So for a clean set up with an echo dot and a typical home theater set up, you are going to tell the dot to play some music but you’re also going to have to switch the receiver to the correct input. Not hard with vera but how are we going to “sense” the music and trigger the “amazon music scene”???
I am thinking a packet sniffer to check out what alexa is receiving from the cloud, in the case of music at least but I’m not very good with wireshark and couldn’t even get scapy to load correctly on my mac or Rpi.
My plan to solve this is: I ordered the Harmony one hub and remote and am going to use ifttt to trigger dot to send commands to harmony to change scene to music.
[quote=“new2me07, post:1, topic:191487”]So for a clean set up with an echo dot and a typical home theater set up, you are going to tell the dot to play some music but you’re also going to have to switch the receiver to the correct input. Not hard with vera but how are we going to “sense” the music and trigger the “amazon music scene”???
I am thinking a packet sniffer to check out what alexa is receiving from the cloud, in the case of music at least but I’m not very good with wireshark and couldn’t even get scapy to load correctly on my mac or Rpi.
I am wondering if anyone has any good ideas?[/quote]
What receiver do you have does it have internet on it? I don’t have a dot on order but I have had Echo for sometime now (when it was 99.00) and since she can already run scenes she already turns on music (usually pandora for me) on the receiver. I also have sonos tho (which she controls better) and I find that I use that alot more.
I’m not sure how I would use a dot since I can’t here feedback from it and I don’t think I want to here “OK” from my surround sound in the middle of me blasting some music. Right now music plays from speakers but the feedback from from echo which is nice as a low background response not a stop all music and respond.
Im basically trying to figure out how to turn two commands: Turn on Music, and Play song … into one seamless command.
Automate the automation… if it takes two commands my wife will never use it. I suppose I can keep a default action of turning on a receiver for whatever room is occupied but seems like a waste of electricity.
I have iTunes set up to airplay things automatically such as when you turn the bathroom lights on during a timeframe, but it just randomizes a large playlist. I was thinking if i subscribed to amazons cloud music (different from prime music) I could get decent voice control over my entire music collection and take iTunes and my applescripts out of the mix.
[quote=“new2me07, post:4, topic:191487”]Im basically trying to figure out how to turn two commands: Turn on Music, and Play song … into one seamless command.
Automate the automation… if it takes two commands my wife will never use it. I suppose I can keep a default action of turning on a receiver for whatever room is occupied but seems like a waste of electricity.
I have iTunes set up to airplay things automatically such as when you turn the bathroom lights on during a time frame, but it just randomizes a large playlist. I was thinking if i subscribed to amazons cloud music (different from prime music) I could get decent voice control over my entire music collection and take iTunes and my applescripts out of the mix.[/quote]
A scene is how you do more then one thing with a single command. Have alexa run a scene is what I do now.
According to Amazon the DOT has an internal speaker.
From the Amazon website: “Includes a built-in speaker so it can work on its own as a smart alarm clock in the bedroom, an assistant in the kitchen, or anywhere you might want a voice-controlled computer”.
According to Amazon the DOT has an internal speaker.
From the Amazon website: “Includes a built-in speaker so it can work on its own as a smart alarm clock in the bedroom, an assistant in the kitchen, or anywhere you might want a voice-controlled computer”.[/quote]
Instresting, so if its connected to a receiver will it respond back to the receiver or to the internal speaker? If it has an internal speaker is the only difference from this and the Echo just the size and quality of the speaker?
I’m now considering to pick one up to play with, altho I’m sure the line is long now.
[quote=“integlikewhoa, post:7, topic:191487”]Instresting, so if its connected to a receiver will it respond back to the receiver or to the internal speaker? If it has an internal speaker is the only difference from this and the Echo just the size and quality of the speaker?
I’m now considering to pick one up to play with, altho I’m sure the line is long now.[/quote]
According to Amazon, DOT has “Built-in speaker for voice feedback when not connected to external speakers”. So you can assume you will get voice feedback from DOT thru your receiver when connected. I don’t know if the connection is limited to cord or Bluetooth.
[quote=“lemrock, post:8, topic:191487”][quote=“integlikewhoa, post:7, topic:191487”]Instresting, so if its connected to a receiver will it respond back to the receiver or to the internal speaker? If it has an internal speaker is the only difference from this and the Echo just the size and quality of the speaker?
I’m now considering to pick one up to play with, altho I’m sure the line is long now.[/quote]
According to Amazon, DOT has “Built-in speaker for voice feedback when not connected to external speakers”. So you can assume you will get voice feedback from DOT thru your receiver when connected. I don’t know if the connection is limited to cord or Bluetooth.[/quote]
That will be the problem then. Repeating Everything back threw the surround system I can see will get quite annoying. I placed and order for one, but damn they up to July 25th now.
