I can get it to play an album, but sometimes I have multiple versions of the same album by the same artist, so that's difficult: it just loads all tracks without distinguishing. I guess that's to be expected. I haven't been able to get it to tell me what albums I have by a certain artist. Maybe I have too many.
Have you taken a look at the instructions in the Alexa app?
If you say, "Tell house band to play the album 'Kind of Blue' ", and you have multiple versions, it will either a) list them, if you have 7 or fewer versions or b) tell you that you have too many to list, and that you can play them all by saying, "play all."
(Similar behavior occurs when you say, "Play the song 'Freddie Freeloader' ". If you have multiple versions, it will list them.)
If you just say, "Tell house band to play 'Kind of Blue' ", it will play everything (songs, albums, etc) that match "kind of blue."
So, if you are saying, "play the [album/song]...." and it's just playing all of them, let me know. I'll look into it.
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OK, I'll test it out. What are the options if there are more than 7?
So, no it doesn't work for me because all my different versions of the album Kind of Blue are named the same, but are distinguished by way of a different field name.
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OK, I'll test it out. What are the options if there are more than 7?
So, no it doesn't work for me because all my different versions of the album Kind of Blue are named the same, but are distinguished by way of a different field name.
Yeah, it will just load all of them up as if they are the same album.
However, if you remember what is in the in the field that distinguishes them, you should be able to play the album by saying the album name + the content of the distinguishing field. So, if the distinguishing field says, "SACD" then,
"Play Kind of blue sacd" should work....
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Naming albums needs some thinking about. I have quite a few duplicate albums in standard resolution and 24 bit etc. I've suffixed all the higher than cd with "Hi Res" and of course Houseband sees that as "Hires" as in hiring a car!
Not Housebands fault at all, just shows some renaming might be required to make it work consistently.
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Naming albums needs some thinking about. I have quite a few duplicate albums in standard resolution and 24 bit etc. I've suffixed all the higher than cd with "Hi Res" and of course Houseband sees that as "Hires" as in hiring a car!
Hmm. If I ask for something like, "play the album blood on the tracks hi res", Alexa hears it as "hi rez". I'll look in the code...I thought HouseBand would try out both "hi res" and "hi rez". It would be weird for Alexa to return "hires" given "hi rez."
Also, if you just say, "Play the Album Blood on the tracks" it should list both the regular and "hi res" version (assuming you have both.) Then you should be able to select "hi res" just by saying, "select hi res".
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Thanks for that, I will try it out some further today and report back. It may be my accent but Alexa seems to have problems with "Hi Res".
What would she make of "HD"?
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What would she make of "HD"?
You can always check in the alexa app. It will show you both what Alexa "heard" and, in the case of unsuccessful searches, House Band will send a card show which search(es) it performed.
I just searched for a non-existent album ("Blood on the tracks hd") and Alexa/HouseBand heard it correctly, and rendered "hd" as, well, "hd"
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This sounds like a great app - however, I'm in Canada, and am getting the "You are not eligible to enable this skill due to geographical restrictions" message. Any chance you can have it enabled for Canada? It appears to be enabled for US/UK right now (at least the language selection shows US/GB).
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This sounds like a great app - however, I'm in Canada, and am getting the "You are not eligible to enable this skill due to geographical restrictions" message. Any chance you can have it enabled for Canada? It appears to be enabled for US/UK right now (at least the language selection shows US/GB).
yes. I'll try to get around to submitting that soon.
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Hi
At the moment (and for the last few hours) I have been unable to link Alexa to Houseband. I get an "Internal Server Error" message only. Is the problem at my end or is it the Houseband server?
Thanks
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Hi
At the moment (and for the last few hours) I have been unable to link Alexa to Houseband. I get an "Internal Server Error" message only. Is the problem at my end or is it the Houseband server?
Thanks
That would be a problem with HouseBand. Has it resolved?
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Hi sarkonovich
It's a no I'm afraid. I have tried periodically over the last few days and always get the same answer.
If I purposely submit an invalid key, I see your "Linking Failed. Invalid Access Code" page, but when I submit the correct code i get "Internal Server Error".
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Hmm. I'll look at it tonight! Thanks for the heads up.
Steve
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Hi sarkonovich
It's a no I'm afraid. I have tried periodically over the last few days and always get the same answer.
If I purposely submit an invalid key, I see your "Linking Failed. Invalid Access Code" page, but when I submit the correct code i get "Internal Server Error".
Well, it works for me. Could you try it again a few times this evening? I don't think it will work, but it will be easier to find the error in the logs.
Thanks,
Steve
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Have tried again in the last few minutes a couple of times (its 6:15 am here in the UK) and same result.
Disabled and enabled the skill, same. I tried with MC server not running and got the correct error message so presumably some connection is being made.
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Now 6pm and a couple more tries - same Internal Server Error Message.
Anything else I can do or try at my end?
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Now 6pm and a couple more tries - same Internal Server Error Message.
Anything else I can do or try at my end?
No, you're good. It's timing out trying to reach your server. I'll try to figure out why that's going on - and certainly fix it to give more info when the a timeout occurs.
I'll try to fix it this evening.
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No, you're good. It's timing out trying to reach your server. I'll try to figure out why that's going on - and certainly fix it to give more info when the a timeout occurs.
I'll try to fix it this evening.
Ok, not sure when this evening is for you! I shall try in about 8 hours and report back (just tried - no change)
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I think he is West Coast U.S., so 8 hours behind you.
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Ok, not sure when this evening is for you! I shall try in about 8 hours and report back (just tried - no change)
Try it now (or, when you wake up!) Not really sure if it will solve the problem. Hoping to get lucky. (The alternative is to actually put in the time and figure it out :D )
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Sadly its no change at 0615 gmt. Am I the only person having this issue? It is strange as I had several weeks of use with no connection issues at all.
