MMM-AlexaPi

Davepre · Mar 28, 2017, 8:31 PM

Hi everyone, heres to report that I was successful.
In a nutshell i did exactly what @lucallmon recommended but for others to follow my procedures in order to fix this issue i will go step by step.

Initially I had installed AlexaPi on the raspberry pi 3 and during the installation process i was asked to name the platform. Since its a pi i selected “raspberrypi” which (looking back now) seemed to have caused the issue.

However as a first step I changed the Output handler from “vlc” to “sox” to see whether that would do the trick:

I opened the console and typed in

Sudo nano /etc/opt/AlexaPi/config.yaml

Under the 4th paragraph there is the line “playback_handler: “vlc””

I changed “vlc” to read “sox”

(At this stage i saved, restarted and noticed that i could run magic mirror and alexa would also respond but the mic icon was still crossed out so i went back to config.yaml again and continued as follows)

Furthermore the device named in the config file was still “raspberrypi” and i wanted to change that too.

So wherever I saw the words "device: “raspberrypi” i changed that simply to “device: “magicmirror””

I changed 4 entries in total:

In the “sound” paragraph in the very beginning (line 3 of the paragraph),
in the paragraph following the playback_handler (line 4 of the paragraph ) “# output device:…”
2 paragraphs below that (line 1 of the paragraph ) "# some device:…#
and finally towards the bottom theres a paragraph called “Platform” (line 2 of the paragraph )

After changing those lines I hit ctrl, x confirmed to save the file with yes and confirmed the file name with enter.

I rebooted the pi and started up magic mirror and now everything is working!!!

One thing to note though is that the changing from “vlc” to “sox” in my case caused alexa not to greet me with “hello” upon startup anymore. But since everything else seems to be working now I can live with that.

Hope this helps everyone who encounters a similar problem. Thanks again for all the tips!

Best regards / Dave

johnnyboy · Apr 28, 2017, 5:59 PM

This post is deleted!

cyberphox · Mar 30, 2017, 12:25 AM

@johnnyboy i reinstalled the module and selected MagicMirror as the device and its been working since. I’ll be switching to my Kinobo USB mic this weekend…

lucallmon · Mar 30, 2017, 12:58 AM

Solid! Good job guys!

Davepre · Mar 30, 2017, 7:56 AM

Good morning guys,
a quick question for everyone who managed to get this to work. How is the performance when leaving the mirror on for a couple of hours?

I havent had the time to properly test it yet, but yesterday night I was under the impression that the MMM-AlexaPi module is quite a heavy hitter performance wise. I use a raspberry pi 3 and don’t feel like I overloaded it (only default modules + mmm-alexapi, motion detection and mmm-uklivebusinfo as 3rd party ones). But the newsticker got stuck after ten minutes and I was unable to close or alt+tab out of magic mirror. Again, I havent tested it properly yet since I didnt have the time, just wondering whether you experienced similar slow-downs.

Best regards / Dave

johnnyboy · Apr 28, 2017, 5:59 PM

This post is deleted!

johnnyboy · Apr 28, 2017, 5:58 PM

This post is deleted!

lucallmon · Mar 30, 2017, 9:02 AM

@Davepre If you lost the “hello” at the beginning, you might be able to change back to ‘vlc’ as playback_handler and see if that works. I’ve had the best results with ‘sox’, however, I’m currently running on v1.4 with vlc as my handler and it’s working great. I get my flash briefing, I get music access from TuneIn and iHeartRadio. It’s almost as good as my Dot that I have in the kitchen.

lucallmon · Mar 30, 2017, 9:08 AM

@Davepre said in MMM-AlexaPi:

Good morning guys,
a quick question for everyone who managed to get this to work. How is the performance when leaving the mirror on for a couple of hours?

I havent had the time to properly test it yet, but yesterday night I was under the impression that the MMM-AlexaPi module is quite a heavy hitter performance wise. I use a raspberry pi 3 and don’t feel like I overloaded it (only default modules + mmm-alexapi, motion detection and mmm-uklivebusinfo as 3rd party ones). But the newsticker got stuck after ten minutes and I was unable to close or alt+tab out of magic mirror. Again, I havent tested it properly yet since I didnt have the time, just wondering whether you experienced similar slow-downs.

Best regards / Dave

Every once in a while the mirror sticks but not often. I’ve been running AlexaPi from the start. Usually I just CTRL+Q to restart the mirror or I reboot. I have a reboot button on the side of my mirror. see my setup here. I also have a monitor off button. I have an old LCD monitor that get very hot and overheats, turning off the HDMI, so I keep it off most of the time, however Alexa still runs in the background. I also have a temperature sensor on my MM and I have a 5V fan attached to my Pi to keep it cool. It stays belwo 45degC.

Davepre · Mar 30, 2017, 9:56 AM

@lucallmon Thanks for the feedback. I hope to get the chance to test a bit more during the weekend and report back if the performce issues become really bad :)

Best regards / Dave