It's not dumb. Not at all. Is it profitable for Hubitat to provide an 'User App Server' image with all the download/update structure ? Would be interesting.
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I’m not much of a coder, but I’ve managed to work out the following:
time spent updating us != time spent working on a solution
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I just sent $10 to Tony. I saw a suggestion, I think earlier in this thread that a $7 donation would be what one month of one app costs in the upcoming Heroku pricing. I think it is a small amount to pay for the convenience that Echo Speaks gives me. His Paypal link is at the bottom of the Echo Speaks app first page.
To some extent that depends on how profitable HE is. They make a pretty solid/excellent device that doesn’t require users to repeatedly buy something that repeatedly breaks so some credit where credit is due...
This app server is exactly what I suggested some time ago: the RPi Companion for HE.
There are several differences between a repurposed C5 and your Rpi companion. I'm assuming Hubitat would do the work for the C5 for profit. Both ideas are good but different.
You are absolutely right … I did skip the part where the thread was talking about the C5’s.
However the current discussion about the Echo Speaks is a clear application for the HE Companion. The developer (@tonesto7 ), AFAIK, is developing a Docker container for hosting the Echo Speaks server side, currently hosted at Heroku.
The idea behind HE Companion is to provide a broad support for Docker containers for use with HE, where we could install, configure and manage the containers directly from HE.
I’m, slowly, very slowly, acquiring knowledge about Docker so I could get some idead about the Companion.
But - there’s always a but, isn’t it? - putting bread on the table is consuming my time.
Echo speaks is not working for me today. No errors in the logs at all. Just echo notifications do not work. I seem to be able to use the other functions in individual echo devices. Heroku is up. No errors there, though a stack update is available. The Amazon login cookie is current and working. Anyone else having this problem or have any ideas? I tried rebooting Hubitat but no change.
Yes same here no speaking from my echo devices. I can see the event to speak from my device but nothing coming back from Amazon to speak.
Other functions seem to work. I just sent a voice command as text and it worked fine.
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Surprised there aren't more replies to this. Wondering if this is only us @ronv42. And if so, what does that portend? I make extensive use of this feature and boy am I missing it.
Yep don't know what it means. All my other Echo Speaks integrations are "voice command as text" to play weather or music. I use TTS to confirm certain automations and when I didn't get a confirmation that the trash was taken out this morning I knew something was up.
I just flipped the switch to send TTS to Lannoucer which I use as whole house though my intercom to make up for the loss of TTS in a room by room basis Echo Speak gives. Wife it going to hate me until this is resolved.
I'm seeing some issues but only with my Larger Echo Shows. All other devices are working. So this is definitely an amazon issue at the moment
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Well it is still early. Don't know if I have a problem or not, but the ECHO voice prompt I should have got this morning as I entered my garage on my way out to to work did not work. Won't know until this evening. Also I am running my server local, so if I have the same issue it's not Heroku related.
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Just so everyone understands how it works the server has no role in the device communication. It's basically there just to help with Authentication every so many days.
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So I wonder if this is some change that Amazon has made to stop echo from saying ad hoc phrases?
With no error from the API call it's has to be a backing service on Amazon's side. It's hard to get status of their internal services.
For those who want to test. This fails every time. You get the "beep" for the volume set though.
As stated voice commands as text seem to be working fine. I just sent a "Weather" request though it:
Play Announcement seems to still be working, attributes change but not hearing anything from Speak, or Play Text on Gen 2 dots.
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