Good luck with the changes.
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@robt
Progress has been made! Let's move this to PM, but we are getting closer.
Steve
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Ok, got that.
Wont be in a position to try again for about 8 hours, I'll look out for pm...
Rob
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I might need a bit of feedback from JimH or others. The problem *seems* to be that the format of the response to a "/MCWS/v1/Authenticate" request has changed, at least in this instance.
The response is in this format:
{"Response"=>{"Item"=>[{"__content__"=>"XxxXXx", "Name"=>"Token"}, {"__content__"=>"1", "Name"=>"ReadOnly"}], "Status"=>"OK"}}
But HouseBand expects the value of "Item" to be a hash, not an array. Since that has worked up till now, it seems like something has changed.
Has there been any changes to this recently?
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Yes. I'll try to get you an answer today.
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The response to an Authenticate call is an XML package that looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<Response Status="OK">
<Item Name="Token">OeHuyCtW</Item>
<Item Name="ReadOnly">0</Item>
</Response>
It used to only return a token, now it also returns a boolean "ReadOnly" flag which indicates whether the token has full access or read-only access (0 or 1). An 'Item' in our XML Soap format has a 'Name' attribute and a value. My guess is the XML parser you're using produces different JSON output depending on whether there is a single 'Item' element or multiple 'Item' elements. With a single Item element, it creates a simple hash, if there are multiple Item elements, it creates an array of hashes. Does that sound like what you're seeing?
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The response to an Authenticate call is an XML package that looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<Response Status="OK">
<Item Name="Token">OeHuyCtW</Item>
<Item Name="ReadOnly">0</Item>
</Response>
It used to only return a token, now it also returns a boolean "ReadOnly" flag which indicates whether the token has full access or read-only access (0 or 1). An 'Item' in our XML Soap format has a 'Name' attribute and a value. My guess is the XML parser you're using produces different JSON output depending on whether there is a single 'Item' element or multiple 'Item' elements. With a single Item element, it creates a simple hash, if there are multiple Item elements, it creates an array of hashes. Does that sound like what you're seeing?
Yep. That sounds exactly right. Thanks so much!
All should be working now....
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Yep. That sounds exactly right. Thanks so much!
All should be working now....
Yep, success!
All working again.
Thanks a lot...
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Hi @sarkonovich
Can you please enable House Band in Australia for us? Amazon Alexa just formally launched here in the last couple of weeks.
Cheers
Hilton
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Hi @sarkonovich
Can you please enable House Band in Australia for us? Amazon Alexa just formally launched here in the last couple of weeks.
Cheers
Hilton
Yes, I will. It will probably take about a month after I submit it to Amazon, though....
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Hi.....excuse me if this has been covered as I didn't see it in this thread, or if this the wrong place to post.
I just bought an Alexa and added House Band.......it does work connects fine......
I have over 2000 albums in my library, but Alexa/House Band only sees 20 of them.
I asked Alexa to play "Clutch" and it did saying shuffling from your library...or something like that.
I then asked to play "Rush" and said it can not find any "Rush" in my library. The voice command and response was correct.
I then logged into my Alexa, and looked at "My Music Library" and it only shows 20 album, none of which is anything by Rush, so Alexa was correct based on what I saw.
I'm certain that I didn't do something correct, and was wondering if there was a way to see my entire library. Please note, I have about 60,000 songs in my library all tagged properly. MC has no issues with anything in my library.
Please advise.
Thanks for your time.
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@mmad29
Are you say, "Alexa, tell house band to play Rush?" Or just, "Alexa, play Rush."
HouseBand has nothing to do with your music library in the Alexa app. So, it sounds like you are actually invoking HouseBand to fulfill the request.
Steve
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@mmad29
Are you say, "Alexa, tell house band to play Rush?" Or just, "Alexa, play Rush."
HouseBand has nothing to do with your music library in the Alexa app. So, it sounds like you are actually invoking HouseBand to fulfill the request.
Steve
Yes...I am saying..."Alexa, play Rush."
I will try that when I get home this evening, as that is probably the issue.
Thanks for the quick response.......
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And just be forewarned, the music will not come out of your Alexa device, but through a MediaCenter zone.
Steve
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And just be forewarned, the music will not come out of your Alexa device, but through a MediaCenter zone.
Steve
Ah...I had my kid try it and nothing came out of Alexa.......that explains that...thanks again
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Alexa cannot launch houseband???
I ask alexa to "Alexa launch houseband"
Alexa says "sorry I am having trouble accessing the houseband skill right now"
Any thoughts?
It is linked to jriver although it appears it is in alexa?
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I'll check it out, but I'm pretty sure that's an Amazon message and has nothing to do with HouseBand.
It's working fine for me. You could try to reboot your device....
Let me know if it keeps up.
Steve
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All working now, thanks for the help.
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Will there be a german version of House Band?
(I would like to help with translation as I already did with the localisation of the Calm Radio skill)
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Will there be a german version of House Band?
(I would like to help with translation as I already did with the localisation of the Calm Radio skill)
I used to say, "yes". But now I say: I will take a look at the code and figure out how much refactoring would be necessary to get it ready for localization. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised! But, unfortunately, there are other projects that might take precedence.
I appreciate the offer of help. And if I can get it in shape to be localized, I'll definitely need some help !
Steve
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I would be plenty happy if the english skill could run on my german Echo devices, but I guess Amazon doesn't like that?
I might have asked that before and forgot the answer. :)
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Still not available here in Australia....its been a month. Any chance of chasing this up?
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I am having trouble linking House Band to my server. I have turned off Authentication, entered the code as instructed and get sent to the page that informs that HB has been successfully linked.
Then I try and launch the skill and the Echo tells me that I need to link to the server and sends another card.
