Search Tile on Dashboards

SharpTools.io (web)
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Not sure if this has been asked before.
Is it possible to have a search tile for music services that when you press the tile a window pops up with a search field that allows you to type in music requests for specific music services? This would be pretty cool to have.

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Thanks for the feedback, Mike. What music playback devices are you using?

Unfortunately, the SmartThings spec doesn’t include any official capabilities for searching music sources, but we’ve been considering adding direct integrations for additional devices and platforms (like Sonos), so it’s something we can keep in mind for those.

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I think this would be useful. I have just started to really play around with Sharptools, and having a tile that you could input artist names or song title into to to get to a specific Pandora station would be great.

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Welcome to the community! I hope you are enjoying SharpTools! What kind of music playback device would you queue this music up on?

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Hi Josh,
currently I use pandora, Amazon Music, and Apple Music .
Would it be possible for the search pop up window to contain a drop down list of all the music services?

This would be really cool if you could do this.

Is this something you think would be best implemented in the actual device tile like an Amazon Echo? Or as a separate tile where you choose the device?

I have separate music Zones in my home that often play different music so for my purposes I think it would work best within the actual device tile.

Thanks.

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Thanks for the feedback on other music services. What music playback devices do you use though? Sonos? Amazon Echo?

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I am all Echo. Which , as you know, is capable of having music search with the Echo Speaks smart app enabled.

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@Mike_G, you can do this with the new Variable feature, which is currently in beta. I’ll pm you the rule setup that you can try it out since you are already in the beta group. See the video below for how it works in the dashboard. It changes the music pretty immediately, but it can take several seconds before the Album Art changes due to the native latency through the Echo Speaks integration.

https://i.imgur.com/G0HBNcO.mp4

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Thanks, the platform is amazing so far! It was a tough choice between Actiontiles and Sharptools, but in the end Sharptools just seemed more what I’m looking for. We have roughly 6 echos throughout the house, most are hooked up to Marantz receivers others are hooked up to Sony. We use Pandora a lot, and my daughter uses Amazon music. It would be nice to have a tt I could type “Staind” into, and pandora would play that station on the speaker’s we selected.

Which brings me to another “want”. Having 6 echos throughout the house and 3 groups, it would be nice to have a tile that would allow me to choose which device or group I want to play the music on. It seems that for now i need to make groups of Audio tiles for every speaker I want to listen to.

I have to say, I have a Fire HD8 and rooted galaxy tab 3 8.0 that I have been messing around with. I went from trying to decide which one I like better… to “may as well make them both home controllers”… to "I bet you I can root this Nook and install Android 7.0 on it and make a 3rd. This is a lot more addicting then I expected, and I’m really impressed with what can be done with Sharptools !

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@Greg_Krynick, you will be able to use the “Variable” tile (currently in beta) to achieve the “search & play” for both Amazon Music and Pandora since both are supported through Echo Speaks DTH. But, unfortunately, not to select what device to play while search the music.

Depends on your needs, you may also consider to group the devices by room in each dedicated dashboard. Ex: media room, living room and office. So you can navigate among the dashboards and play music through the specific echo device based on the context of the dashboard, or dedicate each tablet to a room so it always shows the specific dashboard and allow you to navigate if needed.

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Yeah, I have them separated into groups (I.E. downstairs, whole house, Party group, ect ect), it just seems to take up a ton of space for something that could be done with a tile that switches through or has a drop down box for all of your Echo’s and groups until you get to the one your looking for. Even if you could assign which Echos and Groups you want as options during the setup so that you don’t have 16 options to dog through to get to what you need.

I can’t wait for the beta features to be released to everyone. Hey, if you want another beta tester for it. I’d be happy to give it a shot. Lol.

I’m sure that as I get deeper into Sharptools, I’ll find workarounds that will alleviate most of my hiccups and growing pains. Such as music control.

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Any chance I can get a peek at that rule setup? I tried creating a variable and made rule to search amazon music using the variable with the trigger being the variable changes to anything but 1234… but no luck. Played around a bit and can’t seem to make it go. Any help is much appreciated!

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Here’s a copy of the notes @James put together:

  1. Create a “Text” variable using Manage Variables

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  2. Create a rule to be triggered by this text variable when it changes and the value is not empty, and add the Echo search music command - I used searchSpotify here for example, and you can use searchAmazonMusic if you prefer.

    For the String(text) argument, you can tap the variable button at right, and select the variable you just created, and you can toggle the “Advanced” control at top-right corner to remove the additional Number arguments, which are usually the volume and the seconds how long it will play the music. (You can find more Echo Speaks’ command argument details here.)

    I also added another action in the end of flow to clear the text of this variable.

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  3. In your dashboard, you can add this newly created variable as a tile. When tapped, it will prompt you for text input. Now whenever this variable’s text is changed, the rule will be triggered and play the search content you input.

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