Default rooms

[rgraciano]

There's a general desire to be able to act on the system without always specifying which room to act on.

Eg, issue #16 - it would be nice for JoinGroup to be able to look up what room is currently the coordinator and default to that. It would not work in a scenario in which multiple groups are playing at the same time, but there's no way around that except to specify a room.

Functions like next, previous, and so on would also benefit from this feature.

[kshartman]

It could also use the default room when when the room slot comes in undefined (which it will if you don't say 'in') or when the room is garbled because alexa didn't hear you correctly.

[kshartman]

You can do something like this (specific to me)

function roomOrDefault(roomName) {
var selectedRoom = 'shanesoffice';
if (roomName) {
switch (roomName.toLowerCase()) {
case 'bedroom':
case 'kitchen':
case 'livingroom':
case 'sunroom':
case 'patio':
case 'shanesoffice':
case 'kathysoffice':
case 'mediaroom':
selectedRoom = roomName; // known room
break;
// aliases
case 'pool':
selectedRoom = 'patio';
break;
case 'media':
case 'media room':
case 'tvroom':
case 'tv room':
selectedRoom = 'mediaroom';
break;
case 'sun room':
selectedRoom = 'sunroom';
break;
case 'bed room':
selectedRoom = 'sunroom';
break;
case 'den':
selectedRoom = 'livingroom';
break;
case 'shanes office':
selectedRoom = 'shanesoffice';
break;
case 'kathys office':
selectedRoom = 'kathysoffice';
break;
}
}
console.log('debug: ' + JSON.stringify(roomName) + ' = ' + selectedRoom);
return selectedRoom;
}

Then replace intent.slots.Room.value with roomOrDefault(intent.slots.Room.value) everywhere

[jplourde5]

I just finished working on musicSearch for node-sonos-http-api and have been testing it with echo-sonos. It supports Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, and the local music library. What I'm finding while testing is that the amount of utterances is growing rapidly to the point that it is breaking the model. As a result, I've been thinking about ways to greatly trim down the number of utterances.

I too think that there should be a means for setting a default room as well as a default service and include utterances for changing them. I would create a slot for the different service types including apple, spotify, deezer, library, siriusxm, pandora, and presets. I'm wrestling with where to store the defaults so that they can easily changed by an utterance. I'm thinking DynamoDB or S3.

I'm also talking to the Echo product manager about adding an Echo ID to the json message that is passed to Lambda so that the defaults could be set differently for different Echos/Rooms. (My company spends a TON with AWS so I have access to all of the PM's :)

Should I pursue making these changes?

[bradanlane]

I may be in the minority but I don't see myself using defaults on a per-room basis. I tend to pick music for the room (or rooms) I'm in. The room isn't the pivot point for me - it's the music and by correlation, the music service.

Further, I don't subscribe to multiple services and when I talk with some other big music listeners, they've invested heavily in one service or another and do not tend to use multiple services as normal practice. Some use Pandora One. Others are big users of Spotify. Still others have adopted Apple Music. In each case, they have their "go to" service. The exception is that a few of these contacts have big legacy libraries on a computer.

I guess all of this data points to the desire for setting a default service. However, default rooms is less valuble for the installations I work with.

[jratliff681]

That is awesome you can get to the product managers! I would love to see an echo ID sent so your skills can know which device the request came from. If only that could also be used with the built in smart home skills too so you could say "turn on lights" and depending on which echo you were talking to would turn on different lights based on the room it's in. Would also be useful for "Tell Sonos to play" and control different speakers depending on the room. I have skills named "TV pause", "TV play", etc and would be able to set those up for multiple TV's/rooms with an echo ID to work with.

The only other thing I'd love is if they'd let you assign a skill as the default interface to open automatically when you say "Alexa". If the original interface is not default then you could do something like "Alexa, ask Amazon ..." I built a skill for work that interprets all aspects of our schedule and put an echo in our lounge. But people always screw up asking it stuff directly "Alexa, who works tomorrow" vs saying "Alexa, ask the schedule who works tomorrow".