I have tried restarting MC and the computer. This is happening from multiple Echoes. I guess I'll try restarting them next but what else should I try?
Edit: restarting Echoes didn't work.
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I am having trouble linking House Band to my server. I have turned off Authentication, entered the code as instructed and get sent to the page that informs that HB has been successfully linked.
Then I try and launch the skill and the Echo tells me that I need to link to the server and sends another card.
I have tried restarting MC and the computer. This is happening from multiple Echoes. I guess I'll try restarting them next but what else should I try?
Edit: restarting Echoes didn't work.
@rec_head:
Do you have multiple profiles and/or amazon accounts associated with your alexa devices. This behavior sounds a lot like what would have if you a) link HouseBand via one profile and then b) try to invoke it using another.
So, for example, if you are logged into the your Alexa App (where you do the linking) as Bob, but then your echo device is set to Sally's profile, you'll get this sort of loop.
Make sure that you are using the same profile/account all through the linking chain: in the alexa app, and on the alexa devices.
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You really know what you're talking about! It was so easy once I used my wife's phone to link it up.
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You really know what you're talking about! It was so easy once I used my wife's phone to link it up.
:) :)
Glad that fixed it!
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HTTPS Support:
HouseBand should now support HTTPS if you have it selected for your MediaServer.
You shouldn't have to do anything. It will default to HTTPS if you have it selected, otherwise use HTTP.
Please, let me know if I broke something!
I believe support of HTTPS will allow streaming your own music through an Alexa device. I'll have to look into it, but if MCWS allows HouseBand access the file like it was sitting on a file server, it should be pretty straightforward....
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So I'm new to JRiver and am having account linking woes. I've used the webgizmo page and can't connect from outside (can from inside), so as I understand it, that indicates port forwarding issues.
I looked at the router's company's webpage, and it says that port forwarding is an extra cost. My issue is that I'm living abroad for a year and internet service isn't something I have any control over. (Abroad = New Zealand, where I bought my Echoes and House Band is enabled).
Does this mean I can't use House Band while I live in this house?
Am running Linux Mint if that makes any difference.
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I'm certainly no expert, but it sounds like unless you get a different router, or pay for port forwarding, then you can't use HouseBand. It needs to be able to communicate with the media server....
Steve
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Wait. I did some digging and found how to do it.
Just one problem, and it must be a very basic one, probably with an easy fix. I tell it to play such-and-such album and it plays, but the sound comes out the laptop rather than the Echo speakers.
I just got something set incorrectly, right? Any help?
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Guess I got it. The music streams via blue tooth. I just bought a new Echo and it wasn't paired so it didn't automatically connect.
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Kevin,
Yes, HouseBand will only stream to a Zone, and most alexa devices can't be zones. So, connecting via bluetooth is the only way to go.
I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to get MediaCenter to stream to an Alexa device, but it doesn't look plausible right now.
Steve
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If anyone is out there, could someone do me a favor and just check that you can launch the HouseBand skill?
Thanks,
Steve
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Me: Alexa launch House Band.
Echo: What should I play?
Me: Taylor Swift.
..... that's all I get.
I haven't used HB much since first linking it up but I know that sequence worked in the past.
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Me: Alexa launch House Band.
Echo: What should I play?
Me: Taylor Swift.
..... that's all I get.
Thanks. I figured out the issue. I changed the skill to use HTTPS when available, but the changes caused problems with earlier versions of the skill.
So, that sequence above doesn't work. Can't remember if it ever did. You need to say "play" or "add"
- Play songs by taylor swift
- Play taylor swift
- Add songs by taylor swift, etc
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KevinP
you can export playlists from JRiver and play through the Amazon Dot (so I assume the Echo works the same way) with MyMedia for Alexa.
https://www.mymediaalexa.com/
Then just say "Alexa, ask MyMedia to play Gary's Favorites Playlist". You can shuffle, etc.
My media has 7 day trial and a yearly fee, but it does work. I have a bluetooth connect to my Dot and Alexa plays my playlists through to the Bluetooth speaker.
Hope this helps. MyMedia requires some exporting, etc, while House Band plays to zones. Great products.
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Here's an issue I've been having, possibly more lately. Bear in mind that I'm still new to JRiver in general (but have the full version now).
I tell the Echo to ask House Band to play, for example, 'A Whole New Thing' by Sly and the Family Stone. It responds that it's playing it, but what actually's coming out the speaker is the last thing I listened to.
Sometimes going to the computer, pressing stop, or closing and reopening JRiver and trying again helps, but not always.
Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?
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KevinP
That sounds like a bug to me. I'll send you a PM, since I might need your help to reproduce it / track it down.
Thanks,
Steve
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Sure. Anything I can do to help.
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Please can someone help me. I have been trying to integrate Alexa on Echo dot with JRiver but still had no positive result. I have done port forwarding in the router (JRiver seems to be fine while testing the connection to the server says you can load this server on any client by ......). I have also linked accounts on Alexa app successfully by entering Access key and it is showing account linked. However when I give command to alexa to launch houseband, it says, "I am not sure what went wrong".
I am soup trying to figure this out. If someone has a solution please email me dircetly on sourabhkum@gmail.com. I am part of a AV consultant compnay and would like to be able to provide Alexa integration to one of my Clients who needs it.
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@Sourabhkum
This is a generic Amazon error. Why don't you send me a message and we can figure it out.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
Thanks for ur post. I did send u a message few days back from my inbox but there has been no reply since. I sent it to user I'd sarkonovich. Please try to respond soon I need to complete this integration ASAP.
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Feature Request: Skip to Track number
Let's say I'm listening to an album but I get interrupted. Later in the day, I want to resume where I left off. What I want to is to be able to say, 'Computer (Alexa), jump to track 9,' whereupon it starts playing track 9 AND continues playing track 10, track 11, etc. until the album is over.
