[digiltd]

jingai,

I got everything working great first time whcih I'm happy with.  I found when my library was scraped for the contents of the slots, the generator only returned a maximum of 100 items max for each slot, is that normal, a bug, or did I do something wrong? I have at least 2,500 movies in my Kodi library but only got 100 listed for the MOVIES slot.
Cheers.

It is normal, it only needs a sample of your data

[jingai]

jingai,

I got everything working great first time whcih I'm happy with.  I found when my library was scraped for the contents of the slots, the generator only returned a maximum of 100 items max for each slot, is that normal, a bug, or did I do something wrong? I have at least 2,500 movies in my Kodi library but only got 100 listed for the MOVIES slot.
Cheers.

 The skill uses fuzzy matching to figure out what you're requesting.  The slots are merely examples, and don't need to contain every item you have in your library.

[jingai]

The language you select in the skill needs to match the language you chose on your Echo exactly.  So, for example, if your Echo is set to "English (Canada)", you need to also choose "English (Canada)" for the skill -- "English (US)" will _not_ work.

Further, this is all semi region-locked.  For example, if the geographical address on your Echo is in the EU, you cannot host the skill in "US East (N. Virginia)".  I believe in general you want to choose the hosting region that is closest to the geographical location of your Echo.

For hosting providers other than AWS (Heroku, etc), the region doesn't matter.  But the language you set in the skill model still must match the language you choose on your Echo device.

[taurus35]

jingai,

I got everything working great first time whcih I'm happy with.  I found when my library was scraped for the contents of the slots, the generator only returned a maximum of 100 items max for each slot, is that normal, a bug, or did I do something wrong? I have at least 2,500 movies in my Kodi library but only got 100 listed for the MOVIES slot.
Cheers.

 The skill uses fuzzy matching to figure out what you're requesting.  The slots are merely examples, and don't need to contain every item you have in your library. 

 OK, thanks jingai.
Another quick question (feature request): Is there any way to automatically mute the volume of kodi when the command "Alexa ask/tell kodi....." is heard? With a surround sound system, it doesn't matter where I put my Alexa it is near to a speaker & I have to shout to one get it to recognise the Alexa command but once it's active it almost always picks up speach from the movie/TV show & carries out all sorts of strange operations & activating new skills
Cheers

[jingai]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a way to mute Kodi when you say Alexa. I toyed with the idea of using an embedded device with a photocell to detect the light ring, or intercepting network traffic, but I just haven't had time to work on it.

[taurus35]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a way to mute Kodi when you say Alexa. I toyed with the idea of using an embedded device with a photocell to detect the light ring, or intercepting network traffic, but I just haven't had time to work on it.

 That's a shame.....can Kodi not be muted (or set kodi volume to zero) for a set time, say 5 seconds, as soon as the kodi skill is invoked & then returned to previous level? It doesn't matter if anything is playing or not, just set it to zero & then return. I'm sure it's not as easy as that
Keep up the great work.

[DonBrutto]

The best solution I have found so far is the Alexa remote. I have to admit, I would rather a Star Trek chest type communicator style, but this works for now!

[jingai]

The skill isn't "invoked" until you've already said your request.

It'd be possible to mute on a two step command, like:

"Alexa, open Kodi"

Kodi mutes

"pause"

but given the extra step and time (it's two commands for Alexa to process, and an extra two commands going to Kodi to mute and unmute), I'm personally more inclined to just use the remote for mute/pause if it's that loud in the room.

If people want this, I can look into it though.  One problem I can see right off the bat is if the user already had it muted, it would unmute after the new command is issued unless I first check the status of the volume.  Which means 3 commands sent to Kodi in addition to the command you really wanted to send.  Unless you're hosting locally, I don't think many would find this delay acceptable.

[dcdead]

Hi everyone.

First of all thank you very much for the work. 

Almost anything is working perfectly for me.

Except pausing and resuming playback.

I'm using AWS and I'm using the skill in German.

If I say Alexa tell kodi to pause (In german of course), nothing happens and nothing appears in the alexa app. If I say alexa tell to kodi to resume it understands it as jump forward ("weiter vor" utterance)

Here is the AWS log for when I tell her to pause:

------


Strange thing is, that it does work if i enter pause in the test section of the skill. 

In the logs it shows then that it connects to my kodi machine, which it doesnt in the log above where I say it to alexa:

------



Is there something obvious that I'm missing?

[dcdead]

Ok, I fixed it.

I had to add 

AMAZON.ResumeIntent

and 

AMAZON.PauseIntent

to the Utterances in the model

[jingai]

@dcdead be aware that you're overriding Amazon's own built-in utterances if you do that.  You definitely should not have to do this to make it work; if you do, I suspect it's a transient error in Amazon's modelling.

