AlexaPi seems to kill googlevoicehat until reboot

Trying to get AlexaPi to work with the new googlevoicehat, and I can hear the audio output through the 'speaker if I run: sudo sox /opt/AlexaPi/src/resources/hello.mp3 -t alsa But whenever I start AlexaPi, I hear no “Hello” message, and any further attempt to play sound results in silence, but with no errors reported. I can only restore sound by rebooting.

sudo /opt/AlexaPi/src/main.py -d outputs: 2017-05-07 19:15:24 DEBUG: Setting up playback handler: VlcHandler 2017-05-07 19:15:24 INFO: Checking Internet Connection … 2017-05-07 19:15:24 DEBUG: Starting new HTTPS connection (1): api.amazon.com 2017-05-07 19:15:25 DEBUG: https://api.amazon.com:443 “GET /auth/o2/token HTTP/1.1” 404 29 2017-05-07 19:15:25 INFO: Connection OK 2017-05-07 19:15:25 INFO: AVS token: Requesting a new one 2017-05-07 19:15:25 DEBUG: Starting new HTTPS connection (1): api.amazon.com 2017-05-07 19:15:26 DEBUG: https://api.amazon.com:443 “POST /auth/o2/token HTTP/1.1” 200 978 2017-05-07 19:15:26 INFO: AVS token: Obtained successfully 2017-05-07 19:15:26 DEBUG: Stopping audio play 2017-05-07 19:15:26 DEBUG: Playing audio: /opt/AlexaPi/src/resources/hello.mp3 2017-05-07 19:15:26 DEBUG: Player State: State.Opening 2017-05-07 19:15:26 DEBUG: Player State: State.Playing 2017-05-07 19:15:26 DEBUG: Started play. 2017-05-07 19:15:29 DEBUG: Player State: State.Ended 2017-05-07 19:15:29 DEBUG: Finished play.

In /etc/opt/AlexaPi/config.yaml I have: input_device: “plughw:CARD=sndrpigooglevoi,DEV=0” output: “alsa” output_device: “plughw:CARD=sndrpigooglevoi,DEV=0”

aplay -L gives me: null Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture) pulse PulseAudio Sound Server softvol micboost default sysdefault:CARD=sndrpigooglevoi snd_rpi_googlevoicehat_soundcar, Default Audio Device dmix:CARD=sndrpigooglevoi,DEV=0 snd_rpi_googlevoicehat_soundcar, Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=sndrpigooglevoi,DEV=0 snd_rpi_googlevoicehat_soundcar, Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=sndrpigooglevoi,DEV=0 snd_rpi_googlevoicehat_soundcar, Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=sndrpigooglevoi,DEV=0 snd_rpi_googlevoicehat_soundcar, Hardware device with all software conversions

[Noiprox6]

I had the same problem using the Google AIY Kit and AlexaPi. I’m using the image from the AIY kit and then installing AlexaPi. I finally tracked it down to this:

https://github.com/alexa-pi/AlexaPi/wiki/Audio-setup-&-debugging#pulseaudio

Specifically the “External DAC Support” section. What wasn’t explained by Google with the kit was that the Google Voice Hat uses an External DAC which uses GPIO pins to communicate with the Pi. So when AlexaPi starts it attempts to setup optional buttons on GPIO pins and conflicts (kills) the Voice Hat audio.

I did as explained in that article and used the “dummy” platform (device: “dummy” in the config file) instead of “raspberrypi” as you would expect as the “dummy” platform doesn’t use GPIO pins for optional buttons so now there is no conflict. Now I can run both AlexaPi and the original AIY project at the same time and both work perfectly. AlexaPi even uses the Speaker from the AIY kit however I didn’t get it working with the Voice Hat MIC, I used a usb MIC and Alexa will respond to her name and Google to the button press from the AIY Kit.

Can’t remember what I used for audio devices in the config files but I think defaults should work once you change the AlexaPi platform.

[shadowscott]

@Noiprox6 Can you help? I’m trying to do something similar. I installed GassistPi to get Google Assistant working on my Pi without the MagPi image which works fine (despite not realizing it doesn’t have all the play features I was hoping for). However I’m not sure how you got AlexaPi to use the AIY Hat installation. Did you just install it and then change information in the config.yaml for the settings to be ‘default’ to use the built in speaker?