Emulating Google News with Home Assistant

Configuration
1

I’ve been using Google News for a few years to play a few news podcasts in the morning.

I’m wanting to leverage HA more for my morning routine (plus add more info that HA has which Google Home doesn’t), and that means I want to replicate Google News, but I can’t figure out how to do it.

Essentially what I’m trying to do is:

  • Read a set of podcast RSS feeds
  • Grab the latest one from them and put them into a playlist
  • Play said playlist

I’ve come across the Feedreader integration, which I think will do it but I can’t quite figure it out.

Is Feedreader the right thing, or is there something else?

(I’m aware of the Assistant Relay, but it’s now abandonware and I’ve been unsuccessful in setting it up)

3 Likes
2

I’m trying to do this exact same thing. Have you had any luck or found anything yet. Seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult but I can figure out the download of new feed from feed reader.

3

No luck so far (but I’ve also not been able to do much testing). I’ve found a few of the news sources on Spotify but some seem to be dedicated feeds for Google, so getting them would be harder.

Then I have to work out the best way to track the URL

4

So I was actually able to get this to mostly work after a lot of trial and error. Check out this script i wrote.

alias: Morining News Briefing
sequence:
  - service: media_player.play_media
    data:
      media_content_id: "{{ states('sensor.bbc_hourly_bulletin') }}"
      media_content_type: music
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.house_core
  - wait_for_trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id:
          - media_player.house_core
        from: playing
        to: idle
    continue_on_timeout: false
  - service: media_player.play_media
    data:
      media_content_id: "{{ states('sensor.fiveminutenews') }}"
      media_content_type: music
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.house_core
  - wait_for_trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id:
          - media_player.house_core
        from: playing
        to: idle
    continue_on_timeout: false
  - service: media_player.play_media
    data:
      media_content_id: "{{ states('sensor.daily_tech_headlines') }}"
      media_content_type: music
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.house_core
  - wait_for_trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id:
          - media_player.house_core
        from: playing
        to: idle
    continue_on_timeout: false
  - service: media_player.play_media
    data:
      media_content_id: "{{ states('sensor.60_second_sci') }}"
      media_content_type: music
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.house_core

The “News” sensors i use are made up of Scrape sensors pulling data from RSS news podcast feeds. Unfortunatley this is hit and miss and i have had several RSS feeds i cant scrape the proper data from so you will just have to try different feeds until you get one that works and has the news you want. Here is an example of one of my Scrape sensors for reference.

- platform: scrape
  resource: https://feeds.feedburner.com/BbcHourlyNewsBulletin
  name: bbc_hourly_bulletin
  select: 'enclosure:nth-of-type(1)'
  attribute: url
  scan_interval: 1800

Hope this helps.

1 Like
5

Isn’t that more than 255 characters on that news feed?

6

I’m not sure I understand what your saying. 255 character where?

7

An entity can only hold a state of 255 characters.
I just assumed your news feed was more than 255 characters.

8

So far some work some don’t so its possible that the ones that work are short enough and the ones that don’t are to long i have not looked into this very far as it is functioning as i need it right now.

9

Are you able to make this work with the BBC Hourly Bulletin? The only RSS feed I can find of theirs does not contain any enclosures and I was wondering if you had any other sources. I was able to get others up and running such as NPR no problem using the new scrape method.

Thanks