[APP][Pro] Amazon Echo - Looking for testers and contributors

Can you maybe be more specific what commands you run and what responses you are getting?

I have tried the following:


Will start the radio on TuneIn without any response/announcement


Will stop the radio again without any response/announcement

perfect.

Just wanted to say that for me it works good with amazon.de.
I have only one dot for testing and I mostly need it to control the flows via voice and to whisper, announce some stuff.

This is the problem with BBC radio on Amazon (and other) devices in the uk. Changes to BBC Radio on TuneIn | BBC Sounds

This is what means that despite it being us in the UK who pay for the BBC, the BBC has decided to make its digital services more functional for everyone else in the world than us. It’s really frustrating. It also stops any possible automation of BBC radio on HomePods without extreme workarounds.

@Andy_Henderson i had the same issue as you with the announcements. They are coming from the bbc sounds app on Alexa so particularly difficult to treat. I had some limited success with a routine on Alexa which I called play bbc radio four quietly. That routine would turn the volume down to the lowest setting, then pay bbc radio 4, then turn the volume back up to where I wanted after a few seconds. Then I triggered that routine via Homey.

Sure. As @Jonathan_Draper says we can’t use Tunein to play BBC radio stations in the UK. There are four main commands I use:

  1. “play b. b. c. radio two”
  2. “play b. b. c. radio four extra”
  3. Stop audio on …
  4. “Stop playing in one hour”

1 & 2 trigger response “Playing BBC radio two/four extra”
3 doesn’t trigger a response
4 triggers response “OK I’ll stop playing in one hour”

Yes, the commands are executed by the BBC sounds app which occasionally announces “BBC sounds” but, as you say, those announcements are in the BBC stream at the prescribed volume.

The announcements I describe above might be sent by Sounds, but they are generated by Alexa:

  • They use Alexa’s voice
  • If you whisper any of the above commands, she responds with a whisper (which makes me hopeful - however, using a command like “whisper play b. b. c. radio 2” doesn’t work - I suggested it to Amazon ages ago, but didn’t get a response)
  • BBC Sounds isn’t involved with the ‘Stop playing’ command which is generic
  • They are unaffected by the current Alexa volume - googling “alexa notification volume” reveals a ton of people with the same issue - the work-around of adjusting alarm volume doesn’t work for me and, if it did, it would affect my actual alarms.

This is what kind of works for me: it doesn’t completely mute the “playing BBC radio four” response, but it does make that a lot quieter. And having the delay set to 5s also covers the occasional “BBC sounds” announcements as well. Then after the timeout, the volume is turned back up so I can hear the radio at normal volume.

Thanks for taking the trouble to provide that. I gave it a go, but the volume of the announcement sounds just the same as my usual routine. I’m guessing that’s the minimum volume for announcements. My normal playing volume is 2 or less (the dot is right next to me).

If that’s the case, my only hope is to trigger whispering through the app or a routine, somehow.

Any idea how to solve this issue? Authentication to amazon.de

I think it should be the same solution as for the other alexa app

  • IF you have MFA turned on, and your connecting the app may show a ‘page not found’ error page.
    Solution: you must go into your Amazon account via web browser and enable 2 factor authentication. Then use an authenticator such as Google Authenticator, problem solved. Use the code that comes through the authenticator app, not the one that Amazon texts to you. Hope this helps.
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Thanks, just adding a 2nd Authenticator (in my case Microsoft) solved the issue. I even can authenticate with SMS

Thank you for this work that I have been waiting for for a very long time.

Test carried out successfully from amazon.fr (Connection did not work on the first attempt, but after restarting the app OK).
All my Alexa devices are recognized, namely 1 echo dot 3, 2 echo hub, 2 echo spot 2024, 1 echo spot, 1 echo pop and 1 echo show 15.
My sonos beam was not recognized (but this is not not a native alexa device ;-)).
Playback with Spotify ok, track change OK, volume adjustment ok, announcements also (say, announce and whisper work perfectly), no latency.
Let’s hope that this app arrives on the store and that it is stable (and that the Amazon API does not change every 15th of the month). Congratulations again for your investment.

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Hi, when i try to logi in I get this messages on evry devices (laptop, phone):
Error: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘replace’)

what browser (version) are you using?

Mac Os: Safari 17.6, Chrome 131,
IPhone: 18 / Homey App

in every place the same

Ah I think I see the problem, might I know what language you are using Homey in? An what amazon country you are trying to access?

Currently I only have those languages mapped, so I think that’s the problem

EDIT: from your screenshot I assume your language is polish. I just released 1.0.6 which should fix this issue, let me know if it works for you now.

Thanks for this, happily connected my dot 5th. Happy to test it for you and myself :wink:

Maybe bug report:

When I chose at speechcard: Say it doesn’t work, announce and whisper do work!

What language is you Echo/Alexa configured to?

Any homey error now. When i try to go to plugin page i got 404 error on homey website. I spoke about public plugin webpage

As mentioned in the first post in the topic, since this is currently a test only version the app won’t be available in the store while it awaits review from Athom between versions, but if you already have it installed it will still work and you should be able to receive the update before the review is finished.

Dutch