Alexa with reverse proxy

[podonnell 47]

I see my server name when I added the emby skill in Alexa, but unable to make any terms work. Just getting a “sorry, i’m having trouble accessing your emby skill” message. 

One thing I wanted to check on was that I use a reverse proxy, so “external” access to emby isn’t really required. I have this setting off:

and clients can connect without issue. 

I do use IP whitelisting, so one question I have is if there is a dedicated IP or list of IPs I need for Alexa to communicate properly. However, even when I allow all, I get the same message. 

What other things should I be looking at to help fix this?

Thanks!

[podonnell 47]

When I check off this box, it allows me to add the base url path that I need, but now emby is needlessly exposed on my network.

Can someone assist with exactly what the Alexa app is using to determine my full URL? I am under the impression that I must enable the above setting in order for Alexa to know it can connect, when in reality I am able to have external access with this setting off, using a reverse proxy.

Any tips how to not expose this in such a way?

[Luke 42077]

Hi, you’ll need to check that box for Alexa. 
To answer the question about the URL, the full URL used is the remote address that is displayed on your Emby server dashboard.

[podonnell 47]

15 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, you’ll need to check that box for Alexa. 
To answer the question about the URL, the full URL used is the remote address that is displayed on your Emby server dashboard.

Thank you, I've made changed to 'Network' so that the Remote (WAN) access shows up exactly how I have it in my reverse proxy.

That said, I'm continuing to get the error "sorry, i’m having trouble accessing your emby skill right now".
Are there any further logs I could find that could describe why this error is occurring? I currently have all external access enabled so I can test the communication is working.

Alexa should be hitting my reverse proxy and then being forwarded to emby.

[Luke 42077]

7 hours ago, podonnell said:

Thank you, I've made changed to 'Network' so that the Remote (WAN) access shows up exactly how I have it in my reverse proxy.

That said, I'm continuing to get the error "sorry, i’m having trouble accessing your emby skill right now".
Are there any further logs I could find that could describe why this error is occurring? I currently have all external access enabled so I can test the communication is working.

Alexa should be hitting my reverse proxy and then being forwarded to emby.

Are you using https? If yes, then you need to make sure that your certificate is something that Alexa accepts.

[podonnell 47]

14 hours ago, Luke said:

Are you using https? If yes, then you need to make sure that your certificate is something that Alexa accepts.

Between my reverse proxy and Emby - http

It's only https into the proxy. So if I connect externally, it is over https. I am using a Let's Encrypt certificate with caddy.

[podonnell 47]

I'd really like to get this working, any other tips or places I could ask?
I can access Emby without any issues externally, my cert is valid and doesn't need to be manually accepted or anything like that.

I don't want to break down the reverse proxy to test direct to Emby, so I'm hoping perhaps there are logs somewhere?

[ginjaninja 605]

On 15/08/2024 at 21:31, podonnell said:

I'd really like to get this working, any other tips or places I could ask?
I can access Emby without any issues externally, my cert is valid and doesn't need to be manually accepted or anything like that.

I don't want to break down the reverse proxy to test direct to Emby, so I'm hoping perhaps there are logs somewhere?

Sounds like your HTTPS ecosystem is healthy to me. If you can access/logon/browse  your Emby service out on the internet over https i reckon youve done the hard bit.

I am not aware of any logging to help troubleshoot initial setup. Once it is generally working you can see the search/media selection commands that Emby Alexa is initiating (but that wont help you now unfortunately)

you have Emby premiere and have configured Emby Connect username? as per https://emby.media/support/articles/Alexa.html?

 

[podonnell 47]

3 hours ago, ginjaninja said:

Sounds like your HTTPS ecosystem is healthy to me. If you can access/logon/browse  your Emby service out on the internet over https i reckon youve done the hard bit.

I am not aware of any logging to help troubleshoot initial setup. Once it is generally working you can see the search/media selection commands that Emby Alexa is initiating (but that wont help you now unfortunately)

you have Emby premiere and have configured Emby Connect username? as per https://emby.media/support/articles/Alexa.html?

 

Yes indeed, thanks for checking on those ideas though.

[Luke 42077]

On 8/15/2024 at 4:31 PM, podonnell said:

so I'm hoping perhaps there are logs somewhere?

Unfortunately not because if Alexa doesn't like your certificate then requests will not even reach Emby Server, therefore there will be nothing in the log.

[Luke 42077]

Is Alexa connecting to exactly the same address that the certificate is bound to?

[podonnell 47]

I reconnected the skill again and I managed to get it working.

I made no other changes, so there is no certificate that I needed to attach in my settings. This 'just works' with Caddy it seems.

I think a lot of the confusion also comes from how you interact with Alexa.
Is the proper workflow like this?

1) "Alexa launch Emby home".
2) Alexa then responds with "okay, here's Emby"... "Hello, I'm Emby, how can I assist you? For example, you can say 'play a few songs' '".
3) "Play <movie>".
4) Alexa executes the action.

It is a pretty awful experience so far, as I've only been able to execute a single action. Here are a few additional questions:

A ) Can you speed up the launching of this? I very often just want to pause my player, but I have to re-launch the skill, and wait for #2 to complete. Then I have to say my action.
B ) Can you give the emby home skill an alias somehow? This name is often confused for other services.
C ) Does pausing actually work? I have not been able to get this one to execute.

Thanks for additional help. This is functionality working, but I would really like to get this working in a manner that makes it useful. It would be wonderful if so.

[podonnell 47]

Also, do we have any way to interface with Emby through an API? I have another voice assistant that I wrote, and if there's an API I can call these commands to, that would be great.

[Luke 42077]

45 minutes ago, podonnell said:

Also, do we have any way to interface with Emby through an API? I have another voice assistant that I wrote, and if there's an API I can call these commands to, that would be great.

Yea just using the normal Emby Server api. That's what our alexa support is using.

[hatharry 113]

7 hours ago, podonnell said:

I reconnected the skill again and I managed to get it working.

I made no other changes, so there is no certificate that I needed to attach in my settings. This 'just works' with Caddy it seems.

I think a lot of the confusion also comes from how you interact with Alexa.
Is the proper workflow like this?

1) "Alexa launch Emby home".
2) Alexa then responds with "okay, here's Emby"... "Hello, I'm Emby, how can I assist you? For example, you can say 'play a few songs' '".
3) "Play <movie>".
4) Alexa executes the action.

It is a pretty awful experience so far, as I've only been able to execute a single action. Here are a few additional questions:

A ) Can you speed up the launching of this? I very often just want to pause my player, but I have to re-launch the skill, and wait for #2 to complete. Then I have to say my action.
B ) Can you give the emby home skill an alias somehow? This name is often confused for other services.
C ) Does pausing actually work? I have not been able to get this one to execute.

Thanks for additional help. This is functionality working, but I would really like to get this working in a manner that makes it useful. It would be wonderful if so.

A. You can speed up the experience by saying "Alexa ask Emby home to play <Movie>" or "Alexa ask Emby home to pause". This will send the request to the default player.

You can set the default player by opening the Emby app of the device you want to set as the player e.g. "Emby For Android on your TV" then say "Alexa ask Emby home to change the default player" say "No" to the first Alexa device, then say "Yes" to the device you want to set.

B. No there is not an option to change the name of the skill at this current time.

C. Yes pausing works. also if you are playing audio directly from your Echo you can just say "Alexa pause" / "Alexa play".