For the last few days asking for "Alexa, play the Radio Paradise Station" (so not the skill, just the stream) more often than not will now play "Oldies Paradise" which seems to be a station on Tune-in. Some times it will work correctly, and RP will play as expected, but that's now rare. Until a couple of days ago, RP worked every time.
This is on an Alexa Dot 5th Gen. In the UK.
Even having "Play the Radio Paradise Station" as part of a routine will play the "Oldies Paradise" station. It's totally weird.
I've checked the Activity history and Alexa IS hearing me say "play the Radio Paradise Station", but it still plays "Oldies Paradise".
The SKILL does still seem to start reliably, so "Alexa, play Radio Paradise" is working as expected, although I've been using the Station rather than the Skill because of the issues with paired speakers (discussed previously in this thread, and still an issue to this day, but now the Station is buggered ð¤·ââï¸).
Here's an example routine I have - if you "Play this routine" from the app (3-dot) menu (so no voice command involved) then it will play "Oldies Paradise". Arrrrgghhhh!
At this rate, it's more likely that RP will get the elbow.
Did you check this article? Then you could bump this whole topic over to the "Bug Reports & Feature Requests" thread for it to be seen by the RP developers. They might just see it there more easily, as they don't follow all threads here. (I guess.)
Yes, I've gone through all the suggestions in that article:
1) Replaced all devices by upgrading from 4th Gen to 5th Gen
2) All devices are running the latest firmware
3) Rebooted all devices
4) There are no other users of the Amazon account
5) Music restarts without any vocal interaction - so no wake word confusion
5) Checked all routines, and there are no routines configured to trigger on 2 hour intervals, or to otherwise interact with the RP skill (other than those I use)
6) Checked all Activity History and Voice History, and there is nothing unexpected, and nothing is being logged when RP playback resumes all by itself
I'll post a link back to this thread in the Bug Reports thread, to save repeating myself! Thanks!
Then you could bump this whole topic over to the "Bug Reports & Feature Requests" thread for it to be seen by the RP developers. They might just see it there more easily, as they don't follow all threads here. (I guess.)
I started playing RP on the Kitchen pair at 12:35, stopped playback at 13:40 with "Alexa, stop" (Alexa replied with "Music, paused"), but then ...
Like I said, I have no personal experience with these home-spies. But the word "paused" doesn't sound like "stopped" to me. My Samsung TV (also spying on any audibles in my room and sending them home to South Korea) has an on/off switch on the socket, simple as that.
Sadly, my life isn't SO interesting that I have to worry about someone (or something) spying on me!
Yes, I agree "paused" may not be the same as "stopped" but "paused" always worked until this dual-mono/stereo behaviour started, which is also when the RP Skill started to become self aware. Also, "paused" works fine with all other Skills. And finally, I have tried setting up a routine called "stop radio" which silences audio on ALL devices and that behaved the same as pause - 2 hours of silence, then the speakers that had previously been playing RP would start up again, all on their own.
I guess the point is, something has changed to cause this unwanted behaviour which is specific to the RP Skill.
Powering off/muting/disabling all of the speakers to avoid this unwanted RP specific behaviour isn't realistic, unfortunately.
At this rate, it's more likely that RP will get the elbow.
I started playing RP on the Kitchen pair at 12:35, stopped playback at 13:40 with "Alexa, stop" (Alexa replied with "Music, paused"), but then ...
Like I said, I have no personal experience with these home-spies. But the word "paused" doesn't sound like "stopped" to me.
My Samsung TV (also spying on any audibles in my room and sending them home to South Korea) has an on/off switch on the socket, simple as that.
I started playing RP on the Kitchen pair at 12:35, stopped playback at 13:40 with "Alexa, stop" (Alexa replied with "Music, paused"), but then at 15:41 the Kitchen pair automatically sprang back into life with RP (currently playing Beatles "I am the Walrus", confirmed below). Weird. I can't think what is causing this - it ONLY happens with the RP Skill!
Edit: On this occasion I was standing by the kitchen door at 13:39 waiting to hear if the speakers reactivated on the 2 hour mark (which they did) and there was no other audible or physical input to the speakers which preceded the speaker activation. It's as though the RP Skill "un-pauses" itself after being paused for 2 hours/120 minutes...
Edit2: And even though I stopped the Kitchen playing Radio Paradise at 15:50 (after it auto-started at 15:41, above) it's restarted again at 17:50... I'm going to have to stop playback, then disable the RP Skill to shut this up (I've found if you disable the Radio Paradise skill THEN try to stop the music this won't work as Alexa needs the RP Skill to stop the music that is already playing!)
I have already checked my routines, and can't see anything that would/should trigger this - I'm also not seeing anything in the Activity History when the Echo's turn themselves back on. It only happens with Radio Paradise, and only when I have previously been listening to Radio Paradise - it never happens if I haven't been listening to RP (so for example if I'm listening to the BBC Radio Skill or Spotify, they don't turn back on 2 hours after I stop listening).
