Broadcasting Messages via Home Assistant Dashboards on Google Nest Hubs

Feature Requests
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1

Hello,

I currently use Home Assistant’s native dashboard casting to display information on my Google Nest Hubs throughout my home. However, with Google’s recent removal of the ability to broadcast without announcing incoming messages, I have a feature request.

Request Details:

  • Objective: Enable broadcasting messages via Home Assistant dashboards that are already casted to the Google Nest Hubs.
  • Current Behavior: When using the Hub’s native broadcast functionality, an “incoming broadcast” pre-message is played.
  • Desired Behavior:
    • Allow users to choose and broadcast messages via the existing dashboard cast.
    • Remove the “incoming broadcast” pre-message.
    • Enable casting sound files (e.g., doorbell sounds, alarms, beeps) instead of relying solely on text-to-speech.
  • Use Case Example:
    • I currently have a message casted via text-to-speech that announces if the garage door has been left open for longer than 10 minutes.
    • With this feature, I could achieve the same announcement without interrupting my dashboard cast.

Thank you for considering this enhancement! :raised_hands:

Edit: flag option

2

So you want to be able to resume casting after sending a TTS or sound file?
This was literally proposed 4 hours earlier, and was rejected because it is a repeat request…
Post about trying to fix this:
Text-to-Speech (TTS) stops current media playing without resuming it.

Long standing [FR] for this. Please vote there and add your idea of using broadcast to do it if you like…
WTH is there no option to resume media after a TTS announcement.

5

No, nothing to do with resuming casting after playing audio. This is a feature request for the ability to transmit the notifications directly to the casting app and have it play while casting the dashboard.

This would completely remove the need to break the existing dashboard cast.

6

I hear what you are saying.
Did you read the links I posted and did you try this:
Community Hass.io Add-on: Google Assistant Webserver (broadcast messages without interrupting music).

It just might do what you are asking for as it uses google itself to ‘broadcast’ the TTS. When you trigger the ‘google broadcast function’ from say an android request, it should resume (continue in your terms) the cast after it sends the message. You can easily test if the ‘google broadcast’ interrupts your screen by asking google to do a house broadcast from another device, and see if your screen stays or goes. “hey google, broadcast…”

The problem is essentially what google speaker is controlling and what HA is controlling. If I’m playing iheart music, that is essentially google casting the audio to the speaker. If you are casting a dashboard, it is google casting the stuff (that HA is sending it) into the speaker/screen. When there is a TTS or MP3 send from the HA media player, it is HA interrupting what the Google is doing so that process ends. This [FR] and the [FR] i cited are requests to not interrupt that and possibly just mute it or something.

The link above has a good possibility of getting you where you want to be short term. We should keep asking for this to be more elegantly fixed (ala the request that was made to fix the behavior), that part doesn’t change and we should continue to lobby for that fix.

In the end a fix for one of these problems is a fix for both problems.