The only way I can do this now is to say, 'Computer, tell House Band to skip' eight times.
This is especially useful when albums are part of a box set where every track has the same tag, or even just large box sets of rarities, etc. I recently listened to the first disc of one such set, and it would take telling my Echo to skip 23 times to resume via House Band to continue. The Isley Brothers' Complete RCA Victor and T-Neck Album Masters is a 23-disc set preserving the original albums. If I wanted to listen to the album 'Harvest for the World,' well that's on CD #13. I'd like a way to be able to skip to there and play the whole album. (I'm pretty easygoing. If it didn't stop but kept playing the whole rest of the box, I'd still be happy.)
I know I could probably retag it, but there are many. many such tracks.
If this feature is already available, please let me know.
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That's a good suggestion. Development of HouseBand is definitely on the back burner these days, but at some point it'll shift to being more active.
Right now, yeah, if you tagged the albums with some unique identifier, you could just say, "Alexa play [tag value]", and that will work for any tag name. So, you wouldn't exactly have to re-tag. But you'd have to add some additional tags.
But you're right, there's no way to pick up from a certain track right now.
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Help needed!
I don't know what I am doing (wrong). I think I have everything setup properly, but I can't get Alexa to recognize House Band. When I ask Alexa to launch House Band the response I get back is "Sorry something went wrong". I am new to all of this, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Welcome to the forum.
Please try the instructions:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=15326.msg717359#msg717359
Maybe you missed a step.
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@JimH
Sorry but that link doesn't have any instructions. Mainly just commands. Am I missing something?
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@PapaJohn,
I'm pretty sure that 99% of all HouseBand errors have been issues with account linking.
So, the first (and usually last) trouble-shooting tip is to make sure that you can access your server from *outside* your home network. Check here:
https://jriver.com/webgizmo.html
enter your 6 letter access key and make sure that the location is "Outside my Network."
If you can connect, and you still have trouble with HouseBand, try disabling and re-enabling the skill. You should get land on a page that says: "Account successfully linked" (or words to that effect.)
If you get that far, and HouseBand still doesn't work, please PM me. But I'm betting that will fix it.
Steve
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Possible bug:
Im running JR Media 23. Randomly asking house band to continue does not work.
The most recent scenario... Ask Houseband to play all songs by Billy Joel.... she says 'too many to list'... I tell her to play all and she starts playing them like normal. I ask her to pause and continue many times and it usually works fine. But I just came inside anf asked her to continue and it didnt. She said she did, but nothing happened. I ask her what was playing and she says XXXX by Billy Joel. I turn on the monitor that is connected to the embeded computer running WIN10 and JR media...go to <now Playing> and, in fact, XXX is the song at the top, but JR is not playing it. I watch the window and ask her again to play, she says OK. Nothing happens. I manual click the play triangle in JR and XXXX starts playing through my stereo. I manually pause it.... it stops. I ask Alexa to continue, she says OK... and now JR starts playing it as it should.
This has happened a few times but in the past I have fixed it buy telling house band to play a new list of music rather than connecting a monitor and manually playing what was already in the queue.
If there is a better place to post this please let me know. Otherwise I look forward to helping fix this if needed.
T
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@thouchin
Thanks for reporting this. This has been mentioned before (and, indeed, it has happened to me.) So, I'm going to call this a known bug.
I'll try to track it down.
Steve
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Hi all,
I tried searching this topic in this thread, but I keep getting a "too many searches" response (even after the first search I do after logging in).
'Working with HB on a Dot and MC Version 22.0.7 on a PC. It (HB) can handle a number of requests successfully (play song by name, play all songs by a band, play songs containing a word), but cannot seem to find my playlists.
I'm wondering if I have to somehow "teach" the HB skill the names of my playlists so it can later find them? Or, do I have to create new playlists after setting up HB? Or maybe save them in a different location (they're listed simply under the Playlist header).
I have one list simply named "All Rock Music". I figured this would be easiest to understand, but, no luck. It can't find other simple names like "Driving Tunes", "Car Radio", "Garage" (and it repeats the names properly when it states it can't find them).
What simple thing am I missing?
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I also want to extend kudo's to Steve, our new hero ;D
very cool application!
And I see he is up in Portlandia, not terribly far from me. Maybe next time I'm up there he'll let me buy him a beer.
I tried houseband and first just using bluetooth and streaming music to my echo, but now I want the whole enchilada.
I have some pretty nice Klipsch speakers hooked up to my yamaha receiver, but unfortunately its "old school" hard wired.
So I am looking for recommendations for wireless speakers. This probably is not the best thread for the question, but I figure some of the people here have some experience with it.
I'd love to have the wireless Klipsch's but they are pretty spendy, on the other hand I hear Sono's mentioned a lot but I am not sure of the sound quality and they seem almost as expensive as the Klipsch's which I'm sure I'd love. Also concerned about limited range of bluetooth connections. Wifi would probably be better.
Does anyone have any recommendations for good wireless speakers that a financially challenged audiophile could afford?
Thanks!
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I'd love to have the wireless Klipsch's but they are pretty spendy, on the other hand I hear Sono's mentioned a lot but I am not sure of the sound quality and they seem almost as expensive as the Klipsch's which I'm sure I'd love. Also concerned about limited range of bluetooth connections. Wifi would probably be better.
Does anyone have any recommendations for good wireless speakers that a financially challenged audiophile could afford?
Thanks!
I'll split this to a new thread.
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I'll split this to a new thread.
Ok!
where will I find it?
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@perry59
Hmm. How do you request the playlist? Basically, as long as you have 'playlist' in the command it should work: "Ask house band to play my Pink Martini playlist"
I believe that if it doesn't find anything, it sends a card to the Alexa app showing you what how it searched.
