[jingai]

@ziggy73701, it's described in the README pretty thoroughly. Is there something in particular you don't understand?

[ziggy73701]

Apparently I just totally missed that bit in the read me

Will be upgrading later and checking out... love this add-on so thank you for all the work!

[vmantzar]

is anyone facing issues with the kodi-alexa skill where Alexa cannot find all songs in the library or at least new songs that have been added after the skill was created? When I added the skill I got back the list of songs, albums, artists etc. from the script, but all lists (e.g. MUSICSONGS) for some reason were limited to 100 entries, is this normal?

[jingai]

@vmantzar, that is normal. The items in the Slots are merely examples -- the actual matching is done in the skill code itself against the current library contents in a 'fuzzy' manor.

[vmantzar]

@vmantzar, that is normal.  The items in the Slots are merely examples -- the actual matching is done in the skill code itself against the current library contents in a 'fuzzy' manor.

thanks for the prompt response. So I would assume all my songs in Kodi's library should be dynamically (when added) picked up by Alexa/Kodi...

hmmm probably is not happening in my case or there might be something wrong with the tagging of the songs that I asked Kodi (via Alexa) to play

[jingai]

@vmantzar, there is no 'syncing' involved -- every time you make a request, it asks Kodi for the relevant library items.  Then it matches what Alexa 'heard' against your library.  If it finds any items that match confidently, it will choose the top match of those.

Bear in mind, this isn't and can't be perfect without a huge curated list of possible media titles (such as Amazon's catalog, which we can't access yet).  But it does generally do pretty well.

To help you diagnose what's going on, please tell me exactly what you are saying to Alexa, and provide the skill log relevant to that request.

[vmantzar]

@vmantzar, there is no 'syncing' involved -- every time you make a request, it asks Kodi for the relevant library items.  Then it matches what Alexa 'heard' against your library.  If it finds any items that match confidently, it will choose the top match of those.

Bear in mind, this isn't and can't be perfect without a huge curated list of possible media titles (such as Amazon's catalog, which we can't access yet).  But it does generally do pretty well.

To help you diagnose what's going on, please tell me exactly what you are saying to Alexa, and provide the skill log relevant to that request.

Thanks once again, when you say the skill log? Where do i get that from? Or you mean what Alexa understood (typed) when I said something to her

I asked her to play song intro, in the Alexa page i see below (i.e. it heard it correctly but played recently added songs), and in my library when I look at the tags I have a song tagged as Intro, so most of the time Alexa decides to play recently added songs, making the whole experience quite annoying tbh. Other thing I noticed is that Kodi does obey the command stop, so music never stops, I can pause/resume/next ect. but not stop. Looking at the Interaction Model Sample Utterances there are no playback control commands like stop, next, previous etc.

Playing recently added songs
Kodi
Playing recently added songs

• Voice feedback
  
• Alexa heard: "play song intro"
  

[jingai]

Amazon prevents some slot values from reaching us. 'intro' might be one of those. Try a song with a longer/different title and see if it works at all. Unfortunately, until we can utilize Amazon's library catalog, we can't do anything about this though.

Stop works here just fine. I'm not sure why it's not for you. We use Amazon's built-in Intents for playback controls like this, so we don't need to specify them explicitly.

[vmantzar]

Amazon prevents some slot values from reaching us.  'intro' might be one of those.  Try a song with a longer/different title and see if it works at all.  Unfortunately, until we can utilize Amazon's library catalog, we can't do anything about this though.

Stop works here just fine.  I'm not sure why it's not for you.  We use Amazon's built-in Intents for playback controls like this, so we don't need to specify them explicitly.

Some other songs do work but is a hit and miss thing, if I recall stop worked once when I was using an Amazon US account and the Echo was registered against that account, but when it got migrated to Amazon UK it stopped, even though I have added English UK as an additional language

[sirbadger]

Hi there,

I'm thinking about getting an Amazon Echo... this looks GREAT to control Kodi. Awesome work.
I'm using Kodi as my TV Frontend (tvheadend client). Is there a possibility to control the TV part of Kodi with this? I couldn't find anything in the readme or does anyone know another method to switch channels in the TV part?

