I would like to turn on my TV & amp at the correct channels when the Chromecast gets activated. But the Chromecast stays in the ‘off’ state on a selection screen. Is there a way so I can trigger my TV & amp automation when the Chromecast selection screen is displaying?
Steps:
I ask my Google Home: “hey Google, play a cat video”.
It responds: “Sure, displaying a selection of cat video’s on your TV. Which one do you prefer?”
The media_player.chromecast is still on status ‘Off’, even while it is displaying a selection screen for cat videos now. The automation to turn on the TV & amp doesn’t trigger because there is no status change.
Is there a different approach I could use to automatically turn on the TV & Amp?
Thanks for your response. I will certainly keep it in mind.
For my other media players, I monitor when a media player is coming online (‘from: off’) and then run an automation to set the TV & amp to proper channels. That way, it doesn’t matter how the media player is turned on: by voice command, by physical button, by phone app or by Home Assistant. I was hoping to replicate this for the Chromecast, but that doesn’t seem possible I guess.
I do the same thing, accept I make separate switches for specific actions instead of automations. I mainly do this because every time I turn the TV on, I’m not doing the same thing. Today it could be music through the receiver, tomorrow it could be Netflix or Xbox. So I made switches that look like light bulbs for all other devices. So it works via voice, physical button, or through the HA interface.
Sounds like your issue might be with the fact that chrome cast isn’t letting other devices know it’s on when switched on. I would think that it would though. Are you sure you have it setup properly?
It seems to me the Chromecast is in reality always on, at least it always shows a screensaver on the tv. But in Home Assistant it’s always showing state ‘off’ except when it’s actually showing media (playing a video, showing Google Photos etc). Then it shows ‘playing’. It does not seem to have an ‘idle’ state.
There’s not much to set up I believe? The Chromecast is autodiscovered.
By the way, I actually never turn on the TV by myself. I just turn one of the mediaplayers (Kodi, Chromecast Audio, Chromecast Video, settopbox) and let HA handle the TV & amp through automations. Just a slightly different approach, but very similar.
Ah makes sense. Well looks like you’ll have issues with your method because the chromecast is always on. Maybe you just make a dummy switch to execute your automations to get around this.
You’re other option would be to attempt to change the component to handle an idle state. I’m not sure the google API lends to that type of behavior though.