jthorn 3 Posted July 24, 2021 Share Posted July 24, 2021 (edited) Which version of the skill you are using: Release or Beta? - I can't find a version number for the skill, but I just re-installed it so it's probably the most recent one. What time you got the error message. If you are unsure, try to recreate the bug and include the time. - Appox. 5 minutes ago ... 11:08 Central Time Which language you are using: English US, English UK, etc. - English A description of the problem you are experiencing. What did you say exactly, what Alexa think you said and the behavior you expected. After starting Emby home on any of my Alexa devices, the skill will recognize that I am connecting for the first time (it does this if I disable and re-enable the skill as well). Afterward, it asks me if I want to select a default player. After I answer yes, it tells me it cannot find a player to control. If I am running Emby on my browser, it will provide a list of players which include 1: This device 2: The Emby Web Client. If I choose 1, nothing works. It seems the skill will only allow me to control another player which is worthless to me. I have done this on various echo devices throughout my home (I have echo dot 2nd & 3rd gen as well as an echo show) but none of them work. I have set up SSL on my public port 443 and all that. I can provide the secure URL for verification if needs be. I also created a guest admin account if any support person wishes to review the configuration or log files. For what it's worth, listening to audiobooks from my Alexa devices was a main reason I purchased a premier license. I really regret not being able to try the Alexa integration before I purchased a license. Edited July 24, 2021 by jthorn Added Picture Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 24, 2021 Author Share Posted July 24, 2021 Here's an example history when a web browser was connected ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 24, 2021 Share Posted July 24, 2021 Hi, can you try this with a music library trying to play a song back? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 18 hours ago, cayars said: Hi, can you try this with a music library trying to play a song back? Yes .. as it turns out I can play music from my Echo devices just fine. However if I tell it to play an audiobook, it insists on playing it on another device. Specifically, because I had a browser window open with Emby on my PC, when I asked to play the audiobook, it played it on my browser instead. When I asked to play music, it played directly on the Echo device. Additionally, when playing an audiobook, the Alexa skill had this annoying habit of making me specify a starting track, by listing them all and making me pick. It doesn't seem to do this for music albums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 I'd be willing to debug the code myself if needed. This used to be open source right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 I honestly don't know if playback of audio books is supported for playback on Alexa. A dev would need to comment on that. What format are these in? No, the Alexa code has never been open source that I'm aware of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 50 minutes ago, cayars said: I honestly don't know if playback of audio books is supported for playback on Alexa. A dev would need to comment on that. What format are these in? No, the Alexa code has never been open source that I'm aware of. That seems odd ... the audiobooks are MP3s just like my music is. For all practical purposes, they are just like music albums with a different library name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 Yes, I agree this is odd. I'll be trying to do some testing on this shortly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 Thanks! I'm looking forward to your results. Let me know if there is anything else I can try for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 Echo, open m.b. home Play audiobook No Second Chance Say the number you want. 1. No Second Chance from Dylan Baker, 2. Deadliest Catch: No Second Chances One It then started playing the audiobook on my Echo which I previously set as the default player. PS my dad can't say "Alexa" correctly for some reason so I use "Echo" instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 That's nice ... can I come to your house to listen to my audiobooks? Unfortunately it doesn't work like that for me. Here are the actual Alexa responses when I try. Now, I know what you are thinking ... "this guy probably doesn't have the default player set correctly" ... well, here's the Alexa responses to my checking that ... Also .. when I performed the exact same steps, with the exception being that I was running Emby in a browser on my PC, it started playing the audiobook there. I could show you the history of that too, but it would be redundant. Just to make sure we are on the same sheet of music here ... is your audiobook set up the same way as mine is? That is to say, are your audiobooks set up in a separate library, with the content type set to "Audio Book"? It seems odd that yours would prompt you to choose between a audio book and a TV episode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 Is this an mp3 file or some other format audio file? Just as a test open Emby in Chrome on a PC and reset your default player to the web chrome player. Try this same skill again and let's see if it will start on the PC/web player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 Ok ... I followed those steps. Funny thing, it said it was playing, and chrome displayed the track as the current track, but it wasn't actually playing, just appeared like it was queued up to play. I gotta say .. if I have to listen to those options every single time I try to play a book, I'll pull my hair out. This is a small book by comparison to some others. I'm hoping I can resume a book from where I left off .. but I have to get to the first step before I can try that. At any rate, anything else you want me to try? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 ... and yes .. it's an MP3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 ... also, I can PM you connection info with a temporary guest admin account if you want to log in and see how it's configured. