Homey Plex application - main discussion thread

Qx5

Cant wait to test the app @MikeOne ! Thanks for all the effort you put in development!

EvertorN

MikeOne said:

Well, and that is exactly my question :-)
If I install a device, let's say in the kitchen, and I tell my app to watch a movie in the kitchen, I get a zone back (with ID and stuff) - but not the device that was installed in that zone. However, If I give my device (player) a friendly name (by renaming it), than I can ask Homey to play on that specific device ("watch on 'chrome' - if I rename my chromecast to just 'chrome') - in that case the correct device is in the devices array.

So in short - I'm either doing something stupid that prevents Homey from giving the actual device reference when a zone is detected in speech - or there is a bug. I'd like to find out which :-)

I had a discussion with @Emile about this like a month ago. An old version of the API contained a function where you could GET your own devices in a specific zone. Sadly, this function has been removed (as a security measure if I remember correctly). I kinda need this in my Kodi app too. I want to be able to respond to a question 'Play movie XXX in the living room'. Last I heard about this feature: to be (re)implemented!

djesko

I must be doing something wrong here , add chromecast and PMS as device + PIN but cannot see the Media server under settings.

Any tip ? 

Thanks

Bumblez

I have a feature request:
Would it be possible to offer some kind of 'alias' list?
For example, I have albums from a band named "Gotthard" in my collection. But when I ask Homey to play Gotthard, it consistently hears "got hard"... I would love to be able to make a list of aliases, where I can specify that when Homey hears "got hard", it should be interpreted as "Gotthard" instead.

MikeOne

@djesko - okay the steps are

1) Install app
2) Go to the settings page - Plex app
3) Click the 'Start PIN process' button (then login to plex.tv and goto plex.tv/pin, enter the PIN
4) Go back to the settings page and you should see one or more PMS servers there, click the 'select' button next to your PMS server
5) Now go to devices and add a device, choose your driver and select your player

Seeing it is not yet active in the App store, are you using athom-cli to install? If yes, do you see any errors in the output?

@Bumblez - The Plex app does not (yet) support playing music. This might be a feature I can add later, but seeing there are already some music apps available for Homey, I considered it a lower prio. Also, the internal Plex format for music is very different than that for movies/series so it would take some effort to support. 

Having said that, an alias list is not a bad idea - as the same problem occurs with some movie titles (i.e. titles that contain made up words). This is the real challenge in the speech recognition logic.

MikeOne

@EvertorN - okay, I really hope this will be (re)-implemented as the Zones in Homey are fairly much useless as they are. 

A work around (which currently is implemented for the Plex app) is to rename your device to the Zone it is in (i.e. 'Kitchen') and then the device is actually returned in the speech result devices array.

Bumblez

You're right, the alias list feature would benefit movie titles as well.

And I definitely hope you will add music support. To me, music support is even more important than video support.
The music apps that exist, are mainly focused on streaming music from external sources (like iTunes, YouTube, Soundcloud). I have a large CD collection (yeah, I'm oldfashioned, I still buy actual CDs!) that I ripped and that's on my own (Drobo) NAS running Plex. Being able to tell Homey to play a certain album/track from my NAS, with the sound going to my stereo set, would be awesome.
(unfortunately, there is no Kodi app available for the Drobo, so that's not really an option for me, unless I set up another - separate - server)

djesko

@MikeOne ;

Did install it from git yes ,  will take a look at the output when i come home.

this is how it look now : 

Edit : did have some problem installing it last night , some wifi problem at home !  can it be that it did not install correct ? 

MikeOne

Hey @djesko, it seems no servers where found I guess? 

You could retry by hitting the 'reset settings' button and re-do the pin procedure. You also need to allow Plex to be remotely accessible (you can do that from you plex settings page in plex itself.

Another check you could run: make sure you have a browser window that is logged in to Plex.tv and then visit https://plex.tv/devices.xml - that should give you an XML result. Now look for a device that has a "provides="server" attribute. That should be your server. If this doesn't show, than your plex.tv account isn't connected to your server.

Let me know how you get on.

MikeOne

Oh, and BTW - the App has been approved and is now published in the App Store!

Qx5

MikeOne said:

...
Having said that, an alias list is not a bad idea - as the same problem occurs with some movie titles (i.e. titles that contain made up words). This is the real challenge in the speech recognition logic.

I think @EvertorN fixed this with a fuzzy lookup function in Kodi. So it looks for a good match of "got hard" in the available list of movie titles for example. When there is a highly rated match it returns it, in this case "gotthard".


Great to see it in the store! Tried installing it from work. connecting with plex.tv worked flawlessly! Having trouble with adding the chromecast as player but can not troubleshoot easily from this distance  

MikeOne

# Step-By-Step Installation:

1) Install the App on your Homey.