As far as default room, for those of you who like to play around with it, I copied the Sonos core skill into 5 duplicate skills. The skills all have invocation names the same as my speakers. So I have skills named "patio", "living room", "garage", etc. Each skill is coded via their options.js to send commands to that speaker only. Then I can say "Alexa, play pandora in the living room", "Alexa, tell the patio to pause", "Alexa, volume 40 in the garage", "Alexa, tell the living room to join the kitchen", etc... I think it just makes it more convenient to give commands.

[jplourde5]

Bradalane, I agree on the services except for maybe many having two, Pandora and then another main streaming service. I also agree that you tend to use one more than any. I actually want three, SiriusXM, Pandora, and Apple Music. And then there are the presets.

As far as rooms go, the rub comes when you have multiple Echos and multiple Sonos and really would like to by default, associate a room to a specific Echo (which I can't do yet). Short of that, I still tend to play music in one room more than another and don't constantly wander around the house playing different music.

I'm thinking it should be more like a multi-room stereo tuner where you change service (FM, XM, CD, TV, ...) and can change the room setting too (eventually room by room). To do this there should be utterances:

Change service to X
Change room to X

Which would change the defaults. You could then simply say:

Alexa, Ask Sonos to Play Coldplay

jratliff681,
I've actually asked the PM for 2 things, the first being to pass the Echo Sonos ID, and the second to have support for multiple trigger words and be able to link the alternates to a skill. This way we could say:

Alexa, bla, bla

AND

Sonos, play Coldplay

What I'm really driving towards is being able to have the Echo NATIVE simple music experience with Sonos.

I'm thinking that it may be better to just fork this project to something like Echo-Sonos-Plus and implement this new behavior. That way I don't disrupt the current behavior.

Thoughts?

[bradanlane]

Forking initially does make sense. Then, once it's been "in the wild" for a few months, it can be decided if merging is desirable.

I have only one Echo so I didn't consider that option. I can see your point. I do have nine "zones" for my Sonos.

[ryanmaule]

Setting a default room would be useful for me as well and reduce utterance complexity. It's currently failing the wife test. Setting the default to the last used room would also make the flow easier. A command like "Alexa, tell Sonos I'm in the kitchen" as @jplourde5 suggests would be nice.

[jplourde5]

I hear you on the wife test. My problem also, and one of the reasons I want more simplicity. I'm also running out of breath with some of these utterances ;)

I'll go the forked route and shoot for a default behavior that mimics what is here now. The main problem I have now is with the Play "something" preset command because it collides with where I'm headed. But I could make Presets the default service and effectively have the current behavior as a default, sans all of the other music service capabilities that don't exist in standard branch now anyway.

[rgraciano]

@jplourde5 - I'd vote for forging ahead in the same project, since merging the forks over time becomes problematic and most people seem to want some variant of all of these features anyway.

I would suggest:

1. Default room and default service in options. Default service is "preset" for backwards compatibility. "Play" command operates on default room and service.

2. If the user wants a stateful service, then "switch service" and "switch room" (or similar) work with either S3 or Dynamo. Could turn these off in options.js by default, so users who don't care don't have to go through the extra steps of setting the storage up.

Setting up lots of invocation names would be a great feature if Echo could support it easily. Might be something to document in "Optional Setup" someplace for the brave.

[jplourde5]

Will do. I'd prefer not to fork it if we can avoid it.

[jplourde5]

I finished the work and will begin testing tonight. I'll provide links to my branches for others to test once I finish my initial testing, hopefully before the weekend. The changes will add support for Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Sirius XM, and the local music library. Default behavior will be as echo-sonos works now. Advanced mode will allow users to change services and rooms, allowing for easier utterances.

[jplourde5]

Okay, I've done some preliminary testing and things seem to be working. You can get the releases at:

node-sones-http-api Use the below release instead of what is is specified in the documentation
https://github.com/jplourde5/node-sonos-http-api/releases

echo-sonos
https://github.com/jplourde5/echo-sonos/releases

I'm sure that I'll be fixing, tuning, and updating the releases after further testing. Let me know if you run into any problems. Good luck and enjoy!