Steve
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@perry59
Hmm. How do you request the playlist? Basically, as long as you have 'playlist' in the command it should work: "Ask house band to play my Pink Martini playlist"
I believe that if it doesn't find anything, it sends a card to the Alexa app showing you what how it searched.
Steve
Sorry, but I have not asked a question about playlists, at least not yet ;)
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Ok!
where will I find it?
Now it would be better if you could copy your text on speakers and use it to start a new thread on this board:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/board,9.0.html
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Now it would be better if you could copy your text on speakers and use it to start a new thread on this board:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/board,9.0.html
Ok, thanks, I'll do that
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I say "Computer, launch houseband".
The dot then asks me what I want to do and gives suggestions. Before the light goes out, I say this: "play the playlist all rock music".
I've also used the commands "launch", "run", "listen to" in place of "play".
I always state "playlist" or "the playlist" before stating the playlist name. I always get the response that it cannot find the playlist.
It CAN find songs by group name, songs that contain a word, etc., and can pause, skip, play by verbal command.
Playlists seems to be a sticking point.
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@robbnj
Hmm. Do you have other playlists? Does it fail to find any of the them?
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Having some trouble getting houseband to work.
I have tried a couple different methods to get houseband to play.
1. me: "alexa, launch houseband", alexa: "what shall I play", me: "play enya", alexa: "resuming".....then nothing
2. me: "alexa tell houseband to play enya", alexa: "resuming"....then nothing
I did forward the port and port utilities says it is forwarded. The alexa app says it is linked. However the web gizmo thingy times out when I try to connect.
I did NOT make a static IP and maybe that is a problem. there is also a bluetooth connection between my computer and the echo.
suggestions?
Thanks!
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@perry59
If it's linked and it is saying 'resuming' then I don't think it's a port forwarding issue.
Try, "play *songs* by enya"
Also, try other artists/commands: "play the album the very best of enya"
Do all of these result in the same behavior?
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in this case "enya" is a playlist, I'll try some albums or single tracks when I get home.
still curious why the webgizmo won't connect, perhaps I should set a static IP
Thanks
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well, some success.
when I asked alexa to start houseband and play "enya songs" she said too many to list.
when I told her to "play the enya playlist" that worked!
when I asked her to "play the album ten" she list several albums with number, but not that one (by pearl jam)
when I asked her to "play pearl jam" she could not find it.
I'll have to play with this some more!
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Yes, for playlists, you have to use the word 'playlist', e.g., "play my enya playlist", or "play the playlist enya"
For the last, you could try: "play the album ten by pearl jam"
Here are the rules!
If you say "play" with no modifier, HouseBand should play everything that matches that string, no matter where the terms show up (album title, track title, artist name, etc).
"play the album..."
"play the track..."
"play songs by..."
"play the playlist..."
will look for album, track, artist, playlist, respectively.
Generally, recognition is better with a modifier, because Amazon's AI is contextual. So if it hears keys music-related words, it will be biased toward artists, albums, etc.
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I'm learning, thanks!
she has trouble with "ten" by pearl jam I think because it is spelled out, not the number 10
so she started listing all my albums with a number in the title like 1984 by van halen, 2112 by rush, etc.
pretty cool though, I'll get the hang of it ;D
Thank!
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Hi,
Just a couple of quick questions that may or may not have been answered already (sorry if that's the case):
1. Will this work on the Sonos One (the one with the integrated Alexa support)?
2. Will this work with a JRiver Id on my home network to play on Sonos speakers around my home?
Thanks in advance!
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OK, So I took a (stupid) chance and purchased J River Media Center. Apparently, Houseband doesn't like Canadians.
It's been since this app has been out and we're still being neglected? I paid just as much for this ... s any American, as well as the same price for MC. I...
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Sorry. House band is not affiliated with JRiver. It's a 3rd party app that I really wrote for myself and offered to the community here. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to actively develop it lately, so it's not available yet Canada (or Australia, or India.)
There have been several requests from Canadian users on this board that have made me want to put in the effort to release it in Canada. But I'm pretty sure it will happen anyway.
The folks at JRiver have been kind enough to offer some space here (like they do for other 3rd party plugins, skins, etc.) for me to do a bit of troubleshooting.
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Edited rude comments above.
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TRIGGER WARNING :P
Sorry. House band is not affiliated with JRiver. It's a 3rd party app that I really wrote for myself and offered to the community here. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to actively develop it lately, so it's not available yet Canada (or Australia, or India.)
There have been several requests from Canadian users on this board that have made me want to put in the effort to release it in Canada. But I'm pretty sure it will happen anyway.
The folks at JRiver have been kind enough to offer some space here (like they do for other 3rd party plugins, skins, etc.) for me to do a bit of troubleshooting.
@Sarkonovich: Your efforts are appreciated by many, I'm sure, and they would be greatly appreciated by Canadians. Far too many times we're left in the dark and I'm fed up with it. Sorry for any misdirected rage. ;)
Did you know we still don't have "follow up mode"? What's it been since it was released? A YEAR?? Unreal. Anyway, the sooner you can look at that, the better (if you can find the time)! I'm sure it's not even a real issue since we are basically just an extension of the US if you ask me anyway. The only difference is that one province here is primarily French-speaking, but that's no reason for Amazon to stall Alexa plugins. It baffles me as to how this feature is not baked into J River as a basic feature! We aren't playing vinyl here!!!
P.S.- Thanks, Jim, for editing my comment in favor of making me look like a disjointed idiot. Good thing you can't edit all the forums. ;|
(disclaimer: this comment may have been edited to reduce hurt feelings and/or put J River Media Center in a better light.)
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@VenoM
I should know more about this, but I know you can access the US store by changing your language settings to EN-US in the companion app. Also know this has some downsides (e.g., cannot access prime music for a Amazon.ca account), but maybe this the tradeoffs are worth it?