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 So it's sending the command to the player when chrome. Switch you player back to to the Alexa and try one more time. I'm at a loss as to why it's working to be honest. What device is the Alexa? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 BTW, when trying this again to playback on Alexa check your Activity list on the Emby Server Dashboard and let us know what shows up there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 Ok .. changed .. same result. The activity list says Alexa 1.1 last seen one minute ago. For what it's worth, I think we are dealing with a couple of different issues here ... #1) I can only select "This Player" as a default player if there is another player on the network. If there is not a player on the network, I do not get the option to select "This Player". #2) It seems to be treating the Audio Book content type as though it were a movie or something. The behavior seems reasonable if I were asking Alexa to play something it didn't support. However I CAN play music over Alexa. Audio Books should be treated the same as Music files and it seems that they are not. When I am playing music, I can see Alexa 1.1 in the activity list and it tells me what it is playing as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 25, 2021 Author Share Posted July 25, 2021 Oh ... I have various Alexa devices, some Echo Dot 2nd and 3rd Gen and a few Echo Show 5s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 I only have the Echo Dot gen 4 devices but can play to either of mine with music or Audiobook. Have you tried playing back to the different devices? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted July 27, 2021 Author Share Posted July 27, 2021 (edited) Yes .. I have now tried it on all my devices. All of them display the same behavior. I'm not sure how germane that is unless you are going to tell me that only the latest generation is supported. I even completely changed the server I am using to ensure I am using the absolute latest versions of all the software. I just want to say that I appreciate you trying to help, but I am getting a bit fed up with this. I really don't want to keep doing the same things over and over again. Having to repeatedly tell Alexa the same commands over and over again is getting mind numbing. Is there anything else I can give you to help debug this? I have set up two separate Emby service instances now. I have jumped through all the hoops to set up SSL on port 443 through my router and obtained a certificate and installed it. I can listen to music, so that rules out SSL being a problem. I have offered remote access and provided screen shots of the responses from Alexa. The best response I can get is that it "works for you", however there is no context to compare how our setups differ, other than you are using the latest Echo device. I even asked follow up questions to which no answers were given. I don't know what else I can do to help you help me. I get that you have more fires to put out than mine, and don't expect you to drop everything to fix this. If you need time to research, then fine. Give me a timeframe and I'll leave you alone. I'm just trying to decide if I should call the credit card company and have them reverse the charges at this point. Edited July 27, 2021 by jthorn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 27, 2021 Share Posted July 27, 2021 Sorry this doesn't seem more helpful but we're trying to figure out why this isn't working. To be honest this is the first time I've heard of someone wanting to play audio books back this way (nothing wrong with that) so it's new territory to me. Could it be the generation of device? I don't know, but that seems unlikely. Would you mind trying one more test for me? Try moving one audio book out of your audiobook lib. Scan that lib to make sure it's removed. Now move that audio book into your music library and scan it. At this point the audio book should be part of your music library. Will it play back the audio book this way to your Alexa? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jthorn 3 Posted August 1, 2021 Author Share Posted August 1, 2021 Well ... I did a more thorough test. I removed all my libraries and created two new ones. One with an Audiobook Content Type and the other with a Music content type. I added a single MP3 file to each library. As expected, I could not play the file in the Audiobook Library without Alexa trying to control another player. I could however play the Music file in Alexa. I then moved the MP3 from the Audiobook Library into the Music Library. Afterward I rescanned both libraries. I was then able to play the Audiobook by telling Alexa to play the "Album" instead of the "Audiobook" Here's where things get interesting however. For giggles, I tries to tell Alexa to play the "Audiobook" even though it was in the Music Library ... the behavior was exactly the same as before. It found the audiobook and prompted me with options, afterward it attempted to play it on another player. So then I moved the audiobook MP3 file BACK to the Audiobooks Library and told Alexa to play the "Album" ... That worked!! It seems the Alexa skill is having trouble with the "Play the Audiobook {Title}" command listed in the documentation page. It should behave exactly the same as the "Play the Album {Title}" command, with the exception being that it should look for content from Audiobook Libraries. For that matter, I would argue that using the Play Album command, should NOT play content from Audiobook libraries (However this seems to be the only way to get Alexa to play audiobooks at the moment). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted August 1, 2021 Share Posted August 1, 2021 That's interesting and wonder why this works differently on your system? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37050 Posted August 14, 2021 Share Posted August 14, 2021 @jthorn ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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