Cheap speaker options for Hass.io

I’ve been playing with my Sonos speakers and I have them saying things using the Google TTS; but I’ve found that the playlist gets wiped out when I send TTS stuff to them. So, I’m interested in finding a way to build or buy a smart speaker. I’m definitely not interested in doing a Google home or Amazon Alexa, I don’t want any microphone just audio output. Anyone know of a cheaper solution that might work for me?

I’ve used Sweex USB speakers for a while before moving to Google Home Minis.

That sounds like something I need to plug into a computer. Is it a standalone setup?

it’s not standalone. If you want standalone, then look at a bluetooth speaker. just make sure it’s one that stays on / doesn’t lose BT when it goes to standby/sleep

I thought there was a service you could call with Sonos that would save the list ? Or does that just save what you are currently playing, and not what’s also queued ?

Yeah, it’s media_player.sonos_snapshot and media_player.sonos.restore but on the component description page for sonos it says explicitly:


and then this:

Still really want to do this. Looking for a WiFi enabled speaker that I can send Home Assistant signals to. I really like being able to have HA use Google text to speech to make the house say things. Works great with Sonos. I’m now wondering if I can build a WiFi-enabled speaker with an ESP8266 or something…

Get a Google Home mini. When in offer you can bag one for like £25-30

The only eap8266 projects I’ve seen that play audio have been from a storage card, rather than streaming.

Thanks but I’m not interested in a cloud-based device. I want something local only.

Yeah, I’ve seen these too and ESPHome.io supports the DF_Player mini which is what you’re talking about. Doesn’t look like it enables streaming either. I did find this:
GitHub - smurf0969/ESP32_ESP8266_WiFi_Speaker_OLED: A MP3 streaming WiFi speaker for ESP8266 & ESP32 chips

… but I doubt it’s supported by Home Assistant. I ordered some parts to play around, we’ll see…