Thanks for the advise. I have begun working on this and so far so good. A little time consuming but with the copy function of the rules I will be able to get it done without too much work. I decided to put a true/false tile for each device and speaker group.
Do you have any ideas on the use of Album Art and the media player for multiple devices? Right now I would need two 3 tiles for every Echo device (True/False, Album Art, Player).
A Visible/Invisible tile (if you had it) would not work because you can not put tiles on top of each other.
Any other great ideas?
@Bill_Findley, can you please provide a bit more details what you are trying to achieve (or the issue you have) with the 2 sets of the 3 tiles? Are you not having enough landscape for those tiles? Or something I missed?
Here is an example screenshot. I have tiles for each device, tiles for music searches (artists, stations, playlists) and a tile for the AlbumArt and one is the media play. Right now the AlbumArt and Media player tile are for one particular Echo device. I am trying to have only two tiles (one each) instead of 2 tiles for every device.
So I would either need a Media Player and AlbumArt tile be able to represent multiple Echo devices are tile on top of each other that would disappear when not active (true)
I hope that helps.
@Bill_Findley, thanks for the details and screenshot. The music player and album art is not able to represent multiple devices unfortunately, but you may create rules to execute play, pause, fast forward, rewind, volume-up or volume-down command on specific devices by checking the True/False variables, like your playlist rules, and add these rule tiles to the dashboard to replace the “Music Player” tile.
See the screenshot below for example. (The play tile in the screenshot is actually a True/False variable that uses $.runRule() syntax to execute a rule to send play command to the specific device and toggle the variable value to have the tile “active/inactive” color effect and change the icon.)
But you will have to add the album art tile for each device to be able to show the image played on each of them though.
Thank you! That will work great. The AlbumArt is not something I need to look at on my phone anyway just something cool…but I could make a tile that gives the currently playing song.
Great timely response. Thanks again.
Don’t forget to post your final setup in the “Show Off Your SharpTools Dashboards!” thread. I believe it will be very cool and inspiring to the others!
This looks really cool and something I have spent hours today trying to get the first step done, only to find that there seems to be an ongoing issue where echo speaks is not working in the UK
Are there any alternative options for using Echo speakers?
Well that was simple haha, thank you so much. The thread was so long I never spotted that bit but has done the tick. Much appreciated - I can continue playing now Appreciate the help
Hi @adam_lewis I hope you don’t mind that I moved your post to the Echo Speaks thread where I think you’ll get more visibility about your question (the other thread was more about tiles with custom shapes).
The last part of the first post in this thread has some tips on how to use Media Tiles along with a special $.runRule("RULEID") hyperlink syntax to create nice visual tiles to start desired radio stations.
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You can see some neat examples in this thread including the banner image by @James and a neat example by @Bill_Findley
So this gave me an idea which started working on but thought would put here in case anyone else gets inspired
Started to put together a TV remote which some GIF’s to select the channels. Behind the scenes I have rules linked to virtual switches in Smarthings that select the channel via IFTTT on my BroadLink pro
Has anyone migrated to the new Smartthings app yet? I’m still running Classic but will have to upgrade soon. All of my music integration relies on EchoSpeaks which is being sunset in about 2 weeks. Does the new Alexa integration allow album art and all the same level of control with SharpTools?
Hi @Matthew_Barnes, the SmartThings’s new Alexa integration doesn’t support all the features provided by Echo Speaks, and I’d encourage you submit a feature request via ST’s online form. However the good news is the Echo Speaks’ developer is working on the “lite” version that he plans to release before Echo Speaks goes away. (See the ST post by Anthony.) But we are not clear what features will be supported by the light version at this point as Anthony is still working on it, but we will test it out when it is available.
Hi James. Thanks so much for the fast response. I’m really fretting the migration to the new app but by the looks of it my hand is going to be forced in October. Anyway, do you know what features will be supported or where I can get that info. Haven’t been able to find it on the Smartthings community. I’m really most concerned about music control and album art.
Anthony, the developer of Echo Speaks, has not commented much on what the lite version is going to support. But you can ask him by tagging ‘tonesto7’ in the ST post, so he can be aware of the request.
As he mentioned in the ST community, he was about to explore the new ST api, so he may not commit to anything, but he has been a really great guy that willing to extend his work to the “lite” version knowing many liked and relying on Echo Speaks, and trying to help as much as he can.
Thanks for all of the great suggestions and examples in this thread. I have two questions I am curious if anyone has successfully implemented:
Is there a way you pass the shuffle command to searchAppleMusic with your playlist name to randomize the playing of your playlists?
Has anyone been successful using the Jukebox dashboard to execute native Alexa skills? - I have been able to by creating a switch and a lock to pass to Alexa Skill to enable an Alexa routine that executes the Alexa skill. Seems like an extremely roundabout way to get there. and 2a) If you have, can you pass a secondary parameter to the skill launch for the scenario where the skill initially asks you which feature you want to use?
@Barry_Martin, welcome to the community! Not sure how I missed this post though.
Unfortunately, the command doesn’t support the “random/shuffle” parameter, and I am not aware of any command to shuffle in Echo Speaks. But I’d encourage you to suggest the feature in the Hubitat’s thread to get the author’s attention.
This is the only way to trigger Alexa routine at this point afaik. Though I think you can just use a virtual lock and change the lock’s status in the dashboard, and use the lock to trigger Alexa Routine.
Appreciate the help
Anyway, do you know what features will be supported or where I can get that info. Haven’t been able to find it on the Smartthings community. I’m really most concerned about music control and album art.
