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Q&A (FAQ)

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René Kliment edited this page Mar 19, 2017 · 24 revisions

How do I upgrade AlexaPi?

  1. Go to your installation directory, which is /opt/AlexaPi by default:

    cd /opt/AlexaPi

  2. Pull from the repo:

    sudo git pull

  3. Run the setup script again

    sudo ./src/scripts/setup.sh

  4. Start with a fresh config or update your configuration file - consult the config.template.yaml, CHANGELOG.md and Configuration changes wiki page.

How do I uninstall AlexaPi?

  1. To be nice to AlexaPi, first stop it & disable it:

    sudo systemctl disable AlexaPi.service
sudo systemctl stop AlexaPi.service

  2. Remove AlexaPi:

    sudo rm -rf /opt/AlexaPi

# For systemd install:
sudo rm -rf /etc/systemd/system/AlexaPi.service.d/
sudo rm /usr/lib/systemd/system/AlexaPi.service

# For classic init install:
sudo rm /var/log/AlexaPi.log
sudo rm /etc/init.d/AlexaPi

systemctl daemon-reload

  3. (optional) Remove all configuration:

    sudo rm -rf /etc/opt/AlexaPi

How to try the dev branch

After you have done the sudo git clone ... do

cd /opt/AlexaPi
git checkout dev

and then run install normally. It is highly recommended you use a new config. Otherwise, you'd have to manually update your config, which can be much more difficult.

Does AlexaPi support Amazon Music?

Yes, but you have to apply at Amazon Developer portal for permission. You'll find that in your device setting - same as when you registered the device.

NOTE: This is currently suspended by Amazon. Also, they have stated that they allow this only for to-be-commercial devices (seen this in our gitter room).

Can I switch the language to German, etc?

Not currently. (or at least we're not aware of such option)

Can I discover my devices with AlexaPi like with Echo?

No. AVS API doesn't have a way to connect the devices to Amazon. You can probably still do this by setting up your own Alexa skills, but that's a different thing than AlexaPi. AlexaPi will allow you to control your devices such as Hue provided you also have a genuine Echo in the network which acts as a gateway between the Alexa service and your Hue bridge.

How do I change my location, time zone, units, ...?

This is not up to us. Do that over at Amazon: https://alexa.amazon.com

Why do I see the AlexaPi device offline in the Alexa app? / Why do I get "Timers and alarms are not currently supported on this device"?

Because we use the old AVS API. This will change when we suport the new API.

What's the difference between Amazon's sample app and AlexaPi?

Amazon's sample app AlexaPi
language / environment Java & node.js Python
headless AFAIK can be done YES
device support unknown excellent
AVS API support excellent uses old API version
community development no (bugfixes only) YES
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