All might be well and good if you have an existing cookie but what if you are trying to start a new instance and can’t get the original cookie to begin with?? That’s the situation I am in
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is it possible to use the old manual method for the first time? I honestly don't know, just offering ideas. the steps to do it gotta be round here somewhere!
Well I guess I'll speak up. I DID do the Alexa+ upgrade a number of weeks ago. I ALSO have the 404 error - I was about to post a bunch of stuff about it, but I see that many others are seeing it.
AFAIK Echo Speaks is working just fine. Cookies refresh fine too. But my logs have tons of 404 errors like everyone else.
Bottom line: This might not necessarily be related to A+ since folks with it and without it are getting lots of 404 errors.
Just tried to update my echo speaks cookie.
From the ES app I cleared cookies and hit login to Amazon. Got a 404 (I think) error, page not found. Went to docker and hit the link and started again. Cleared cookies and signed in to Amazon. Page refresh and all was good. Went back to my c8 and the app said X no cookie. Restart on both c8 and server... No good, I'm lost.
When looking for it is it going to http or https?
Http.. I have login to Amazon 3 times and it still shows I haven't
I did a restore and it's back
Post a screenshot of what you are seeing under the Alexa Login Service section of the app. The red X by auth status is a known issue of late:
If you see that you should be OK. If you see any other red X, you still have an issue somewhere.
I got tired of playing with this. So I just restored a backup when it was working. I was worried about 107 days without a cookie refresh. It now working again.
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FYI: I built my own version of Echo Speaks long before it became an app on Hubitat. My version runs as a node.js server on a raspberry PI and I've used it for years:
My code, (and it looks like the echo-speaks app too) is based on a wrapper originally written by github user Apollon77. That being said, I'm still able to retrieve the cookie but am no longer able to perform authenticated actions like enumerating the current echo devices associated with the login. I'm currently in the process of installing the app in my dev environment so that I can understand the full suite of functionality related issues. I'm also worried that my production server may be on borrowed time since I never try to retrieve the cookie automatically.
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Quick update on this: echo devices can't be enumerated any more because the api isn't being initialized. This could be the reason why restoring from backup works, but anybody who wants to set up Echo Speaks from scratch is out of luck. Since this app (and my app) both used a somewhat sketchy developer api, I'm not surprised that Amazon changed or disabled the functionality. I'm actually surprised that it ran for as long as it did. I've therefore decided to switch over to Airplay for my HE TTS needs. This works well with Hubitat's Airplay integration app and my homepod mini devices.
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@tonesto7 are you able to do anything for this? Or is it dead in the water now?
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Thanks @kevin_wilcox for posting this. I put hours yesterday into trying to get a new ES server install working, using ChatGPT as my assistant, with no luck. I got super close but no cigar for reasons you noted above. I was impressed with how much ChatGPT knew and how well it helped. When I told it about your discovery, here is what it said:
Amazon has been quietly changing:
- the login challenge flow
- their cookie structure
- their API validation responses
- the Alexa device enumeration endpoint
…and they did not keep backward compatibility.
So yeah: your DGX, your callback URL, your Echo Speaks app reinstall — all of it was correct.
The failure point was Amazon changed the expected post-login response, and the current Echo Speaks version doesn’t know how to interpret it anymore.
And the thread you found from kevin_wilcox is dead-on. Other skill developers have been reporting the same breakage on the Alexa device API since Alexa+ went public.
Not sure what happened but Amazon cookie update by itself.
I wonder if it's related to Amazon's path upgrade to the new Alexa+ with AI.
I'm on their beta for my devices and every device that's on it is seen by Echo Speaks, but there's no output. The older devices that haven't changed over are still receiving alerts and playing.
So, how do we avoid this mess?
What exactly do you want to avoid?
If you have everything setup/configured properly, by default, your cookie should automatically update every 5 days.
Do nothing. If ES is working for you, leave it be.
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