PlexMusicPlayer for Alexa - Plex music playback on Echo devices

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
1

I recently obtained an Echo Dot and was surprised to see so little support for different music stream platforms. Therefore, I made my own that allows music playback from my Plex server. Both the project and a detailed overview of the setup are provided in this blog post:


Please keep in mind that this project has only just started, so there is still a lot of room for improvement and enhancements.
If you have any questions, please ask!

2

that’s awesome!

3

Hi Tyzer - this sounds very exciting and just what I need - but I have tried to follow your script and don’t get very far!!! Please bear in mind that I have no knowledge of haroku or git so I have been following your script to the letter. I have installed git and haruko without issue and created my webserver but get a fatal error when I run “git push haroku master” the error is :

fatal: ‘haroku’ does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository

Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists.

I run the git push command from the directory that I cloned the files to.

Any ideas?

Thanks

4

Hi Siange! First of all, thank your for your interest!
I think the error relates to you using haroku in the command, instead of heroku.
As haroku is not known to git, it returns the error that it does not appear to be a git repository.
Please use the following command: git push heroku master
If there are any further questions, please ask!

5

looking good, is there away to publish this to a local web server, (instructions) (have full esxi environment running)
thanks

6

I am not sure, as I have no experience whatsoever regarding ESXi. I do think that, if you would run the application locally and forward the port to make it available online, you should be able to make it work. To do this, you should first clone the git repository on your local web server and use python to run the application:

  • First, you need to install the required python libraries: pip install -r requirements.txt
  • Next, you should be able to run the application: python server.py
    (if you want to run it in the background, you can use python server.py &)
    This should now allow you to run the application under the ip: localhost:5000
    If you would forward your 5000 port from your local webserver, to another port, you could use the combination of your ip and that assigned port as base url to write the Alexa Skill with in Amazon Developer. However, your local webserver shoud provide HTTPS, as Alexa only communicates over HTTPS. This implies that you need an SSL-certificate for your webserver (I think).
    It is quite complex to work it out this way, but I do think it is possible! Good luck!
7

Hi Tyzer34

Thanks for responding - apologies that was finger trouble on my part!!! This is the command line and error I get. Cut and pasted this time to avoid silly typo’s!!

C: emp>git push heroku master
fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git

If I move to the plexmusicplayer directory I get the following

C: emp\plexmusicplayer>git push heroku master
fatal: ‘heroku’ does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Siange

8

It seems to me that you haven’t installed the Heroku CLI yet.
You can find documentation and installer here
Sidenote: You should be in the plexmusicplayer directory, so the second error is the correct error.