Alexa Pi

chicks

Lunatic Member
Voice control of your local media files with a Dot and Raspberry Pi? Sounds pretty cool. Jyst $5-$10/year. Cheap.

https://www.mymediaalexa.com

Any of you Pi guys want to try it and report back? Windows, Mac and Linux support, too.
 
I saw this when I was looking for an alternative to the $25 plan I have with Amazon that matches my music. I will probably stick with that, but I would like to know if anyone is using it. It wouldn’t be bad to have a cheaper alternative that can run locally.
 
Configuring My Media for Alexa service...
sed: -e expression #1, char 17: unterminated `s' command
Starting My Media for Alexa service...
Failed to start mymedia.service: Unit mymedia.service is masked
 
After installing and reinstalling it 5 or 6 times it finally worked!! It is now playing its sample music catalog. My music collection is stored on a different computer (linux) so I am still figuring out how point it to my .flac library (I tried one thing and went back to football). But I can report that it works on a RPi.

The MyMediaForAlexa app on the RPi uses 1% of one core of the CPU and 12.5% of 1GB of it's RAM.
 
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I like this app/skill so much I disabled it on the RPi and installed it on my Ubuntu server where my personal library resides. Installation went very smoothly as compared to the RPi. The only hiccup was that during the installation my user name wasn't populated in the systemctl service file. I added my user name to the service file and all was well. Works perfectly now. $5 well spent.
 
I recently heard of a skill called House Band that will integrate with JRiver Media Center.
Gonna' give it a try this weekend..
 
I like this app/skill so much I disabled it on the RPi and installed it on my Ubuntu server where my personal library resides.

Does the Dot handle FLAC files ok? I notice Amazon doesn’t officially support them.
 
I have an Echo so I can't really say regarding the Dot but I would assume they are the same. The flac files play just fine but it requires transcoding. From the mymedia settings page:

Echo devices do not natively support FLAC or WMA files, therefore support for these file formats requires transcoding. To enable this, you must have a copy of FFmpeg installed on your computer.

Click here for instructions on how to install FFmpeg on your computer.

Once installed, please enable Transcoding Support below and then enter the full path to the ffmpeg binary below and click 'Set':

I am not 100% sure what transcoding actually means.
 
I have an Echo so I can't really say regarding the Dot but I would assume they are the same.

From another thread, we determined that the original Echo can play Radio Paradise in FLAC (with the RP skill), but the 2nd gen Dot can’t. Dunno about the other Echo devices, but it’s odd that Amazon would limit them.
 
My echo is only a month old. It doesn't seem to accept the flac bitrate even though is says it is an option. Ultra is as high as I can go.
 
I recently heard of a skill called House Band that will integrate with JRiver Media Center.
Gonna' give it a try this weekend..
The J River skill doesn’t play directly on the Echo. It will control what is playing from a computer running J River, though. I should mention that I haven’t tried connecting my computer to the Echo via Bluetooth, so that may be a workaround.
 
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