I’m a great fan of playing my mp3 music library through Echo/Alexa devices with voice control. I found Plex Server (on a Raspberry Pi), with the Plex Alexa skill, ideal for this and used it for some time at home. Lately I set up a Plex/Pi/Echo in my Motorhome which uses a 4G Mobile router. This appeared to work well but I realised that, as “Remote Access” cannot work properly (“not available outside network” - the mobile setup is double-nat and no amount of port forwarding helps) it was using the “Relay” feature and, far from keeping the Server/Echo data transfer local, all the MP3 data was passing over the mobile network twice. That was a deal breaker since it completely defeated the object of having a local server to minimise mobile data usage.
I’d previously dabbled with “My Media for Alexa” (MMFA) which also enables voice activated local media playing. It does not have the “Remote Access” issue so, in my Motorhome setup, it works locally and no music data files are transmitted over the, expensive, Mobile network. So I’ve been forced to drop Plex and now exclusively use “My Media for Alexa”.
MMFA is somewhat more basic than Plex, fewer voice commands, some idiosyncrasies and is pretty obviously not being developed - I’d like to return to using Plex.
As a (retired) IT Networking consultant and developer, I can’t imagine why, if MMFA can do it, the Plex Alexa skill can’t be coded to play music entirely locally when the Echo device and the Plex server are on the same local network (i.e. not using the “Relay” function) even when “not available outside…”. Can anyone (developers?) answer this?
I guess this is an enhancement request and, should it become an advanced feature requiring a Plex Pass I’d happily pay for it.
Any comments?
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