2) Configure your Plex Media Server to allow remote access
3) Goto Plex.tv -> Settings -> Server (advanced view) -> Network and make sure the 'Secure Connections' dropdown is set to 'Preferred' and NOT required.

4) Open een browser window en log into plex.tv

5) Go to the Homey page - Settings - Plex (left column)

6) Click the 'Start Pin Process' button, remember the PIN and go to plex.tv/pin to enter it.

7) Go back to the Homey settings page. You should see your available PMS server, click select button next to it.

8) The Homey Plex app will now analyze your media and cache all relevant media keys for speech recognition (this might take a minute)

9) Now go to the 'Devices' page on the Homey and add a device in a Zone. Select Plex, your needed Driver and pick your device.

10) Homey Plex should now be ready to receive voice commands!

11) Enjoy watching.

Imko

@MikeOne i have a plex server connected but no select button.. i run the latest experimental firmware anything i have done wrong?

found some comment in youre code sugesting it's handeld by a driver so i have a look at properly setting up a plex player so i can add it as a appliance

MikeOne

@Imko  - no this seems alright. If there is only one server, it should actually auto-select it... Funny thing is, that didn't work for me, but thbug might have magically fixed itself :-)

The easiest way to check now, it to add a device (player) - and go the flows. Than drag the device (left columns, all the way to the bottom) to the 'Then' column. Then search for media, it should show results from you media server. 

Or just ask homey to watch something :-)

Let me know how you get on okay?

MennoVanGrinsven

@MikeOne dutch is supported right?. Will try with my chromecast 1

MikeOne

@MennoVanGrinsven, very limited dutch support for now. It might work, no guarantees for now. Need to focus more on language support over the coming weeks..

MikeOne

Btw, please let me know if chromecast v1 works as this hasn't been tested (I only own a v2)

MennoVanGrinsven

MikeOne said:

Btw, please let me know if chromecast v1 works as this hasn't been tested (I only own a v2)

i own both + a chromecast audio..

phb

Doesn't work  here, get  a blue  line  on my tv .after  a wile  homey  says  Enjoy  

MikeOne

@phb , kan chromecast play the file when you cast it from the plex web player? Do you know what format the file is? Is it an MP4 file maybe?

phb

@MikeOne Yes  chromecast plays the file  from the plex web player. The format is .mkv

MikeOne

Hmm, that is suprising. I tested a lot of mkv files and they all played without problems. The challenge is that I'm using the plex universal transcoder for files casted to chromecast as this should work for most file formats. 
I really need to beef up my detection logic to make it more reliable. Could you try other movies?

phb

The homey app works well, also switched to chromecastBut I get a blank screen on the TV with a blue bar running at the bottom.I only use mkv files also for the series. Voice recognition is fine

phb

I'm going to try a different format

MikeOne

Because I'm using automatic transcoding, it can take a while for some file formats to start.. 
I think 95% of my movies are mkv as well and most of what I tested runs fine. Some start very quickly, others take a bit longer to transcode..

djesko

MikeOne said:

# Step-By-Step Installation:

1) Install the App on your Homey.

2) Configure your Plex Media Server to allow remote access

3) Open een browser window en log into plex.tv

4) Go to the Homey page - Settings - Plex (left column)

5) Click the 'Start Pin Process' button, remember the PIN and go to plex.tv/pin to enter it.

6) Go back to the Homey settings page. You should see your available PMS server, click select button next to it.

7) The Homey Plex app will now analyze your media and cache all relevant media keys for speech recognition (this might take a minute)

8) Now go to the 'Devices' page on the Homey and add a device in a Zone. Select Plex, your needed Driver and pick your device.

9) Homey Plex should now be ready to receive voice commands!

10) Enjoy watching.

Did get it to run now , was the remote that was not OK , thanks

DennieDeGroot

@MikeOne i'm having a issue with the app. I paired the server correctly in the settings menu and was able to add 'plex home theater' as a device. However I am not able to play any media. So I cloned the repository and looked at the debugging window which is printing the following:

Could not connect to Plex Media Server: Error: socket hang up
Plex server is NOT available

Any idea on how I can debug this further?

MikeOne

Hmm, I've never seen the hangup error while connecting to the local Plex server. The short version is simply that Homey can't connect to your server. Is remote access enabled? Any firewalls on the network maybe? Clues should be sought in in the network layers really.
Can you see in the debug window what the IP is that Homey wants to connect to? Is that IP in your local network range?

MikeOne

Oh... And another thing, was PMS running when you did the PIN process?

DennieDeGroot

Yes my PMS is running 24/7 and is externally reachable. I see it tries to connect to my external IP address and not my local IP, maybe this is the problem? Can I force it to use my local IP? During pairing I can only select my external IP.