You can also assign two profiles two the device, which I think can each be associated with accounts from different regions. Then you can just say, "Alexa, switch profiles" to access the different stores. (I'm not really sure about this last one.)
Steve
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Thanks for your response, Steve.
The problem with that is that I will not be able to use the device for weather forecasts, which is one of my primary uses. Switching profiles will greatly degrade the convenience of the device and make it a pain to use, in effect. It's already a hassle to get the syntax correct in many cases.
Also, I understand how difficult it can be to find the time to work on these "non-essential" projects. Perhaps you could consider a modest usage fee? I'd be willing to pay for it if it weren't for the bad taste in my mouth over my dealings with Jim. I'll be looking for other solutions in all probability.
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Just use Big Sky. It's way better, and completely location agnostic. You can set your default forecast for anywhere, then just say "Alexa, big sky."
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I do, but I wasn't aware of that shortcut. Thanks!! Pretty cool.
(above post edited before our last two responses)
The only drawback with that method is that I'll get erroneous information if I ask more natural questions, like "What's the temperature outside".
Guess it's not a huge deal though. Just another annoyance.
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Hi Steven, I was just wondering if you could clarify what's involved in making this available in Canada. I've been very curious about this for a while now. If it's not too tricky and you think there is a good chance that you'll get around to setting whatever variable needs changing at some point ;) , I won't bother continuing with the chargeback services dispute that I initiated with my credit card company for a refund for the software. "Houseband" was the main reason I chose to purchase the software. JRiver has some nice features, but the vast majority I would never use.
Thanks in advance for the info.
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It's been a while since I posted here. Just wanted to bump this in case you forgot about this thread.
Thanks
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@VenoM
Sorry I dropped the ball on this. Resubmitting it for approval in CA is easy. However, there is a 99.99% chance it will be rejected for various reasons, and it's at that point that things will take a awhile to address. So, I haven't resubmitted it because I know that when it gets bounced in a couple weeks, I won't have the time to fix the things that need fixing.
I wish I had something more helpful to say. I do fully intend to get back to this project, especially in light of the new Music Skill API that they've just released. But, in all honesty, it likely won't be until the summer.
I'm sorry. It's just a question of time!
Steve
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I understand and it wasn't my intention to hound you. I can totally relate to your lack of free time.
I'm really just curious about the differences between the US version and the Canadian one. I can't understand what would be so different about them. After all, we speak the same language and consume the same media even. Really puzzling.
Thanks for your reply.
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No worries. Actually, a little hounding is good!
There is no difference between CA and US at all. (Actually, there can be: there are features that can be used in US but not in CA, but this isn't the case for House Band.)
All the same points apply for resubmitting the skill for US. The process is a bit haphazard. If I submitted the skill and it passed, then turned right around and resubmitted, it very likely would fail. It can be a frustrating process!
Steve
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One big difference is that Canada has two official languages and Amazon probably has to make sure the service is available in French and English before it is launched here.
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The Alexa service is launched in Canada, in both English and French. (These require separate certifications.)
Steve
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I sure as hell hope that this won't require you to learn French! ::)
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So.... I got my new Echo Dot and House Band set up tonight. It works. Sort of. It successfully follows enough commands to assure me that I've set it up right. But beyond that, it's not performed well. I have 3 zones set up and it won't recognize my requests to change them. I even went as far as renaming the troublesome zone to a different name. It would tell me that Greatroom was one of the zones, but it didn't like me asking for it. I changed it to Main. Surely that would be easy to understand (and a real word!). Alas, it didn't work any of the dozen or so times I tried it. Similarly, it's been pretty horrible at getting to the right CD. When I requested of Alexa that she "Ask House Band to play Surfing with the Alien by Joe Satriani", she had no clue what to do. AC/DC didn't work. "For Those About to Rock" didn't work. "Dorina" didn't work. A lot more didn't work, than did. Does the Dot (or House Band) have to get used to my voice? Is there something else I need to do? Thanks.
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@Reddy Kilowatt
Sorry to hear about the experience. I need to go back and fine tune the voice model.
However, generally recognition is better if you use a command like:
"Play the album X by y"
"Play the song X"
etc.
I definitely remember testing on AC/DC a lot!
Did you go through voice training after the set up? (I think there is still voice training in the app.) That helps recognition.
Steve
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@Reddy Kilowatt
Sorry to hear about the experience. I need to go back and fine tune the voice model.
However, generally recognition is better if you use a command like:
"Play the album X by y"
"Play the song X"
etc.
I definitely remember testing on AC/DC a lot!
Did you go through voice training after the set up? (I think there is still voice training in the app.) That helps recognition.
Steve
Steve, I did do the voice training. That didn't resolve the zone issue. I'll try it a bit more and see what happens. Thanks for the response.
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I recently got a new computer and replaced my Ver 1. Echo Show with an updated model. During all of this routers were unplugged, stuff was moved around, etc. Ever since the upgrade I cannot get House Band to work (which really sucks as it's by far my most used skill).
In the Alexa app it says that my library is synced.
If I say "Alexa, ask House Band to play". She responds with "Resuming music" but nothing actually happens.
If I tell her to skip, she responds with "Next track" but again, nothing actually happens.
What's even weirder is if I tell her to play the album "Moving Pictures" it says I have no album with that name. If I say play songs by Rush, she says I have no songs by the artist Rush. These two things are obviously false.
I have tried everything that I can think of.
I have disabled and re-enabled the skill multiple times.
I have generated a new access key
I have tried changing port numbers (and yes, my port is open and I have confirmed it is open)
I've tried restarting the computer, the echo, etc.
Any thoughts?
Thank you!
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Hmm. Sorry for the hassle.
My first thought is to make sure there's just one problem, and not several.
Can you view MediaCenter (or is it running headless?)
