Monday 14 November 2016

Alexa, meet Squeezebox

Since my Amazon Dot arrived, I've been smitten. A little like how I didn't think I'd use a smart watch until I bought a Fossil Founder, I though voice control a gimmick until I started playing with Alexa. In the past few days I've been toying with the idea of building full Alexa control of my squeezebox based whole-house audio system. Here's what I've managed so far. It's a basic proof of concept but it does work;


This comprises a very basic LMS plug-in which links the local squeeze server software to the cloud-based skill. The skill is written using Node-RED with a mySQL database in the background.  I'm really growing to love Node-RED more and more and it seems ideal for flow-based functionality like an Alexa skill. Here's the current flow that drives the demo in the video;



There's still a long way to go but so far this is promising and a blast to put together.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there a to get you to share the plugin made for alexa to squeeze server ?
Soren Walentin

MediaServer8 said...

Hi Soren

The skill is currently under heavy development. Check out the project website www.hab-tunes.com. There's a blog there as well as details on how to get involved as a tester if you like. It's still very early stages though.

peter

Ben Hobbs said...

I too think Alexa and voice control in general is great, It is interesting to watch people develop their own Alexa skills for home automation and media