Tags: alexa

How I start Spotify on any Alexa with Home Assistant

Posted by Raffael on Posted in Tutorials Tagged , , , ,

At home, my music comes from Spotify Premium, and most of my playback devices are Amazon Alexa devices.
I wanted my daughter to start her favorite songs without handling a phone or a screen. Tap an NFC card on the reader and the music starts: a kind of Toniebox, just built myself. The reader is a DIY build based on an ESP32 microcontroller and ESPHome Builder, following the adonno/tagreader template.
The obvious Home Assistant approach is the official Spotify integration plus media_player.play_media. That is not enough for a cold start, though. The integration can use play_media sensibly only when something is already playing. Starting a specific song, playlist or podcast from a stopped player is therefore not supported by this path. This is a limitation of the integration and its current media_player behavior, not a configuration mistake.
The solution is a small Python script. It asks the Spotify Web API for available Spotify […]

Speed up the Alexa app on Android – no more sluggishness

Posted by Raffael on Posted in Android, Tutorials Tagged , , ,

You know how it is: you open the Alexa app on your Android smartphone, click through the menus—and every “click” feels like it’s in slow motion. Whether you’re controlling smart home devices or looking for a simple setting, instead of a quick response, using the app becomes a test of patience.
I had exactly this problem. And the solution is as simple as it is curious.

The culprit: Contacts permission

In most cases, the cause of performance issues is not your smartphone or your internet connection, but rather an app permission. More specifically: access to your contacts.
In my case, the app apparently tried to scan through my 1,000+ contacts every time I changed pages. On a second smartphone with fewer contacts, it worked much faster. The fact is, as long as […]