Thanks a lot!

No, sorry, this skill does not control the PVR aspects of Kodi.

Is this due to a limitation of what can be supported somewhere or have you chosen not to support it?

[Zimerhonzl]

Hello, all

After several failed attempts, I decided to start from scratch, but once again am getting the same "response/error" from Alexa... namely that she can't access the skill.  On the test page I'm getting "There was an error calling the remote endpoint, which returned HTTP 500 : Internal Server Error", with a notation reading there was a "parse error on line 1: there was an error c, expecting 'STRING', 'NUMBER', 'NULL', 'TRUE', 'FALSE',  '{', '[', got 'undefined'

My service request reads as follows:  

{
 "session": {
   "new": true,
   "sessionId": "SessionId.d9699957-ebd7-48bc-a900-7b3b921fe1ec",
   "application": {
     "applicationId": "amzn1.ask.skill.c8ff2462-6437-4771-8001-817c389f2d1b"
   },
   "attributes": {},
   "user": {
     "userId": "amzn1.ask.account.AE6CXQJ5IF62C5IQHGY2RC3UNO5UQW5MNN7FC2JC543FYDUONTS73LHV5DNCIT4CLEYC52XSLH3XVSHUMHOPY5V44WCXFAOAI3AXUHFWLIVOGCGDUJ2BFCMMKFY7REOGY353YKPFE3LQWZFWWUSBCXYBWDYSCRTLA3GUKWGJU2IIDFFY73Z5EVLJXZS3HFBJRDYB2GACFLH6YVA"
   }
 },
 "request": {
   "type": "IntentRequest",
   "requestId": "EdwRequestId.da4e56f6-43a3-4269-97c1-1e76f59058ca",
   "intent": {
     "name": "PlayMedia",
     "slots": {
       "Movie": {
         "name": "Movie",
         "value": "the godfather in movies"
       }
     }
   },
   "locale": "en-US",
   "timestamp": "2017-10-20T21:36:35Z"
 },
 "context": {
   "AudioPlayer": {
     "playerActivity": "IDLE"
   },
   "System": {
     "application": {
       "applicationId": "amzn1.ask.skill.c8ff2462-6437-4771-8001-817c389f2d1b"
     },
     "user": {
       "userId": "amzn1.ask.account.AE6CXQJ5IF62C5IQHGY2RC3UNO5UQW5MNN7FC2JC543FYDUONTS73LHV5DNCIT4CLEYC52XSLH3XVSHUMHOPY5V44WCXFAOAI3AXUHFWLIVOGCGDUJ2BFCMMKFY7REOGY353YKPFE3LQWZFWWUSBCXYBWDYSCRTLA3GUKWGJU2IIDFFY73Z5EVLJXZS3HFBJRDYB2GACFLH6YVA"
     },
     "device": {
       "supportedInterfaces": {}
     }
   }
 },
 "version": "1.0"

I've looked at the forums, and have seen variations on this issue come up, but if anyone can help point me in the right direction, I would GREATLY appreciate it!!  Many thanks!!

I just updated and getting the same thing - nope I take that back. I was using the text test and asked for "what new tv shows" and I got the error but if I ask for "what new television" it didnt, nor "what new movies" this returned results!

I am having the exact same issue as Trugatorguy.  I did not have any problems upon my initial build, but did an update with new kodi.config information (owncloud cache).  Even upon rollback to previous deployments prior to the change this error persists.  I have tried exact test text from the specific utterances as well to no avail.  I tried looking for log files in cloudwatch, but the function does not show up in Lambda, despite receiving the success notification in Zappa.

[sirbadger]

@vmantzar, there is no 'syncing' involved -- every time you make a request, it asks Kodi for the relevant library items.  Then it matches what Alexa 'heard' against your library.  If it finds any items that match confidently, it will choose the top match of those.

