Hi everyone,
I’m trying to play a short local sound file on my Echo (1st Gen / Echo Plus) via Home Assistant — basically an “Iron Man startup sound” that should play before my ESPHome-controlled lights slowly fade in.
The file is stored in the /www directory and is accessible through Nabu Casa, for example:
https://…ui.nabu.casa/local/Ironman_Start.wav
It plays perfectly fine in the browser.
However, when I call:
service: media_player.play_media
data:
entity_id: media_player.xxx_echo
media_content_id: "https://.../Ironman_Start.wav"
media_content_type: "music"
Alexa responds with:
“Direct Music Streaming isn’t supported.”
If I switch to media_content_type: sound, there’s no error — but also no sound.
TTS messages work perfectly fine, as do Amazon’s built-in sound effects like bell_02.
From what I’ve read, Amazon seems to block direct playback of custom URLs.
I’m therefore looking for a workable solution or alternative approach — for example, Bluetooth output from Home Assistant to the Echo, a Spotify workaround, an external Wi-Fi speaker, or maybe something completely different.
Has anyone here successfully managed to play custom local audio files on an Echo device from Home Assistant — or found a creative way to trigger short sound effects through Alexa?
Thanks in advance for any ideas or workarounds!