Pause/resume definitely work here with the language set to en_US.

If it works there for you, then it works.  But I wanted to make the comment so others don't simply start overriding all of the built-ins.  It shouldn't be necessary and probably will be fixed (by Amazon) soon if it's broken currently.

[th3ma5k3]

Hey Guys I´m tied to gut this skill to run, but I am stuck. Im am getting Error HTTP 500 Internal Server error. I tried reinstalling several times, but I sill have no luck.
"zappa tail dev" gives me:

Link for pastebin - log is to long

[AshMan]

I redid everything from scratch and was successful to the point at which I do a test and I get this message.

The remote endpoint could not be called, or the response it returned was invalid. but a random movie did play after a little while

other times I get

There was an error calling the remote endpoint, which returned HTTP 500 : Internal Server Error

I can access my kodi webserver from outside my network fine with the port and user/pass I set so I know that part is working.

When I then ask my alexa to play a random movie I get a message saying it took too long to respond. but after a little while, my random movie did play once.

Is there a setting somewhere to increase the wait time?

I use MYSQL on Mac OS Server and I have a large movie library of about 4500 titles.

Should I work on switching mysql to Another SQL server like MariaDB?

It does appear to function for some things so I know its somewhat working. but most of the time it tries to get the title from the fireTV kicking me out of kodi.

I would love to be able to voice control it but if it wont work well because of my setup. it is what it is.

[digiltd]

I redid everything from scratch and was successful to the point at which I do a test and I get this message.

The remote endpoint could not be called, or the response it returned was invalid. but a random movie did play after a little while

other times I get

There was an error calling the remote endpoint, which returned HTTP 500 : Internal Server Error

I can access my kodi webserver from outside my network fine with the port and user/pass I set so I know that part is working.

When I then ask my alexa to play a random movie I get a message saying it took too long to respond. but after a little while, my random movie did play once.

Is there a setting somewhere to increase the wait time?

I use MYSQL on Mac OS Server and I have a large movie library of about 4500 titles.

Should I work on switching mysql to Another SQL server like MariaDB?

It does appear to function for some things so I know its somewhat working. but most of the time it tries to get the title from the fireTV kicking me out of kodi.

I would love to be able to voice control it but if it wont work well because of my setup. it is what it is.

4500 is a lot of movies, each "movie" type request loads them all into the skill. Alexa only allows 10 seconds before it times out, as you have spotted, even though she reports an error the skill is still working away and responds eventually.

What is your internet upload speed like? You might do better self hosting the skill if speeds are a problem.

[AshMan]

I redid everything from scratch and was successful to the point at which I do a test and I get this message.

The remote endpoint could not be called, or the response it returned was invalid. but a random movie did play after a little while

other times I get

There was an error calling the remote endpoint, which returned HTTP 500 : Internal Server Error

I can access my kodi webserver from outside my network fine with the port and user/pass I set so I know that part is working.

When I then ask my alexa to play a random movie I get a message saying it took too long to respond. but after a little while, my random movie did play once.

Is there a setting somewhere to increase the wait time?

I use MYSQL on Mac OS Server and I have a large movie library of about 4500 titles.

Should I work on switching mysql to Another SQL server like MariaDB?

It does appear to function for some things so I know its somewhat working. but most of the time it tries to get the title from the fireTV kicking me out of kodi.

I would love to be able to voice control it but if it wont work well because of my setup. it is what it is.

4500 is a lot of movies, each "movie" type request loads them all into the skill. Alexa only allows 10 seconds before it times out, as you have spotted, even though she reports an error the skill is still working away and responds eventually.

What is your internet upload speed like? You might do better self hosting the skill if speeds are a problem.

My upload speed is probably 10 mbit or so. so should be plenty fast enough.

If I were to host the skill on my own server. are there instructions for how to do it and connect it?

Yeah I know my movie library is very large. kodi Actually takes about 20 seconds or more to load my main movie folder. and also will take about 10 seconds to start playing a movie when selected. I do use files mode in kodi more than movies mode since I use it as a way to separate the kids stuff from my stuff. and thats with my FireTV connected via ethernet, but works about the same speed as my other fireTV devices that are running on wifi. My server is also connected to my router via gigabit ethernet just to give it the most bandwidth possible versus a wifi connection. I also have all my devices set with static ip addresses.

The one thing I have contemplated is changing my movie organization. right now I have the movies all in one folder with the posters and nfo files. I have considered placing them in separate folders within the movies folder as right now its like this - Volume - Movies - Movie Files but I was thinking I should redo it one of these days to Volume - Movies - "A" Movie folder - Movie file.

Either way still very happy with my overall setup. my 5 year old can go to her folder and chose what she wants which is key. simplicity of use. and my setup means the wife doesn't have to call me and complain about it.