[hslansky]

There is a new addon/skill that has just become available: Amazon Echo Alexa Video Skill for Kodi.  This was very easy to setup, basically the same as any other Alexa skill.  Would that be the direction to move forward?  What is the difference between the two skills and why would one be better/preferred over the other?

[jingai]

There is a new addon/skill that has just become available: Amazon Echo Alexa Video Skill for Kodi.  This was very easy to setup, basically the same as any other Alexa skill.  Would that be the direction to move forward?  What is the difference between the two skills and why would one be better/preferred over the other?

 We are not likely to utilize an addon, but the biggest difference between this skill and that one (with regard to setup effort) is that he/she is hosting the skill for you.  We are planning to offer the same and are working on it, but we want to retain the option of hosting it yourself.

As far as functional differences, that skill is what Amazon calls a "Video Skill."  Our skill here is a "regular" Skill.  There are pros and cons to either approach, but the reason we have not steered away from a 'regular' skill is that a Video Skill is going to be limited to requests that search for and play/display media and control playback (pause, mute, fast forward, etc).  We can respond to any kind of request we want to include, such as "ask Kodi if there are any new episodes of show X?" etc.

[tkislan]

There is a new addon/skill that has just become available: Amazon Echo Alexa Video Skill for Kodi.  This was very easy to setup, basically the same as any other Alexa skill.  Would that be the direction to move forward?  What is the difference between the two skills and why would one be better/preferred over the other?

 We are not likely to utilize an addon, but the biggest difference between this skill and that one (with regard to setup effort) is that he/she is hosting the skill for you.  We are planning to offer the same and are working on it, but we want to retain the option of hosting it yourself.

As far as functional differences, that skill is what Amazon calls a "Video Skill."  Our skill here is a "regular" Skill.  There are pros and cons to either approach, but the reason we have not steered away from a 'regular' skill is that a Video Skill is going to be limited to requests that search for and play/display media and control playback (pause, mute, fast forward, etc).  We can respond to any kind of request we want to include, such as "ask Kodi if there are any new episodes of show X?" etc. 

One other difference is, that utilizing an addon, your device doesn't end up being accessible from the internet.
Which can also be accomplished with other tools, but those probably end up being even more complicated.

There is also a matter of latency, as with the addon, you can do every type of request in a single roundtrip
And I could go on and on.

[dragonfly1113]

I have finally got this running well. Only thing i'm finding strange is i'm finding that when i tell it to play a movie i need to say "tell media center to play movie (movie name). I can't just say tell media center to play (movie name). Also I can't seem to find the right wording to pause. I've tried "tell media center to pause movie" and "tell media center to pause tv show" but it doesnt seem to work maybe i'm missing something or messed something up in the utterances or the intents? One last request is if there would be a way to skip to the beginning of a movie, my daughter loves watching half a movie and then turning it off and wants to watch it again but from the beginning is there an easy way to say like "tell media center to play frozen from the beginning"? 

Sorry if any of this was discussed already 147 pages is alot of pages to search for wording like pause/play or having to say movie infront of a movie or tv show infront of a tv show name.

Thanks for any help that can be given and thanks for building this awesome skill.

[drizzt09]

I say "echo, ask kodi to play (movie name)"
Or "echo, ask kodi to pause"

They both work.
Why did you choose invoke as "media Center" instead of "kodi" seems like a mouthful to continuously use.

[jingai]

IIRC, "media center" was referenced in an old 3rd-party tutorial/guide.

[Philament]

My config for two echo on two kodi systems with one skill seems to be broken

[jingai]

My config for two echo on two kodi systems with one skill seems to be broken

 You'll need to give us a bit more than that to go on.

[Philament]

Sure,
My Setup:
 Livingroom -> Echo Plus and a Minix (at Win10) with Running Kodi 17.6 - Got his own Portforwarding = 2340
 Bedroom   ->  Echo 2.nd Gen. also a Minix (at Win10) with Running Kodi 17.6 - Got his own Portforwarding = 2341

My Problem is when i talk to the bedroom echo, i got a message that there were a Problem with the skill
In the Livingroom it work fine.

In my kodi.config, is the Livingroom,default and the Bedroom at the amzon ID from the bedroom echo.

I reconfigured the skill a few times and set it up also a few times but nothing changed.
I also tried the 8080 port.

Both Kodi instances got the same "username" aka kodi and sam password

[jingai]

@Philament you'd need to look at the skill logs to know for sure, but probably you have something wrong with the address and/or port config for your bedroom echo.

The config section for your bedroom echo should look something like this:

Code:

[amzn1.ask.device.AEFDXCGLSFJFNGCVF8SDJF90FID9G284JDJFGJGHH83358DJFFGIGD734JJDFGK211GDFFHHH23HGFJTYEFGJRT56KJDHDFJ5546DJDFFSWOPPP677P88P873EHZNZDFEIRTYIN2239NDFGIH724JDFKS2AA]
address = <your wan ip>
port = 2341

[Philament]

So it have to look like this:
[amzon id]
Scheme:http
Adress: external adress
Port:2341
Username:kodi
Pw:****
?

[Philament]

Now its working thanks a ot @

[captainfearless]

I set this up today and all went smoothly. I used the how to geek guide after reading it had been updated in this thread.

I am confident everything was done correctly, all python commands executed etc, i entered the url from Zappa.

However all i am getting is the dreaded "there was a problem with the selected skill’s response ".

I then discovered then that the port mapping i had done on my router i had forgotten to apply.         I then applied it and verified that the port was now open.

As the port mapping was done out of sequence do i need to rerun any command for it to work?

My other doubt is that i did the installation on a separate PC to my HTPC one , but i believe i am correct that as long as i input the HTPC ip address in the config file that shouldn't be an issue, as all data has been uploaded to the relevant websites.

Windows 7

The skill responded with 500 HTTP status Code

Only part of the tutorial that had changed was the global endpoint bit. Instead of just the Europe box , i had a default box too. I put the Zappa url in both as it wouldn't allow me to leave it empty. Both skill and Echo are set to English UK.

[gunslinger34]

So I set this up today for the very first time using AWS. It works but it only seems to work 50% of the time.. I have to give commands twice for it to work... Anyone experience anything like this or know why this is happening?

Thanks.

[techbiznis]

Help Please,
Stuck deploying Zappa with this error. Running Windows.

(venv) C:\Users\KodiMedia\kodi-alexa>zappa deploy dev
(six 1.10.0 (c:\users\kodimedia\kodi-alexa\venv\lib\site-packages), Requirement.parse('six>=1.11.0'), {'zappa'})
Oh no! An error occurred!

==============

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\users\kodimedia\kodi-alexa\venv\lib\site-packages\zappa\cli.py", line 2610, in handle
    sys.exit(cli.handle())
  File "c:\users\kodimedia\kodi-alexa\venv\lib\site-packages\zappa\cli.py", line 484, in handle
    self.load_settings_file(self.vargs.get('settings_file'))
  File "c:\users\kodimedia\kodi-alexa\venv\lib\site-packages\zappa\cli.py", line 2073, in load_settings_file
    settings_file = self.get_json_or_yaml_settings()
  File "c:\users\kodimedia\kodi-alexa\venv\lib\site-packages\zappa\cli.py", line 2053, in get_json_or_yaml_settings
    raise ClickException("Please configure a zappa_settings file or call `zappa init`.")
click.exceptions.ClickException: Please configure a zappa_settings file or call `zappa init`.