Liveavatar Automatically disconnects

[MSameerAbbas]

Bug Description

Liveavatar automatically disconnects approximately 2-3 minutes after the initial connection. I've tested it by being idle, and by sending pings every 30 seconds (The entire time the mic was muted to ensure none of the websocket events like agent.speak were being sent). This was the traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\msameer.abbas\Documents\LangTest\LiveKit\.venv\Lib\site-packages\livekit\agents\utils\log.py", line 16, in    
async_fn_logs
    return await fn(*args, **kwargs)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\msameer.abbas\Documents\LangTest\LiveKit\.venv\Lib\site-packages\livekit\plugins\liveavatar\avatar.py", line  
237, in _recv_task
    raise APIConnectionError(message="LiveAvatar connection closed unexpectedly.")
livekit.agents._exceptions.APIConnectionError: LiveAvatar connection closed unexpectedly. (body=None, retryable=True)

I wasn't able to figure out whether it was an issue with the plugin or whether it was a liveavatar issue so I also opened a discussion on the forum

Expected Behavior

The websocket connection shouldn't randomly disconnect

Reproduction Steps

I'm using a super simple agent. In the on_enter method I connect to liveavatar's avatar. In on_exit I do the stop_session cleanup. I run the avatar for like 2-3 mins with the mic muted and the error shows up automatically.

Operating System

Windows 11

Models Used

Irrelevant

Package Versions

"livekit-agents[azure,deepgram,openai,silero,turn-detector]~=1.2",
"livekit-plugins-liveavatar>=1.3.6",
"livekit-plugins-noise-cancellation~=0.2"

Session/Room/Call IDs

No response

Proposed Solution

Additional Context

No response

Screenshots and Recordings

No response

[MSameerAbbas]

I did a bit of a test where I ran an async loop that kept sending the agent.start_listening event once every 60 seconds and my websocket connection didn't automatically disconnect!
I guess this must mean that the server force closes the connection if don't send an event for a given duration. I'm confused as to why sending pings didn't keep it alive. I'm also wondering if there's any other way of keeping it alive other than running a loop that keeps sending agent.start_listening (surely there must be a better way). Any ideas?

[tinalenguyen]

Hi, thanks for filing this report! There is now a way to keep the session alive via the session.keep_alive event. I will work on adding functionality for a keep alive task

docs

[MSameerAbbas]

Hey, thanks for the heads-up on session.keep_alive. I added it in #4212 and it looks like the idle disconnects are gone now (see the Package Versions section). Does that look good on your end?

[tinalenguyen]

Hey @MSameerAbbas, I decided to use a ping interval that sends session.keep_alive only when idle and in one minute intervals. Just made a PR, thanks!

[MSameerAbbas]

@tinalenguyen I just saw your code and yeah that looks way cleaner than my asyncio.sleep lol. Nice one!