Can someone explain / point me to a page about how plex server and echo dot work together?

Plex Media Server
1

I am new to plex server. Found that I need / wanted that to play music through alexa.

I set up server on a windows PC. The echo dots are on the same LAN.

I put the plex app on my iphone. It wanted me to select specific dots to associate plex to that dot?

I don['t have plex pass.

Some questions:

  1. I thought only 1 dot would be able to use plex? in the plex skill, I selected 2 dots of the 4 we have. and was able to get music through both at same time. is that legal / stable? Whats the selecting a specific dot do?

  2. When the plex is serving music, is it going on the internet and back in to the dot on the same lan?

  3. initiallly, my wife said music will stop after a few songs. I hadn’t configured remote access. Is that needed for dots on the same LAN? For dots outside?

  4. in setting up remote access, I had to set a manual port.
    a) do you pick 32400 or is there a reason for another?
    b) going in to remote settings today after getting it working yesterday, it says not accessible. I clicked on the apply button (manually specify port was selected) and it turned to fully accessible. Because it’s manaully set port, is that ‘not remote accessible’ message incorrect /not anything to worry about / just have to hit apply to refresh it?

THANKS!

2

Here’s the related support article.
Not using Alexa myself – from what I remember, the handling on Alexa side is going through their cloud connector, therefore your server needs to be available through remote access. I’m not sure if the entire communication will go through that backend or only the command handling.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/115000320808-getting-started-with-alexa-voice-control/

re #4: you can freely pick a public port if you establish a manual port forward on your router. Just make sure it’s not colliding with some other services on your router and to configure the same public port in the Plex Media Server remote access configuration.

3

One of the topics that is NOT covered by the aforementioned support article is the network behavior of PMS, the Alexa cloud, and the Alexa device.

Specifically, I’d like to put my Alexa devices on a different subnet than my PMS host.

Attempts to do so in the past yielded a non-working environment. My guess, as I did not sniff the packets that were being exchanged, is that the current code base utilizes UDP broadcast messages to reach all the home based devices (i.e. both PMS and Alexa devices).