Amazon Echo - Alexa - Stereo Pair Disappointment

Since I read about the possibility of pairing two echos, I thought it'd be perfect for our kitchen, which is quite a large room. 'Alexa' is in one corner, and sometimes has trouble hearing, if there is some background noise etc, so a second one somewhere else in the kitchen would help with that.

What nobody told me, what I hadn't read anywhere before I bought it was that only some interactions are in stereo. The closest echo will answer regular questions, play podcasts, while the other one just goes inactive.

When you say "Alexa" both normally wake, but as you say "What's the weather?" or whatever, one of them goes back to sleep, and the awake one answers.

If you play music from Amazon's service it will play in stereo. It seems to be some sort of support for different services. If you say "Alexa, play radio 1" (in the UK) it plays Radio 1 from the BBC in mono. If you say "Alexa, ask tunein to play radio 1", then tunein will play Radio 1 in stereo.

This morning I sat at the kitchen table to have breakfast and said "Alexa, good morning". The one closest picked up, and gave me my flash briefing, which is great. Then I asked it to play my morning devotional podcast, and lo and behold the other one (behind me) started playing it.

This is not what I expected when I bought it specifically for this purpose. However, I have to say that when it is in stereo, it really is fantastic, I really like it. I also really like that the volume remains linked in both, so if you use the buttons or use voice control, both change volume simultaneously.

I hope that this mono/stereo annoyance is only teething problems, and that all audio will eventually come from both parts of a stereo pair, but in the meantime, it really is a stereo disappointment.

Edit [1st December 2018]: I got home after a few days away, and one of my stereo pair speakers seemed to have forgotten stuff. I rebooted them both, and one could control the lights, and other skills I had, but the other couldn't. One had access to unlimited music, the other only played samples. When I told it to "discover my devices" it always returned instantly with "no new devices found". I tried quite a few things, but in the end I had to reset it. The only weird thing I noticed was that in the Alexa app when I went into the settings for this device, the volume control was always missing. All working now

Edit [3rd December 2018]: I found this sentence "Note: Paired Echo speakers only support music content" on this page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GPSQQS7N3SBKAEWU
And note: "music content" is different from "Audio player" which is how some of my audio apps work :(

Kitesurfing - Downhill - 21 Sept 2018

Building MicroPython for esp8266 - to freeze modules

For my esp8266 project with the ssd1306 screen I was starting to run out of memory for all the 'threads' I needed. I have a TCP client talking to the server, temperature readings coming from the 1-wire device, and button inputs. Not to mention that I want to run a webserver for configuration.

The answer, and it has so far worked very well, is to build my own firmware, and 'freeze' the modules that are least likely to change into the firmware. I have a font class for the ssd1306 screen, the asyncio library, the aswitch library, and a few others which are unlikely to change, so I picked them.

This is the procedure I followed.

Create a VirtualBox VM, running some recent version of Ubuntu (18.04) (select minimal options), and log into it. I installed opensshd-server, and on the settings for the VM I enabled a bridged network so it gets an IP address on my home router.
sudo apt-get install net-tools openssh-server
Then you can ssh

I more-or-less follow this : http://akshaim.in/IoT/MicroPython_ESP8266/MP_ESP_101.html


sudo apt-get install make unrar-free autoconf automake libtool gcc g++ gperf flex bison texinfo gawk ncurses-dev libexpat-dev python-dev python python-serial sed git unzip bash help2man wget bzip2 libtool-bin

git clone --recursive https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk.git
cd esp-open-sdk
make

(takes about 40 minutes)
(NOTE - this path is shown at the end of the install - run the command)
export PATH=/home/akshaim/Documents/ESP8266/esp-open-sdk/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin:$PATH




git clone --recursive https://github.com/micropython/micropython.git
cd micropython
git submodule update --init
make -C mpy-cross
 cd ports/esp8266
(different from original instructions)
make
(different from original instructions)

Now you can put modules (and subdirectories) into the modules directory, and they end up in the firmware. When you put a new module, you need to 'make' again.

output is firmware-combined.bin located in esp8266/build

This is the current content of my modules dir:
 1624 Sep 15 16:39 websocket_helper.py
 2748 Sep 15 16:39 webrepl_setup.py
 2118 Sep 15 16:39 webrepl.py
   31 Sep 15 16:39 upip_utarfile.py -> ../../../tools/upip_utarfile.py
   22 Sep 15 16:39 upip.py -> ../../../tools/upip.py
 1094 Sep 15 16:39 port_diag.py
   35 Sep 15 16:39 onewire.py -> ../../../drivers/onewire/onewire.py
  850 Sep 15 16:39 ntptime.py
  836 Sep 15 16:39 neopixel.py
 1425 Sep 15 16:39 inisetup.py
 1110 Sep 15 16:39 flashbdev.py
   35 Sep 15 16:39 ds18x20.py -> ../../../drivers/onewire/ds18x20.py
   27 Sep 15 16:39 dht.py -> ../../../drivers/dht/dht.py
  219 Sep 15 16:39 _boot.py
  470 Sep 15 16:39 apa102.py
 1716 Sep 15 17:42 config.py
 6397 Sep 15 17:42 freesans34_num.py
 4096 Sep 15 17:42 uasyncio
   35 Sep 15 17:57 ssd1306.py -> ../../../drivers/display/ssd1306.py

Installing modules

Python uses a package manager to install modules, and it is also available for micropython. I'm not very familiar with all this, and I find it a bit fiddly. However, here are some instructions to install asyncio, logging, and picoweb.

Build micropython for unix.
cd into ports/unix, and here is a version of micropython which can run on the host. This is used to install modules locally before freezing them.

#first some prerequisite packages to install :
sudo apt-get install pkg-config python-pip libffi-dev

#next make the unix version of micropython
make axtls
make

#now you can download and install modules
#cd back into ports/esp8266
../unix/micropython -m upip install -p app picoweb (also installs uasyncio)

../unix/micropython -m upip install -p app micropython-logging

now I move all the files/dirs from app to modules - I suppose you could just install to modules first, but I liked the buffer of not messing up my modules directory, but instead checking the app directory before deciding what to move.

After that just make to build your new firmware, and you're good to go.

Thermostat in progress

As a potential upgrade for my Raspberry Pi heating system, I am working on a thermostat module for it - still in the prototype stages, more info to come but here's where we're at now:

eGalax 7" screen raspberry pi with sketch + GUI

I wanted a light installation of raspian, so I got sketch and added appropriate stuff to make x work.

To install GUI
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg lxde lightdm

This stuff was required to make the touchscreen work - otherwise the calibration just didnt do anything.

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxext-dev libxi-dev x11proto-input-dev xserver-xorg-input-evdev xinput-calibrator  evtest -y


cd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo mv 10-evdev.conf 45-evdev.conf


sudo vi 99-calibration.conf
add xinput_calibrator output, which should look like this:


Section "InputClass"
        Identifier      "calibration"
        MatchProduct    "eGalax Inc. USB TouchController"
        Option  "Calibration"   "67 1948 1877 183"
        Option  "SwapAxes"      "0"
EndSection