Yet from what I'm seeing everyone is having issues left and right. Wish I had known this was going to be the way to go a little bit sooner.
1 Like
There is no official stance. The echo speaks dev will probably have another solution worked out at some point.
If you don’t want to pay Heroku to run an always-on server to refresh your Amazon cookie after 11/28, you can roll your own at home. Thanks to @vmsman’s detailed instructions, it’s pretty simple.
Everyone is not having issues. People that do have issues tend to post about it to get help.
1 Like
@markbellkosel84 People familiar with Docker or NodeJS applications have no problems standing up a server instance. One thing to take note of is that as we all expand our home automation and try to reduce our dependence on public cloud offerings like Heroku, it is highly likely that there will be more and more of these ancillary server apps that you need to host.
Sadly, most folks feel this stuff is pretty foreign because they are used to Windows at the desktop. These types of apps and really most home automation equipment runs Linux under the covers. For those really wanting to work more in the direction of being off the grid and less public cloud dependence, learning Linux, as well as Docker and LXD containers is going to be key. My YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@scottibyte has over 120 tutorials explaining all sorts of details regarding networking, containers, and self-hosting infrastructure for this exact reason. Modern day Linux has a HUGE community supporting questions and answers.
Realize that solutions like Samsung SmartThings rely heavily on the cloud. However, Hubitat Elevation (HE) and Home Assistant are solutions that try to keep all the pieces of the puzzle private. Even though we might like the HE to be able to host everything we need, its not plausible. View your HE as the center of your Home Automation solution and realize that external server instances in Docker, LXD or even VMs are increasingly needed to supplement that processing power.
5 Likes
@brad, Normally you would have to do a save after the startup which should cause the startup to happen every time.
sudo pm2 startup
sudo pm2 save
The only case where I can think that this might not work is if you implemented the Node.js (NPM) inside of Windows wsl2. Windows does not have systemd to automatically start configured services. So, I guess my question is what did you use? Is this a VM or something else?
@markbellkosel84 I was one of those "who had issues." I went with the native Raspberry Pi4 approach. @vmsman instructions worked perfectly for me. The issues I had, which do seem pretty common, is to get the sequence right to get the first cookie. Seems that restarting the Cookie service on the Pi and restarting the hub a few times until it gets that cookie is the way. Took me hours of trying to be honest. But getting the Cookie service downloaded and installed was the easy part. The Echo Speaks app is finicky about the initial setup (for me at least) and once resolved, things are good. I am also glad to be free of the Heroku dependency.
1 Like
Posted in another topic but linked here in case anyone is interested. Running the Echo Speaks Cookie Authorization Server on a Raspberry Pi Zero W. No container. Working great so far.
@vmsman - I figured it out. For some reason pm2.root.plist was being created in /Users/brad/Library/LaunchAgents/. I moved it to /Library/LaunchDaemons/ where I found com.Homebridge.server.plist, and now it is launching upon system start. Thanks for your help!
I just hope that I can get it running parallel to pihole
My Pi is running PiHole, HomeBridge AND the Cookie server. All are running on different ports (by default, nothing special that I did) and together use less than 5% of the CPU. You shouldn't have any trouble.
2 Likes
1 Like
My experience exactly. I am not a Linux guy but @vmsman's non-docker instructions worked perfectly for me after a restart. I had a previous installation of docker that probably interfered with that method and not being a Linux guy I really didn't want to spend a ton of time figuring it out so I went with method #2. It's all working now and seems stable.
I don't really begrudge Heruko their $14/mo but it does feel rather gratifying to do it locally.
So, I logged into Heroku to see what the cost would be to continue their service. They recommended the "ECO" plan which is an hourly plan based on the hours of use with the echo speaks app. The plan was 5 dollars/mo for 1000 hours of dyno use. According to heroku I use about 13 hours/month.
At this point since I'm no synology/docker expert I can live with $5 month. If I ever get time/ambition/instructions to run local, I'll ditch heroku.
I'm just getting this info out there incase someone like myself had questions on staying with heroku.
3 Likes
@brad5, I will be happy to turn you into a Linux guy. I think that all Windows guys interested in advanced home automation need that Linux intro to feel comfortable. Oh and I made the complete jump to Linux in 2007 when my Windows Vista did horrible things to me.
2 Likes
@brad Awesome! sounds like the difference between privileged and private user based. Interesting. Glad its working.
I went to the heroku website, and I saw that it cost me 5 euros a month, seeing the problems I see, I prefer to pay for them, by the way I am from Spain
I got it to work. The container wants to save the cookie to a directory in the docker-config file that it did not have permissions to. I edited the path and reinstalled/recomposed the docker build and it worked after that. It didn't have permission to save the cookie which was the problem but showed that no where in the logs.
Honestly I assumed you were a VMS guy and had just hopped on the Linux fad when it became fashionable 
And for the record I'm a Mac guy so I'm halfway there.
Need to learn how to use a real operating system. 
I say this as an ex windows server engineer who only has a single modern windows system left in his house (for my CNC machine). Everything else in the house is running macOS, Ubuntu or a Debian variant.
3 Likes
Morning Everyone,
Sorry, I missed the deadline... I'm going in a different direction right now.
I will take @tony.fleisher docker script and create an official docker item pushed to the repo.
I will try to get this done this afternoon.
12 Likes
Hi
Please can someone past a link to the instructions to follow to install echo-speaks in a docker container on a Synology NAS.
Many Thanks
