2018-12-31, 10:21
I'll just post the summaries here again (seriously I need to write down some FAQ section)
1. "Nothing found" notification
- Kodi connect addon only works with Kodi's Video Library, because it uses all the information about collections, genres, actors, characters, episodes, watched/unwatched. So if you get "Nothing found" it means that it didn't find it there.
- If you are using some 3rd party addons, you need to find a tutorial on how to ingest that content into Kodi's Video Library (some users use it like that)
- As for naming of the content, it doesn't have to be 1:1, because Kodi connect addons reads all of the data from the Video Library, creates multiple indexes, and uses string similarity to match results, and picks the best one
- E.g. "Maniac" will match to "Maniac (2018)", or "The Matrix" will match to "Matrix", etc.
- For anyone more interested, it uses this N-gram implementation https://pythonhosted.org/ngram/
- That's also the reason why it can search in between tens of thousands of actors in few milliseconds on low-end devices like Raspberry
2. "No linked devices" in Alexa app
- No idea why this started to pop up. I have the same issue in my Alexa app
- But everything works as expected. This is just a matter of displaying it, but unfortunately I can't do anything about it.
- But for some reason, the device does show up in "Smart Home" -> "Devices" menu
3. Beta test
- I no longer add people manually into the Beta tests (because it was time consuming, and I wasn't checking all the emails, PMs, and posts every day)
- This way you can do it yourself, and it takes 10 seconds, instead of sometimes waiting for multiple days
4. Connected/Disconnected
- Definitely an incorrect Email/Secret in Kodi connect addon, or if you use the same secret on multiple devices (you can generate as many as you want)
- Easiest and fastest way how to fix this is just to generate a new one
- Note for me: Since it's using websockets through HTTP upgrade connection, I need to find a clever and smart solution on how to report this back to the addon.
5. Black screen when enabling skill and/or discovering devices
- This has proven to be an issue with Content country settings in the Amazon account (not Alexa settings)
- Amazon only allows these countries: US/UK/DE
- Now I also don't live in any of those countries, so I had to put in fake address, but I can still order and ship stuff from Amazon etc
6. Language support
- As mentioned above, this is a restriction by Amazon, and I have no say in it
7. Fire (TV) devices
- This is again Amazon favoring their own devices.
- Some users reported, that disabling voice control for Fire TV made it work with the Kodi (if that is something that wouldn't bother you)
8. Stop playback
- "Alexa stop" pauses instead (Amazon issue)
- BUT, "Alexa stop <device_name>", e.g. "Alexa stop bedroom kodi" works, and does actually stop the playback
Also please, when reporting that something is not working for you, don't just say that "<Something> is not working for me". Even though I'm still replying to everyone (because I'm of my good nature), it is frustrating to reply to everyone the same request, to provide more info. Because in 98% it ends up being one of the issues mentioned above.
Last but not least. Many Thanks to anyone here that helps the newcomers, so that I don't have to reply to literary everyone here 👍
1. "Nothing found" notification
- Kodi connect addon only works with Kodi's Video Library, because it uses all the information about collections, genres, actors, characters, episodes, watched/unwatched. So if you get "Nothing found" it means that it didn't find it there.
- If you are using some 3rd party addons, you need to find a tutorial on how to ingest that content into Kodi's Video Library (some users use it like that)
- As for naming of the content, it doesn't have to be 1:1, because Kodi connect addons reads all of the data from the Video Library, creates multiple indexes, and uses string similarity to match results, and picks the best one
- E.g. "Maniac" will match to "Maniac (2018)", or "The Matrix" will match to "Matrix", etc.
- For anyone more interested, it uses this N-gram implementation https://pythonhosted.org/ngram/
- That's also the reason why it can search in between tens of thousands of actors in few milliseconds on low-end devices like Raspberry
2. "No linked devices" in Alexa app
- No idea why this started to pop up. I have the same issue in my Alexa app
- But everything works as expected. This is just a matter of displaying it, but unfortunately I can't do anything about it.
- But for some reason, the device does show up in "Smart Home" -> "Devices" menu
3. Beta test
- I no longer add people manually into the Beta tests (because it was time consuming, and I wasn't checking all the emails, PMs, and posts every day)
- This way you can do it yourself, and it takes 10 seconds, instead of sometimes waiting for multiple days
4. Connected/Disconnected
- Definitely an incorrect Email/Secret in Kodi connect addon, or if you use the same secret on multiple devices (you can generate as many as you want)
- Easiest and fastest way how to fix this is just to generate a new one
- Note for me: Since it's using websockets through HTTP upgrade connection, I need to find a clever and smart solution on how to report this back to the addon.
5. Black screen when enabling skill and/or discovering devices
- This has proven to be an issue with Content country settings in the Amazon account (not Alexa settings)
- Amazon only allows these countries: US/UK/DE
- Now I also don't live in any of those countries, so I had to put in fake address, but I can still order and ship stuff from Amazon etc
6. Language support
- As mentioned above, this is a restriction by Amazon, and I have no say in it
7. Fire (TV) devices
- This is again Amazon favoring their own devices.
- Some users reported, that disabling voice control for Fire TV made it work with the Kodi (if that is something that wouldn't bother you)
8. Stop playback
- "Alexa stop" pauses instead (Amazon issue)
- BUT, "Alexa stop <device_name>", e.g. "Alexa stop bedroom kodi" works, and does actually stop the playback
Also please, when reporting that something is not working for you, don't just say that "<Something> is not working for me". Even though I'm still replying to everyone (because I'm of my good nature), it is frustrating to reply to everyone the same request, to provide more info. Because in 98% it ends up being one of the issues mentioned above.
Last but not least. Many Thanks to anyone here that helps the newcomers, so that I don't have to reply to literary everyone here 👍