Bear in mind, this isn't and can't be perfect without a huge curated list of possible media titles (such as Amazon's catalog, which we can't access yet).  But it does generally do pretty well.

To help you diagnose what's going on, please tell me exactly what you are saying to Alexa, and provide the skill log relevant to that request.

Thanks once again, when you say the skill log? Where do i get that from? Or you mean what Alexa understood (typed) when I said something to her

I asked her to play song intro, in the Alexa page i see below (i.e. it heard it correctly but played recently added songs), and in my library when I look at the tags I have a song tagged as Intro, so most of the time Alexa decides to play recently added songs, making the whole experience quite annoying tbh. Other thing I noticed is that Kodi does obey the command stop, so music never stops, I can pause/resume/next ect. but not stop. Looking at the Interaction Model Sample Utterances there are no playback control commands like stop, next, previous etc.

Playing recently added songs
Kodi
Playing recently added songs

• Voice feedback
  
• Alexa heard: "play song intro"
  

I've just set this up today and im having the same issue. i can say stop or try stop in the service simulator and it doesnt work :/

eta: stop is working now..

[vmantzar]

@vmantzar, there is no 'syncing' involved -- every time you make a request, it asks Kodi for the relevant library items.  Then it matches what Alexa 'heard' against your library.  If it finds any items that match confidently, it will choose the top match of those.

Bear in mind, this isn't and can't be perfect without a huge curated list of possible media titles (such as Amazon's catalog, which we can't access yet).  But it does generally do pretty well.

To help you diagnose what's going on, please tell me exactly what you are saying to Alexa, and provide the skill log relevant to that request.

Thanks once again, when you say the skill log? Where do i get that from? Or you mean what Alexa understood (typed) when I said something to her

I asked her to play song intro, in the Alexa page i see below (i.e. it heard it correctly but played recently added songs), and in my library when I look at the tags I have a song tagged as Intro, so most of the time Alexa decides to play recently added songs, making the whole experience quite annoying tbh. Other thing I noticed is that Kodi does obey the command stop, so music never stops, I can pause/resume/next ect. but not stop. Looking at the Interaction Model Sample Utterances there are no playback control commands like stop, next, previous etc.

Playing recently added songs
Kodi
Playing recently added songs

• Voice feedback
  
• Alexa heard: "play song intro"
  

I've just set this up today and im having the same issue. i can say stop or try stop in the service simulator and it doesnt work :/

eta: stop is working now..

When you say "eta: stop is working now.." did you do something to fix it?

[jingai]

Amazon breaks things from time-to-time.. we try to follow it all pretty closely though, so I'm fairly sure it's nothing specific to this skill.

[jingai]

Hi there,

I'm thinking about getting an Amazon Echo... this looks GREAT to control Kodi. Awesome work.
I'm using Kodi as my TV Frontend (tvheadend client). Is there a possibility to control the TV part of Kodi with this? I couldn't find anything in the readme or does anyone know another method to switch channels in the TV part?

Thanks a lot!

No, sorry, this skill does not control the PVR aspects of Kodi.

Is this due to a limitation of what can be supported somewhere or have you chosen not to support it?

The fundamental problem is that the skill is already interpreting quite a lot.  There is a lot of overlap even with dissimilar media types (e.g., music vs movies) -- PVR adds a layer that would be best handled by another skill.  It's already quite difficult to avoid collisions.

We provide Kodi-Voice as a library for this exact reason.  The ultimate idea is, anyone can link to this and use it for any voice service (not only Alexa).  For PVR in particular, it'd be best if you:

"Alexa, ask Kodi to watch <movie in my library>"
"Alexa, ask PVR to watch <movie on TV>"

The thing is, I don't personally have a PVR, nor do I want one, which makes me not a very likely candidate to write the new skill.  Anyone that feels up for it though is absolutely welcome to utilize our library for the JSON requests.