Just to state the obvious, this Echo Speaks cookie refresh issue is super annoying. I’d pay money to have a reliable solution so my Alexa notifications “just worked.” I think there’s a business opportunity here for Amazon to monetize this instead of us all trying workaround their attempts to keep us from using the Echos for this purpose.
I am currently testing token refresh, @JDC says he did also.. hang in there
Right now my fork is private, but I can make it public if people are interested.
It sure is, but there’s 90 workaround that makes the situation manageable.
I’m as annoyed as everyone else but I think it’s unlikely that Amazon sees it that way.
How many echo speaks users are there worldwide? Dozens? Hundreds?
@dJOS I copied this code for the toggleable override into the apps code for ES and it compiled without complaint. But the strangest thing…. Echo Speaks has disappeared from my app list. ??? No sign that it exists or ever existed. The individual echo devices are still there and work fine.
Does this make any sense? Maybe a conflict with Package Manager (which had managed it previously)?
probably move to integrations.. check there
Can't 'speak' to Echo Speaks, but this is the base library in npm for the cookie solution, and it sees about ~2K downloads a day. So there is something there there.
Even accounting for similar platforms like Home Assistant or others that might leverage a similar solution, I would still be shocked if Amazon took any interest in opening up Alexa to outside services in this way. Nonetheless, I’d be happy to learn that they do intend to do something like that, if it were to happen.
Thank you. checked, and gave me the chance to clear out old or unused or duplicate devices. However, I deleted all of the echo speaks "devices" except the last one, and of course that's the wrong one!
Deleted that one too, deleted the server, "redeployed" the non-heroku server, logged in and off and running again for 90 days. Renamed the device in Amazon to better describe it rather than my "23rd device"! ![]()
Check your integrations list.
This exactly. ![]()
Well I’m fairly technical in general, but with all due deference to the comments here about possible solutions, Echo Speaks has always confused me. A lot. There are many moving parts, and getting and keeping the cookie server - which I run standalone on a Pi - going is complicated. I already downloaded a patched version of the Echo Speaks app that was supposed to only update every 90 days. Still went belly up in a couple of weeks. There are numerous approaches here. And if you (me) don’t really understand how Echo Speaks works, until a solution stabilizes that hopefully can be installed with HPM I’ll still be flailing about. I appreciate the efforts, but some of us are still baffled by the whole thing. Hence my musing about how nice it would be if Amazon would just charge me a fee to allow me to use their devices for voice announcements without kicking me out every couple of weeks.
As a data point, (unsure if it is a causal relationship or not).... just noticed that my echo's voices all changed. I do not use Alexa very much for voice, so not sure when it happened. But AlexaPlus just self enabled again. Wondering if this is related to the changes we are all seeing with the echo speaks cookies.
I also had a very frank conversation with the alexa (amazon) support where I explained that you should not change things for users without giving them the option to prevent it, opt out, or at least notify them that they do not have a choice. (I know they don't care. But if everyone voices this frustration, maybe 0.0000001% chance they will listen)
The Alexa voice changes when the transition to plus happens, so I suspect that is what occurred.
I enable plus a few weeks back and have had no cookie issues yet, so I don’t expect it’s related.
It isn't. It's the change in voice with Alexa+. Tell Alexa to turn off Alexa+ if you don't want it, and the voice will revert back. Keep in mind tha Alexa+ will become standard for all at some point.
I know both of these things, since this is the SECOND time it has automatically switched WITHOUT my consent.
What I was meaning was that they were obviously making changes in Alexa and Alexaplus again (as noted in e-mails I received).
I did (again), but I shouldn't have to since I never asked to have it done. In fact, I specifically requested last time that they NOT do it again without my permission.
This is likely going to make my issues easier to handle soon. If they push it on me again, I will get rid of my echoes and go to something else.
Unfortunately, your request means nothing. Amazon is forcing Alexa+ on everyone. As mentioned, it is only a matter of time until it is simply the only default.
Unfortunately for them. I lived without alexa and amazon for the first 40 years of my life. It might be less convenient, but I can do it again. All for improvements, but Alexa+ ain't that in any meaningful way I have seen.
Grating voices and less reliablility.
In any case, that was not the purpose of my original comment. They DID send e-mails about changes they were making on the server side. It DID coincide with a lot of the difficulties. While correlation is not causation, it also is smoke... and usually that means there is a fire.......
I've been having cookie refresh issues and I don't know why everything appears to be working fine, but I get a error of a 408 which means it took a long time for it to retrieve the cookie. I'm not sure what change but it's been working for many years and now it's having trouble getting its cookie file. Is anyone else seeing this? And I haven't found a workaround.
I am using a local raspberry pi docker configuration.
