Alexa Integration - Part 2
Answered
Hi Everyone, just thought I would tell you off my experiences with Alexa Integration. It has now been a few weeks since my first post on this subject and since then I have had some (small) help from the support crew and lots of experimentation of my own. It is clear from other posts on this subject that Alexa and Bluesound integration is not ideal, but I was initially having problems doing anything but the basics. I could Play music and Pause it and play any Preset I had created, but I could not Play anything from my own Library.
It turns out that the integration ONLY works if the Alexa Language is set to English US. In my case (English UK, and all the other English variations mentioned in the documentation) Alexa is unable to correctly translate command like "Alexa tell Blue Voice to play "album name" by "artist name". Simply changing the Alexa language to English US partly resolves this, but annoyingly leaves my Alexa with an American accent!
However, all is still not good, after some experimentation I was only able to get successful plays of albums in about 50% of cases. Sometimes Alexa simply would not translate what I asked for correctly (say in half the failed tries) i.e. she would attempt to play something by the wrong artist or album combination (which does not exist so nothing happens). Her failure rate to do the right thing seems high to me and could be down to her being in English US ( but I speak in English UK, not sure if this makes a difference) or my bad pronunciation. The other half of the failures, where Alexa translates correctly, but BlueOS still does not play anything are probably down to poor integration on the BluOS side.
Finally, the big disappointment was that I was unable to get Alexa to play anything from my local library using Playlists or Favourites. The "BluOS Alexa Skills command" document implies that this is possible but does not give any examples of the phasing for this. Alexa just will not translate any commands using Playlists or Favourites, but strangely I have randomly managed to get Alexa to attempt to play something from a playlist (she repeated "playlist" back to me) even though I never mentioned playlist in the first place, so she knows about them.
In conclusion, I have given up using Alexa (she is now on her way back to Amazon) as this was only a "nice to have" feature and I will continue to use the excellent phone app to control my Bluesound systems. So good luck to anyone else trying this, you will need it.
Mac
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Official comment
Hi All
A full list of compatible Alexa commands and phrasing is available here; https://support.bluos.net/hc/en-us/articles/360009439514
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No Alexa -> no Amazon Music Connect
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I'm experiencing a similar situation.
I'm able to issue basic commands (play/pause, clear play queue, skip, etc) with Alexa but I can't for the life of me start a playlist or favorite with Alexa. I'm in the US so my Echo device is already set to English US.
Initially, I was unable to get most of my albums playing from my library via the "play {album} by {artist}" command but got that working after butchering the album tags on the troublesome albums to match what was recorded in Alexa's history.
So far support's only response is to tell me to use presets which don't scale well (I'll run out of presets before albums) and never mind trying to remember which album I assigned to each preset. Both of which are beside the point anyway since playlist control via Alexa is an advertised feature and simply doesn't work.
When I do attempt to start a playlist with Alexa, she tells me she is starting playback but nothing happens on bluesound's end or she doesn't say anything (and again nothing happens on bluesound's end).
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Tony W.,
That list (as well as the pdf at the bottom) is useless when the commands don't work. The pdf says to use "Alexa, ask Blue Voice to play {playlist}" and that simply doesn't work (see my first post).
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Hi Glc650 , you have probably spent more effort than me trying to get this to work. Clearly the whole Alexa integration is broken (due to poor implementation) and Bluesound don't really care (the number of support people that have just pointed me at the same documentation is at least consistent: 100%, and indicates that none of them have actually tried it out for themselves). As I have already said, I have given up on this and would prefer that Bluesound remove this integration altogether, as at least it would prevent others from wasting time on it. Sorry to sound negative :(
Regards
Mac
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If you are continuing to have issues, as mentioned in the KB, please select Help, Send Support Request in the App so we can assist in troubleshooting your particular issue after reviewing your log files.
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Tony W.,
I have an open support ticket that has gone no where (I keep being directed to use presets instead of addressing the fact that playlist playback is broken).
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Hi Tony, sorry to say that I have already been down that route to no avail. My original comments on this post were made to specifically share my experience from a long "Support Request" adventure.
Mac
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Mark Baker,
Removing support for it all together would be a step in the wrong direction. I have no issue with the basic commands (play/pause, clear play queue, skip, etc) and starting playback with the album by artist command (after manipulating albums names to match Alexa's history) so clearly it can work. But, Bluesound needs to stop advertising it as a feature until they are ready to take supporting it seriously and stop treating it like it was (half-ass) implemented just to check off a box.
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