Indigo Domotics

For audio integration, I have an Alexa Dot connected to my server. (Audio line out to line in on Mac Mini) Using Airfoil to Airplay out the "Built-in Input"

I haven't been able to figure out a way to bring the audio in via Bluetooth. (With hopes that as a bluetooth input, I would get metadata = album art, etc) anyone have thoughts on that?

Sent a feature request to Rogue Amoeba for 1) Alexa integration via ? 2) Ability to change the label of the "Built-in Input"

Anyone figured out other ways to integrate audio from an Alexa device into indigo?

Anyone figured out a way to bluetooth input audio onto a Mac?

Or is there a way to get the metadata from your "Now Playing" page on your alexa.amazon.com ?

Also hoping that in a future firmware update, Alexa will have the ability to control one device from another. (Dot in amy office, Echo in Living Room..... while in Living Room "Alexa, play X on my office dot.) But I haven't seen any ways to control an Alexa device outside of itself (and I'm not going to carry an Alexa remote around with me)

I don't believe you can push sound to an Echo.

Not sure of anything that turns your Mac into a bluetooth speaker, though I actually did think about it the other day. Haven't had a chance to look around yet.

I paired my Dot with my MacMini and it showed up as a bluetooth speaker available to Airfoil. Pretty cool.... but I was trying to go the other way. (Put Amazon music into airfoil). I did achieve this the hard-wire method.... so I have a working solution, but I would like it to be cleaner.

Echo and Dot both have Bluetooth Input. The Dot also has Bluetooth output. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer ... =202009700

If I could push the audio out of the Dot and into the MacMini, I could put the little booger anywhere in my office (no 3.5mm audio cable draped across my desk).

on my iMac I'm running ElCapitan which has "Bluetooth Explorer". Under "Utilities : Special Options", there is an "Allow role switches for audio connections For A2DP connections" Sounds promising.... but my MacMini is running Yosemite and there is no bluetooth explorer built into the OS. I haven't tested it either to see if it works.

Looked everywhere for a "Bluetooth Speaker OS X App" or similar.... A2DP Input, Bluetooth audio in, etc... and found nothing.

I've tried probably 10 different bluetooth speakers with my various Macs and it's an exercise in futility. I can get them paired without too much fuss but getting them to play reliably is a different story. I think the Mac is really built to receive bluetooth and not send it because just about every attempt has resulted in extremely choppy sound.

To update this from where I started....

Last week sometime Amazon release "Music Everywhere". This has helped me out a ton. Now all of my Alexa Dots/Echos are house speakers with all my airfoil speakers.

One Echo Dot is in the server room (3.5mm from Dot to MacMini Microphone) = Airfoil Built-In Audio Source.

Tell Echo in bedroom to play music everywhere and now all the amazon device sync music plus dot in the server feeds Airfoil to sync across all the airplay devices.

This gives me a lot of speaker when using Amazon music or any other music source on the echo.

The only remaining problem I have is with indigo announcements. My system will make different audio announcements throughout the day and for certain alerts.... that just means I have to remember to switch the audio source on airfoil before any announcement. (Experimenting with a couple other RogueAmoeba products now to see if I can merge audio sources)

Lastly... for indigo announcements, I wanted some cheep airfoil speakers.... don't need expensive high end for something that is primarily used for reminders and announcements. You can get the iHome iW1 for under $40. Capability wise, it is overkill for what I needed, but the price was right.

Thanks for posting the follow-up. I haven't had time to experiment with the Music Everywhere feature yet.

It's still finicky. 1/3 of the time it works fine. 1/3 the time it will find a band or song named "everywhere" and jus play that on one device. The remaining 1/3 of the time it will tell me I need to set up that feature in the Alexa app. (Even though it is already set up). But I'm hopeful that it will improve.

Jay,
Just because I like proving you wrong

Say to Alexa "connect to my mobile device"..... the first time there is a pairing process, from then on out it's a quick connect and the echo or dot turns into a dumb bluetooth speaker that plays your phone audio.

jay (support) wrote:

I don't believe you can push sound to an Echo.

Not sure of anything that turns your Mac into a bluetooth speaker, though I actually did think about it the other day. Haven't had a chance to look around yet.

Dewster35 wrote:

Jay,
Just because I like proving you wrong

Say to Alexa "connect to my mobile device"..... the first time there is a pairing process, from then on out it's a quick connect and the echo or dot turns into a dumb bluetooth speaker that plays your phone audio.

Interesting! (though I'm pretty sure when I wrote that back in December 2016 it wasn't possible)

In the context of this topic it would be pushing audio from your Mac to an Echo. Have you found a way to do that?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vpq7n89mlo0vu ... M.png?dl=0

Like this? Not sure quite why you would want to do this... but tell it to pair your device, connect to it via bluetooth and then click the volume icon in the menu bar and choose the echo just as you would any airplay device.

What exactly would the use case for this be?

Edit: I'm braindead.... so yeah, now I see the utility. I never got around to hooking up my airport expresses when we moved because they only seemed to work well hardwired and I don't have that setup available here... so whole house audio is back

Dewster35 wrote:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vpq7n89mlo0vuib/Screen%20Shot%202017-09-14%20at%208.40.00%20PM.png?dl=0

Like this? Not sure quite why you would want to do this... but tell it to pair your device, connect to it via bluetooth and then click the volume icon in the menu bar and choose the echo just as you would any airplay device.

Yeah, exactly like that. I must be totally missing something obvious so can you walk me through the exact steps you took to make your Echo show up on your Mac? I can pair the opposite way (have the echo pair with my Mac), but I never see the echo in any of the speaker output selections (the menu in your picture or in the Sound system preference).

I don't mean to jump in but what I did to pair it was go into Alexa App >>>>>Settings>>>>.Bluetooth Setup up device.

Sharek326 wrote:

I don't mean to jump in but what I did to pair it was go into Alexa App >>>>>Settings>>>>.Bluetooth Setup up device.

Jay,
This works too ^.

Keep in mind it is still shitty bluetooth so range does matter. After I got the close echo to pair, I tried another one and that fact finally sunk in. I'm on the hunt for something that would boost the bluetooth transmission signal from my mac mini to be able to achieve whole house audio.

Sharek326 wrote:

I don't mean to jump in but what I did to pair it was go into Alexa App >>>>>Settings>>>>.Bluetooth Setup up device.

Yeah, I did that. And while it shows up in Airfoil, it never shows up in iTunes, the volume menu, or the Sound Preference in Settings. Odd.



And, BTW, even this much used to not work back when I was messing with it last year so they've made some improvements to the bluetooth capabilities in the past year through firmware upgrades.