I recently (within last month) upgraded from 4x Echo Dot 4th Gens to 4x Echo Dot 5th Gens (will upcycle the 4th Gens, after getting a good deal on the 5th Gens) in an effort to see if it was in any way related to the 4th Gens, so effectively these new 5th Gens are all factory fresh and recently rebooted devices.
I'm really not sure what else it could be, other than some wierdness in the RP Skill.
Also, don't keep the speakers close to your windows, toilet or kitchen sink. This can trigger such unwanted behavior. (This I could read elsewhere on the internet).
Best of luck!
_ _ _ _
Btw. ...
I personally would never mess with such a thing as Alexa, not only because:
Not sure what's going on with the RP Skill, but it was working fine with 2x sets of speaker pairs for a long time (2x Echo Dot 4th Gen speakers, and 2x Echo Dot 5th Gen speakers).
I'm in the UK so no TuneIn. The RP Skill worked great for quite some time (couple of years?) via the "alexa, ask Radio Paradise to sync" command [setup as a routine, to output from one of the speakers in the stereo pair for the room I'm in], although it only ever played in mono (ie. sound from only one of the speakers in the speaker pair - ie. from the speaker configured in the routine). But mono was fine, and much better than nothing!
But then, a few months ago, maybe 4-5 months ago so about May-ish 2023, I noticed the RP Skill started playing in "stereo" out of both speakers on my speaker pairs - not entirely sure if it's dual mono or true stereo, but a definite improvement either way, so that was nice!
There is, however, one MAJOR drawback - my speaker pairs are now possessed by Radio Paradise!
Once I'm done listening to RP I'll usually tell the paired speakers "Alexa, stop" or "Alexa, pause", and the music will stop, and then I'll leave the house, or leave the room, or go to sleep (or whatever).
But now, since the introduction of dual mono/stereo, at some random interval later (tens of minutes, usually, but sometimes a couple hours), Radio Paradise will begin playing again AUTOMATICALLY, ie. uncommanded, from the formerly silent speaker pair, which is quite annoying (particularly in the middle of the night!)
Or, I'll return home in the evening to an empty house with RP blaring from the speakers - speakers I would have been listening to in the morning etc. Or I'll stop listening to music in the kitchen, go to another room to read a book and then after a while I'll hear that the music has started up again in the kitchen.
It's like the RP Skill has possessed my speaker pair... My only solution to reliably stop this behaviour is to disable and then re-enable the RP skill, which is rather tedious as that unlinks the linked account (which then needs to be manually re-linked - not something I can easily automate!) Consequently, this unwanted behaviour has significantly reduced my usage of the RP Skill, because this behaviour is so annoying.
The start of this uncommanded, automatic RP playback issue coincided with the introduction of the dual mono/stereo change - but maybe it's a coincidence? Is the dual-mono/stereo change something that is now expected or is this also a bug, or fluke? Could they be connected?
I've got 2 pairs of paired speakers (2x Echo Dot 5th gen with clock in bedroom, 2x Echo Dot 4th gen in kitchen) and i have the exact same behaviour on both speaker pairs.
Is anybody else experiencing this same behaviour with the RP Skill and Echo Dot 4th/5th Gen stereo pairs? Either the dual-mono/stereo and/or uncommanded playback?
All Echo Dots are updated with latest Amazon firmware.
Edit: More detail on my speaker pairs/groups:
The "Bedroom" group consists of "Bed Right" and "Bed Left" speakers. I have a routine called "play radio" that will start the RP Skill using the command "alexa, ask Radio Paradise to sync", with the output from the "Bed Right" speaker - I would say "alexa, play radio" to trigger the routine so that RP playback starts on my bedroom speaker pair which, until recently, would play mono only from "Bed Right", but now more recently plays dual-mono - or possibly true stereo - from both of the "Bedroom" speakers (however the speakers are also now possessed).
The "Kitchen" group consists of "Kitchen Left" and "Kitchen Right" speakers. I have a routine called "play kitchen radio" to start RP (same as for "bedroom", but instead output from the "Kitchen Left" speaker, and now I say "alexa, play kitchen radio"). Again, I would hear mono from "Kitchen Left" only until recently, but now it's dual-mono/stereo from both "Kitchen" speakers (and they're also possessed, just like "Bedroom").
It's very weird! I need an exorcist...
Edit2: The bedroom speaker pair has just started playing RP again at 02:39 after I last stopped it at 00:39 (according to the Alexa App Activity History, "alexa, stop" was heard/processed by "Bed Left" at 00:39). This is exactly 2 hours/120 minutes of silence before the RP Skill unilaterally decided I needed some more RP goodness. There is no other activity in the Alexa App which might explain why the RP Skill decided to begin playback again at 02:39. Note: I have no alarms or timers enabled on my speakers. I'm going to have to disable the RP Skill in order to get some sleep...
