I’m excited to share a custom integration I’ve been working on that connects your Playnite game library with Home Assistant using MQTT. This evolved from an earlier proof-of-concept into a much more streamlined and flexible solution for controlling your games directly from your Home Assistant dashboard or even Voice Assistants!
Features include:
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Game Control via Switches: Start and stop your games via Home Assistant with a single click.
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HASS user defined scripts: Add your own scripts to hook into turn_on and turn_off events for more advanced control.
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Metadata Retrieval: Fetch game cover images and metadata, and add them as attributes to the game switches. This allows you to build lovelace dahsboards using the game metadata and covers directly from Home Assistant switches.
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Voice Assistants: Expose game switches to Google Assistant and control your games with voice commands. You will need a working Google Assistant integration with Home Assistant for this to work - then simply add domain switches to your Google Assistant configuration and you’re good to go!
Limitations (for now):
- Stopping games doesn’t fully work due to Playnite limitations, but I’m working on some interesting workarounds - with inspiration from PlayState plugin.
- Game state accuracy could be improved.
- Differentiating between different releases of the same game is not yet supported when it comes to game state.
Big thanks to @andrew-codes for his excellent work on the Playnite Web Plugin, which has been the backbone of this integration!
If you’re into smart home automation and gaming like I am, or just want to simplify your gaming setup, this integration might be a great addition to your Home Assistant environment. I’d love to hear your feedback, thoughts, and ideas on how this could be further improved!
Let me know if you give it a try, or if you have any questions!
NOTE: Addition to HACS is still pending so for now you will need to add custom repository cvele/playnite_web_mqtt to your HACS.