[quote=“integlikewhoa, post:9, topic:191487”][quote=“lemrock, post:8, topic:191487”][quote=“integlikewhoa, post:7, topic:191487”]Instresting, so if its connected to a receiver will it respond back to the receiver or to the internal speaker? If it has an internal speaker is the only difference from this and the Echo just the size and quality of the speaker?
I’m now considering to pick one up to play with, altho I’m sure the line is long now.[/quote]
According to Amazon, DOT has “Built-in speaker for voice feedback when not connected to external speakers”. So you can assume you will get voice feedback from DOT thru your receiver when connected. I don’t know if the connection is limited to cord or Bluetooth.[/quote]
That will be the problem then. Repeating Everything back threw the surround system I can see will get quite annoying. I placed and order for one, but damn they up to July 25th now.[/quote]
I spoke with an Amazon rep regarding your question. She said sound redirection and silencing the “OK” response is on the list of things to consider for future upgrades. She said they are reluctant to silence Alexa since voice is her primary purpose.
I believe it’ll have a 3.5mm stereo output. So connect that to the receiver, tell Alexa play whatever song, since it is a song its going to the cloud not to be messed with by the echo bridge. Hence 2 separate commands will need to be issued. I’m wondering if theres a possibility of intercepting that, and using that as a trigger. While I could set up a scene for a playlist, I wouldn’t have control over individual songs. Currently prime music lets you “upload” 250 songs that aren’t available for free on prime music. If you pay 25/year they’ll do your whole library. Finite control over all your music and prime radio stations and all of that.
Frankly, if we figure out a way to customize feedback (notification) and a way to trigger an output device when alexa starts talking to the cloud, we’d be looking at a potentially whole home audio system that would blow sonos out of the water for a fraction of the cost, with hundreds of other features.
[quote=“new2me07, post:11, topic:191487”]I believe it’ll have a 3.5mm stereo output. So connect that to the receiver, tell Alexa play whatever song, since it is a song its going to the cloud not to be messed with by the echo bridge. Hence 2 separate commands will need to be issued. I’m wondering if theres a possibility of intercepting that, and using that as a trigger. While I could set up a scene for a playlist, I wouldn’t have control over individual songs. Currently prime music lets you “upload” 250 songs that aren’t available for free on prime music. If you pay 25/year they’ll do your whole library. Finite control over all your music and prime radio stations and all of that.
Frankly, if we figure out a way to customize feedback (notification) and a way to trigger an output device when alexa starts talking to the cloud, we’d be looking at a potentially whole home audio system that would blow sonos out of the water for a fraction of the cost, with hundreds of other features.[/quote]
I’m intrested, but I think your getting a bit far ahead of yourself. And you seem to be stuck on only one playlist. What about pandora, spotify, itunes, windows media and all the other sources. Right now I can tell alexa to play music which runs a scene to run on the Receiver, change the input, and Play a pandora station threw my stereo.
Now because the stereo is only in one room and to put a 5.1 and reciver in everyroom is not practial and buying a whole home system is also alot more then a play one in each room but without the control of sonos. So I still use sonos to play whole home audio TTS messages and more then what I can do with alexa.
Also speaking from experience having more then one Alexa Seems to not work so well as she can hear me from a few rooms over and that means both hear me at the same time. So commands also seem to be an issue. Having only two far away from each other may be ok, but rooms next to each other like my sonos are is a no go.
Also I bought my Sonos Play 1’s for like 150 each (two pack deal). The dot is cheaper for now but not by much and still requires a audio system behind it so I don’t I would consider it a replacement. And with zone control, and everything else it doesn’t compare to a a few dot’s.
But voice control is the advantage for dot’s. And currently you can do that with vera scenes or I use
to control all my sonos with a single Echo and this is what your looking for minus the sonos.
My main objective is control over the individual song I want to play… by voice. A single command, Alexa, play what does the fox say. Sure we can do that now. But you need a specific scene for a specific song. Theres plenty of other uses if we can (I’m not a programmer) parse some packets and see what Alexa is doing and use these as triggers (playing music, reading the news, asking about the commute) or TTS (I know its further out than the VeraSecure but theres demand I believe Amazon will add this functionality in the future).
I too want a simple interface between echo and sonos and am trying to avoid two steps vs one. As I understand it, some of the sonos products, like the connect, will auto detect of sound is coming through the line in jack. Downside is that I think it means all of the dot sound will go through the stereo instead of the local speaker–maybe the solution is a dedicated dot with a different name for sonos? Seems like overkill…
As an aside, I’m hoping to use a Bluetooth receiver plugged into the line in jack on the sonos, so that we can locate the dot in a more convenient place, but will have to see how the non music audio is.