I'm forking the base code off of this project from Maker Musings. It originally supported checking to see how many new episodes there are and you can ask it if there are any new episodes for a certain show.
I've expanded it to support the following features:
- Basic navigation (Up/Down, Left/Right, Page Up/Down, Select, Back, Open Menu)
- Playback control (Play/Pause, Skip, Previous, Stop)
- Shuffle music by artist
- Play random unwatched episode of TV show
- Play random unwatched movie
- Play specific episode of a TV show ('Play season 4 episode 10 of The Office')
- Play specific movie
- Continue watching next episode of last show that was watched
- Play next episode of a show
- Play newest episode of a show
- Clean/Update video and audio sources
- "What's playing?" functionality for music, movies, and TV SHOWS
- Searching for something in your library
- "Party mode" for music (shuffle all)
- Play audio playlists
Before you can do anything, you need to enable the "Allow remote control via HTTP", "Allow remote control from applications on this system", and "Allow remote control from applications on other systems" options in your Kodi settings. (Note that wording might be change a little bit on different versions, this example is for Kodi 17).
Make sure to keep track of the port, username, and password you are using. Now, you'll need to have your Kodi box opened up to the internet via port forwarding. If you don't have a dedicated IP address, you'll need a dynamic DNS service to give you a static URL to use so you don't have to be constantly change this value.
Once you get that setup, you'll have to have your own server to handle the requests and pass them to your Kodi box. Since this is a Python application, it has several ways that you can run it.
Here are a few options to get started:
If you plan on running your own Apache/Nginx server, I'm sure you can figure that out yourself. Skip ahead to the Skill setup section.
Heroku is a great way to get a server running for free, but there is a small limitation with the free tier on Heroku where the 'dyno' will go to sleep after 30 minutes of in-activity. This might cause some commands to timeout, but so far it seems to be the best option for getting up and running as quickly as possibly. To get around this, you can either pay for a "Hobby" server which is only $7/month. If you really don't want to pay, there is a work-a-round where you get enough free hours a month to leave this server running 24/7 if you add your Credit Card to your account. Then you can use something like Kaffeine to keep it from spinning down.
After you've setup an Heroku account, go ahead and install the command line tool. Once installed, open up a command line and run heroku login.
To create a new app, just run this from the command line: heroku apps:create. If that runs successfully, you'll see something like this:
Now, clone my repo: git clone https://github.com/m0ngr31/kodi-alexa.git and cd kodi-alexa.
Once you have my repo cloned and you are in the directory, you can setup the following environment variables to talk to your Kodi box:
- KODI_ADDRESS
- KODI_PORT
- KODI_USERNAME
- KODI_PASSWORD
You can do this easily from the command line: heroku config:set KODI_ADDRESS='your_ip_or_dynamic_address' KODI_PORT='kodi_port' KODI_USERNAME='kodi_username' KODI_PASSWORD='kodi_password' --app app-name-and-number. Changing of course for your settings. You can also use the settings page on your Heroku app to add these.
Now run git remote add heroku https://git.heroku.com/your_apps_name_and_number.git. This command will allow heroku to deploy new code based on what is in your directory.
Next, run git push heroku master. This will push the code to Heroku and deploy the server!
Heroku doesn't just fire up the server automatically, so you have to tell it to: heroku ps:scale web=1 --app app-name-and-number. Now you are ready to setup the Alexa skill.
If I release a new update here, just browse to the repo directory in your terminal, and run these commands: git pull origin master and git push heroku master
Now skip ahead to the Skill setup section.
I'm not going to talk about what Lambda is, I'll let you search for that on your own. On Lambda, the first 1,000,000 requests/month are free, so I doubt you'll ever hit it's limit talking to your Echo.
To deploy to Lambda, we're going to use a great little Python package called lambda-deploy, so you'll have to have Python 2.7 (and pip) installed. If you don't have it installed on your computer already, just install it and come back. There are plenty of guides online to install it on whatever system you're using.
Now, either download or clone my repo: git clone https://github.com/m0ngr31/kodi-alexa.git and cd kodi-alexa.
Once you have my repo downloaded and you are in the directory, you can setup the following environment variables to talk to your Kodi box:
- KODI_ADDRESS
- KODI_PORT
- KODI_USERNAME
- KODI_PASSWORD
And several AWS environment variables so we can upload the code to Lambda:
- AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
- AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
- LAMBDA_ROLE
These settings are set in the .env file. Do not change the options that already have values.
To get to the options for the AWS variables, log in to the AWS console and browse to Identity and Access Management. Once in there, navigate to the "Users" tab and look for an existing user. If there isn't one, go ahead and create a new one. Once you see a user there, click on it and go to the 'Security Credentials' tab. Then click on 'Create Access Key'. This will only show once, so make sure you copy the Access Key and Secret Access Key before you close the modal. Paste these values into the .env file.
Next, click on the 'Roles' tab on the right. Here, you're going to create a new role that will be just used for running Lambda functions. What name you give it doesn't matter, but when asked for policies, make sure you select "AWSLambdaFullAccess". After that's been created, copy the "Role ARN" value to the .env file under "LAMBDA_ROLE". It'll look something like "arn:aws:iam::11111111111:role/lambda" depending on what you named it.
Now, go back to the console and make sure you are in the directory with this code in it. Run the following commands:
pip install lambda-deploylambda-deploy deploy
If you editing the .env file correctly, this should have successfully sent the code to AWS. Let's go look at your Lambda functions and finish setting up the function. Browse back to the AWS console and click on Lambda. There you should see your function. Click on it and go to the triggers tab. Click on "Add Trigger" and select "Alexa Skills Kit". At the top right of this page, you'll see text that will say something like "ARN - arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:11111111111:function:kodi-alexa". Copy this, as we'll need it in when you setup the skill.
Now skip ahead to the Skill setup section.
I personally haven't tried this, so I can't verify that it works, and I don't know how to make it work. But if someone would like to submit a PR to add documentaion, I would appreciate it.
Here the docker command to get it running: docker run -p "443:8000" -e KODI_ADDRESS="<local xbmc ip>" -e KODI_PORT="8080" -e KODI_USERNAME="<your xbmc/kodi username>" -e KODI_PASSWORD="<the user's password>" kuroshi/kodi-alexa
Once you've setup your server, you'll need to setup an Amazon developer account and start setting up a new Alexa skill.
Here's what it'll look like:
You'll just need to stick the URL from your app in the Endpoint field. If you are using Lambda, you'll need to use the ARN you got earlier.
On the next tab, you'll have to paste the alexa.intents file into the "Intent Schema" field, and paste the alexa.utterances file in the "Sample Utterances" field.
The tricky part is generating the Slots in the middle section. You need to create 4 different slots:
- MOVIES
- SHOWS
- MUSICARTISTS
- MUSICPLAYLISTS
To make it as easy as possible, I wrote a little webapp that will give you the information you need: here.. You can also get the information from running python generate_custom_slots.py in the repo directory if you have python installed. This will create txt files with the relevant information. If one of your slots is empty, you can just enter the word 'Empty' or something so that it'll save.
The next tab has info about the SSL cert, if you are using Heroku, select the middle option.
After that is pretty much just information that you can just put whatever into. Don't submit it for certification since only you will be using your server.
And now you should be set! Go ahead and try speaking a few commands to it and see if it works! If you can't get it working, try looking for support in this thread on the Kodi forum, and if you have more techinical problems, submit and issue here on Github.
Thanks!
Here are a few demo videos showing how to use it. Other commands you can do are in the utterances file.