If so, see what House Band is doing. You can just watch to see if it plays anything, or even better, monitor the network traffic.
Make sure that House Band is controlling the correct zone (so it's not resuming music somewhere you're not hearing.)
As for not finding music you know you have, look at the card it sends and look at the search it's doing. You can copy that exact search into the search bar of media center and see what's up.
There's one thing that would explain all of this, though it's a long shot: you're controlling a different media center. You don't have more than one, or have a key that could associated with a different player?
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I can view MC, I am not running it headless. Nothing happens in MC when I give it a command via house band. I am not sure how to monitor network traffic.
I don't use zones, I thought maybe that was an issue too, but if it is, I don't know how to deal with it. I asked "Alexa ask house band what are my zones?" and the response I got was "I'm sorry, I couldn't access your zone information, what should I play?
When I ask House Band to play the artist Rush, I get a card that says:
Search String(s) Used:
House Band
[album artist(auto)]=rush
There are no brackets around rush, so if I copy/paste it into MC it doesn't return any results, if I add [ ] around rush, it works as expected.
My setup is the following. I have an Unraid server that is running a Windows 10 VM that acts as my HTPC. This is the main computer running MC and the one I am trying to control via house band. I am utilizing library server and I have another computer in my bedroom that accesses the library hosted on the HTPC. None of this is new though, I have had this setup for over a year now. I did recently switch which computer hosted the library server, it used to be the computer in my bedroom and my HTPC connected to it, those roles reversed not too long ago. To be completely honest, I am not sure if house band has worked since that switch, I had some major computer issues and I just can't remember. House band always controlled the HTPC though, I never had house band controlling the bedroom computer.
I had the same thought about House Band connecting to some phantom media center. That is why I generated a new access key in my troubleshooting. The access key given to House Band is definitely the same access key listed in MC.
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FIXED!!
I decided to reset the access key one more time. Reset the access key, restarted the computer, linked the account via Alexa app and it is working again!
There is a bit of a gotcha though. It was working fine with Authentication turned off. Once I turn authentication back on it stops working. The good news is I can turn on authentication as long as I have the "Read-only Authentication" set to "Everyone", if I have it set to "username and password" it stops working.
Happy to have house band back :)
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I have same problem with authentication. Turn it off in Media Center 24, house band works. Turn it on in Media Center 24, house band doesn't find anything to play.
Media Center 24.0.68 (64bit). Thanks, Mark
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Seems I also have the zone switching problem too. House band will only play on the zone currently selected in Media Center. If I switch the zone on the computer running Media Center then House Band will play to that zone. Can't change to a zone via House Band but Alexa does list my zones. Thanks.
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I had the same problem a long time ago. Turning off authentication makes everything work again. However that means I can’t make tag changes remotely.
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Another piece of feedback is that houseband is very verbose in its feedback particularly if it doesn’t understand you in which case it’s goes on this extremely long rant about what you should have said. Instead I wish it would just do nothing or at the very least just say ‘I didn’t get that’ and stop.
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I am also having the problem that house band does not work with authentication turned on.
When setting up the app I turned authentication off as instructed by the house band app. However the app also says that you can turn on authentication after you have set the skill up on alexa. When I turned authentication back on house band no longer works.
Has anyone found a solution to getting house band to work with authentication on??? ?
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You can turn on authentication as long as you have the "Read-only Authentication" set to "Everyone".
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It seems House Band skill for Amazon's Alexa is not available in Canada. I read somewhere that software developers can easily copy their US programming to the Canadian Amazon market. Will this be happening soon?
Thanks.
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I just can't get this to work consistently.
I turn off authentication to set up and it works. But once I turn authentication back on it stops working.
With authentication on I say "ask house to band play the album X" and it plays
With authentication off, Alex responds to this command with "no results matching, album name X"
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So currently with version 23 I can only play music on my computer and not through the speaker of my Alexa Echos?
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So currently with version 23 I can only play music on my computer and not through the speaker of my Alexa Echos?
Read the thread, House Band is not designed to play back to your Echos.
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@sarkonovich
Hey Steve,
I know Amazon doesn't believe that us Canadian rejects deserve the same treatment, respect and privileges as our American neighbors, but how is that English to English translation coming along for us less-fortunates up here north of the border? ;)
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The only thing I'm missing is playing the music directly to the Alexa device. That would be the killer feature for me! Appreciate your hard work for free however.
Edit: Seems you can add the ability to play fairly easily with the AudioPlayer interface: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/audioplayer-interface-reference.html
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Another vote for Alexa playing directly from the device.
Purchased an "Amazon Echo Show 5" yesterday on a whim at local Amazon store since it was on sale. This will replace my alarm clock in the bedroom as it can wake me up to CNBC radio in the morning. I was really thrilled with I found this thread. Thought I could also play my JRiver playlists. But then I found the audio comes from the computer. Wish it could play directly from the Echo.
If it could, I would buy an Echo for every room, including the kitchen and bathrooms! Would be nice to have my playlists play as background music in some rooms. Would be awesome to give the command "Alexa, open House Band and play playlist Classic Rock" and it would play on whichever device that heard my command.
BTW, I had no problems linking accounts. After a little research (opening ports and turning off authentication) it worked flawlessly. Thanks to the developer for all their efforts.
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HamDog
Your request can be handled by using MyMedia on Alexa. Install and export the playlists you want to use into a computer connected to same WIFI then simply say "Alexa, ask my media to play *****playlist". There is a charge for MyMedia, but something like $5 a year. Here is the site: https://www.mymediaalexa.com/
It works well. I only use a few of my many many playlists, but in theory you could export all playlists and point mymedia for alexa to the folder containing all your exported playlists and play any of those on any alexa connected to the same wifi.
It works well.
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You can do the same for free with Plex as well.
