Alexa Dot Emby Skill Challenges

[ginjaninja 605]

emby server stable. 

been trying some of the standard commands to troubleshoot/learn the skill. Alexa is hearing me correctly but skill seems to be doing the wrong thing.

The curently playing alexa session isnt showing in the dashboard FWIW.

With playback of audio the skill will be very usefull..thanks.

 

 

[ginjaninja 605]

setting current player not working

 

edit might be useful if the currently available players could be listed to make sure using correct name?

ask mb home player/device  current player/device

Edited December 29, 2023 by ginjaninja

[ginjaninja 605]

The skill will playback content which does not match the command. Some cleverness is useful but could it be helpful to announce when a match isnt found and ask whether the selected alternative is desirable.

play the album heroes by david bowie.

alexa plays the song heroes (i assume because it cant match on album "heroes" (with quotes))

 

Fetching of music (Album) is extremely patchy if the object title has punctuation, & or numbers in it..

Could emby

• query the inbound phrase for a better exact match from eg musicbrainz

https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Heroes+artist%3ADavid+Bowie&type=release_group&limit=25&method=advanced

(matches '"Heroes"' with quotes)

https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Angels+and+Electricity+artist%3AEddie+Reader&type=release_group&limit=25&method=advanced

(matches 'Angels & Electricity' with ampersand)

(not the best endpoint...just an example to illustrate point that muscibrainz has some helpful 'heuristic' searching....

• parse out punctuation from search term and data base when matching eg Angels and Electricity searches for "Angels Electricity"  as a last resort?
• try numbers '30' rather than words 'thirty', as a resort when no match
• if an artist is confidently matched but the album not matched, could Emby ask (via alexa) for selection from am announced numbered list of albums for artist,eg select 5

 

 

 

[ginjaninja 605]

not sure what i expected but not 'no media found'.

[ginjaninja 605]

I notice that media (music) i play on alexa isnt added to the linked user history...

[ginjaninja 605]

[Luke 42077]

@ginjaninjacan you please try this again? There have been numerous updates to Emby for Alexa. Thanks !

[ginjaninja 605]

Sure, good news some of the examples above which were problematic  are working.

missing punctuation is not tripping Emby [Album] match up.

 

 

Numbers (100 vs Hundred) + And (And vs &) perhaps still need a bit of work.

 

if you need numbers then you are sometimes best to spell them out "one zero zero"

 

 

Disambiguation of album by artist helps to avoid problematic search terms generally. but there seems to be a specific problem with "U2"

problem with "play the album Best Of by U2"

2024-10-23 14:09:54.524 Debug Server: http/1.1 GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicAlbum&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=best of by U2. Source Ip: ‌‍‍54.87.191.77‌, UserAgent: node-fetch

but no problem with "play the album absolutely by ABC"

2024-10-23 14:17:03.809 Debug Server: http/1.1 GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicAlbum&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=absolutely. Source Ip: ‌‍‍54.87.191.77‌, UserAgent: node-fetch
2024-10-23 14:17:03.968 Debug Server: http/1.1 Response 200 to ‌‍‍54.87.191.77‌. Time: 159ms. GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicAlbum&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=absolutely
2024-10-23 14:17:04.229 Debug Server: http/1.1 GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicArtist&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=ABC. Source Ip: ‌‍‍54.87.191.77‌, UserAgent: node-fetch
2024-10-23 14:17:04.587 Debug Server: http/1.1 Response 200 to ‌‍‍54.87.191.77‌. Time: 358ms. GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicArtist&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=ABC
2024-10-23 14:17:04.848 Debug Server: http/1.1 GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=ParentIndexNumber,IndexNumber,SortName&IncludeItemTypes=Audio&Recursive=true&ArtistIds=254571&ParentId=254572. Source Ip: ‌‍‍54.87.191.77‌, UserAgent: node-fetch
2024-10-23 14:17:04.905 Debug Server: http/1.1 Response 200 to ‌‍‍54.87.191.77‌. Time: 58ms. GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=ParentIndexNumber,IndexNumber,SortName&IncludeItemTypes=Audio&Recursive=true&ArtistIds=254571&ParentId=254572

"play the album best of by the artist u2" would of worked (in terms of correct searches interpreted from the audio command)

2024-10-23 14:24:20.940 Debug Server: http/1.1 GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicAlbum&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=best of. Source Ip: ‌‍‍52.90.44.182‌, UserAgent: node-fetch
2024-10-23 14:24:21.206 Debug Server: http/1.1 Response 200 to ‌‍‍52.90.44.182‌. Time: 266ms. GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicAlbum&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=best of
2024-10-23 14:24:21.782 Debug Server: http/1.1 GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicArtist&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=U2. Source Ip: ‌‍‍52.90.44.182‌, UserAgent: node-fetch
2024-10-23 14:24:22.128 Debug Server: http/1.1 Response 200 to ‌‍‍52.90.44.182‌. Time: 345ms. GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=SortName&IncludeItemTypes=MusicArtist&Recursive=true&SearchTerm=U2
2024-10-23 14:24:22.440 Debug Server: http/1.1 GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=ParentIndexNumber,IndexNumber,SortName&IncludeItemTypes=Audio&Recursive=true&ArtistIds=257579&ParentId=272905. Source Ip: ‌‍‍52.90.44.182‌, UserAgent: node-fetch
2024-10-23 14:24:22.500 Debug Server: http/1.1 Response 200 to ‌‍‍52.90.44.182‌. Time: 60ms. GET https://‌‍‍xxx.xxx.xxx‌:8920/emby/Users/6cc6d0fa039849af8147592f5da46188/Items?SortBy=ParentIndexNumber,IndexNumber,SortName&IncludeItemTypes=Audio&Recursive=true&ArtistIds=257579&ParentId=272905

All the correct searches are performed but 'the requested media is not found in the library'.

Could this be a performance/timeout issue as too many matches for Best of....similar to get 1200+ members from a playlist. (searching for album=best of in the swagger api is slow). Could the timeout be relaxed for larger libraries..

 

[ginjaninja 605]

Since following @Carloadvice in the slow music thread to optimise database performance...."play the album best of by the artist u2" now works.

I thought i had tried that before but maybe not...

i set the 'cache to 4096' and 'vacuum the database on startup'. "mo cache mo alexa playback" it seems.

[Carlo 4560]

Glad that helped you out on the performance side of things.