Well it worked for about 6 months and now all my Plex playlists are USELESS as are my echo devices unless - I GIVE UP PLEX ALTOGETHER.
I am running the last version of the server software. I have done all the normal tricks, I am pretty advanced user with 8 echos and software development background (actually develop voice bots), but…
…as of 10/31/20 PLEX no longer routes the audio to the MULTIROOM music group associated with the Alexa GROUP of which the responding echo is “owner” of - UNLIKE every “official” Alexa music service.
I do notice that this little Alexa app “Thunderstorm Sounds” has also stopped working on multi-room music and therefore appreciate that this change is not necessarily the fault of Plex.
I am not sure what to do. I am considering looking into writing my own software and giving up Alexa and maybe PLEX for audio also?
Warning to newbies: If I was just starting out I would just run wires everywhere and have 1 single music player for your entire house. I would never buy any Amazon device period. PERIOD! You may not regret it yet but you surely will eventually.
On a lighter note, if anyone wants to buy 4 echos and 4 echo dots they will be going cheap!
I’m really sorry to hear about this! Unfortunately it’s literally out of our control. The framework we’re using has a very small control interface. We can’t direct music to a specific room at all. That’s all done internally inside the Alexa “brain”.
Thanks, I updated the answer after finding that “Thunderstorm Sounds” got hit at the same time. I appreciate the limitation and will find some way to overcome this issue. In the meantime, this might all magically start working again in 2 days. Any Alexa owner will appreciate the truth in that last statement. Random software.
We don’t have a Google Assistant integration. Google doesn’t provide a similar audio playback framework for us to use.
If you can get by without voice our Sonos integration works with multi-room audio. Either through the Sonos app or via our casting integration. But those speakers are quite a bit more expensive than any of the other options.
Really good to hear that I am not the only one. On top of it, today, it does not open plex at all. You say, Alexa open plex and it sits there without doing anything (tested on both echo show 8 and echo 2017). Thank you Amazon… #not
Hi, I’ve been on live chat with Amazon about the Plex Alexa skill (I use it a lot and it stopped working today), they have found an issue and they tell me it will take 24-48 hours for the fix.
Oh cool, I use on daily basis too. Did not cross my mind to go on live chat with them since where I live now this option is no longer offered. Last time it took them 2 months to fix my issue (no kidding).
I hope you are right but I have big doubts about what Amazon “reps” “promise” to end users in the hope of “ending the support ticket” because the actual answer (at least at that level of the organization) is we don’t know. I pray your chat doesn’t end up in the black hole which is the Amazon ecosystem. I pray Amazon gets better but am looking at other options and intend to phase out this unreliable technology if it’s not fixed (and fixed permanently) soon.
How are you phrasing your request for multi-room? Amazon must have silently added support to the AudioPlayer framework. I can’t seem to trigger it here though.
Ask Alexa to play some music on Amazon Music on a multi room group, while the music is playing ask Alexa to play something on Plex, the multi room function will continue and Plex will play on all the group devices. Even if you stop or pause, when resumed it will still resume on the multi room group
NO, specifying the target multi-room music group as part of the Plex request didn’t and doesn’t work for multi room music on Plex.
Just read what the Plex employee vanstinator said above about the API specification from Amazon.
You could ONLY get Plex to play multi-room by asking for songs from an Echo which “controlled” an Alexa room group with the preferred playback device for that room group was already set in Alexa app to the “everywhere” group.
The trick popclassic59 mentions is accurate. Sometimes this connection to the group would break and you’d have to do his “fix” by asking another official music service to play against the “everywhere” group first. This fix no longer works.
EDIT: THE FIX DOES WORK NOW. IT WAS HUMAN ERROR ON MY PART.
I’ve ordered 2 Chromecast audio devices on ebay and will try that. Alexa is not reliable technology. I can only assume your ecosystem is behaving differently (and outside the normal experience of 90% of users) due to software glitches or the glitch hasn’t hit you yet.
EDIT: AGAIN MY BAD. THE GLITCH IS RESOLVED. I AM AMAZED AMAZON DID THIS IN LESS THAN 6 MONTHS
I can confirm you are correct. I was wrong - the fix is working again after 2 days of down time.
I will edit my comment above. Long story short, I screwed with the groups during my troubleshooting and needed to reverse some hacks I made. Anyhow, thanks everyone and so long. Until it breaks again…
(When that happens I’ll be swapping over to Chromecast Audio groups and Plex Pass on Android.)