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You can do the same for free with Plex as well.
Thanks for the help! Been researching this topic further today and have found several apps that can catalog your personal music and play through echo devices. Plex is certainly a good option. What I really need is to play my playlists which have taken years to create in JRiver. And to complicate things further, these include many DSD files and tracks within an SACD ISO! This really complicates things. Still searching for viable solutions.
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I have not used this, I am not big on Playlists, but you may want to check this out.
https://github.com/XDGFX/PPP
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There is also this to import playlists https://soundiiz.com/tutorial/import-m3u-to-plex
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I'm jumping on this old thread because I’m not sure where else to go for this. Just got an Echo Show for Christmas, and went straight to the House Band skill. I’ve had a media server set up for years, with port forwarding and all that, and it’s been working great. I followed the directions, I turned off authentication and the skill linked to my server and was working great, until I re-enabled the authentication and then it stopped working. Instructions say I should be able to re-enable authentication once it links, and I don’t want to leave it off. Any advice?
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Mike
You can turn on authentication as long as you have the "Read-only Authentication" set to "Everyone".
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Ooh! I have been looking for something like this for years! Amazon seem to have knobbled the Plex skill a few days ago by stopping it from forwarding to the Echo Link, which even with an external DAC wasn't brilliant anyway (hence wanting something else). Thank you very much indeed!
I'd like to set up five players in a perfect life though, is that possible?
It's not the end of the world if it's just one, there is only one room where I am not sitting near a PC. Nice to add it to the lot though...
[Later]
Voice recognition nearly had me nearly chucking it out of the window, but in fact it's quite clever.
I particularly like that it displays on the screen what the useless piece of junk (Hi, Amazon) thinks I said. My standard test is to get Alexa to play the Album Loup Garou (French for wearwolf, voice recognition will end these stupid titles) by Willie DeVille. It normally takes me about five attempts to get Alexa to find that itself, but House Band just wasn't going to do it, ever. However, "Alexa, ask House Band to list albums by Willie DeVille" [...] "Select loop". Not bad. Same thing with Bob Geldof, Loudmouth, which it wants to render as Loud Mouth (idea, get it to try running words together if it fails on the first attempt).
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Have really been enjoying this skill and appreciate all the work you've done. Is there a way to assign a star rating to tracks through house band? I searched the forum and couldn't find any mention of that. If you are still doing work on the app that would be a killer feature addition for me. If it is already possible and I just missed it then even better. Thanks again for making this available though!
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Hi, is there a walkthrough/desctruction page about how to setup the router to accomodate Houseband and Alexa?
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So I tried to launch House Band on Alexa as I have done for several years and Alexa tells me, "the House Band skill is no longer available." What's up with this? I logged into my Alexa account online, went to skills and did a search for House Band and there is no skill called House Band...
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So I tried to launch House Band on Alexa as I have done for several years and Alexa tells me, "the House Band skill is no longer available." What's up with this? I logged into my Alexa account online, went to skills and did a search for House Band and there is no skill called House Band...
Ditto. This has seriously affected the WAF in our home. Does anyone know what happened?
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Yes, I just found out when Alexa told me that the skill was no longer available. Any alternative ? Does anyone know why ? Wasn't hurting anyone.
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Any new info or alternatives?
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Any new info or alternatives?
+1 I'm getting serious grief relative to the WAF. Please help me restore harmony in my home! 😱
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There's a good chance it's probably discontinued. From the looks of it sarkonovich hasn't logged into the forums here since May 2019. Hopefully everything's okay with him, but his disappearance and the disappearance of House Band isn't a good sign.
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Hopefully, JR will pick this up and reimplement it. Seems it would be a great selling point for MC. So many devices these days are integrated with Alexa. I'm not sure how we're going to get along without Houseband here at home. ?
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Don't give up yet. I wrote him a week or so ago and he replied.
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Awesome! Thank you, Jim.
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Any Updates on when House Band will be available again?
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Don't give up yet. I wrote him a week or so ago and he replied.
Jim, please keep this in mind if/when Houseband is resurrected:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,130100.0.html
Reply #8
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any updates on houseband coming back or an alternative alexa skill to work with jriver?
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any updates on houseband coming back or an alternative alexa skill to work with jriver?
bump
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+1
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Like many of you, I was absolutely gutted at suddenly having House Band yanked out from under me. I talked to some people at Amazon and they confirmed that the skill is no longer available in their ecosystem.
JimH: Can you give us any more information on what the reply you received back from the developer was? Was it taken down to add new features? Planning on being up again any time soon?
I agree with some comments that more formal integration of voice command functionality would be a huge boost to JRiver. I would encourage everyone who has posted here to voice that on the 'feature request' section of the upcoming version!
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I switched to using eventghost combined with JRiver’s MCC commands. I can create any keywords in eventghost that is tied to any command, artist, album or playlist in MC.
http://www.eventghost.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7429
It is time consuming to setup and tune with Alexa but well worth the effort. Since you are setting up your own private Alexa Developer skill, it is very unlikely Amazon would ever pull it. I've used it flawlessly for several years now.
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I also reached out to the developer and the response I got back was sadly not encouraging. It sounds like he would have to completely re-write the app and has not indicated an intent to do that. This really seems like something that should be integrated in to a program like JRiver that touts itself as being a modern media player.
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I also reached out to the developer and the response I got back was sadly not encouraging. It sounds like he would have to completely re-write the app and has not indicated an intent to do that. This really seems like something that should be integrated in to a program like JRiver that touts itself as being a modern media player.
Thanks. Looks like we might have to go a completely new direction. Too bad, like JRiver.
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anyone have any updates or find any alternatives?
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The next major version of MC will support Alexa. November?
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Alexa Support in MC30: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,133776.0.html
You can use it now with MC 29.0.87 or higher if you have an MC30 license installed.