Google Cast - Problems with a soundbar

Hi all,

I’ve bought a new soundbar, brought it into my network and HA directly informed me that a new integration would be available. Just a couple of clicks later, I had the soundbar as Google Cast entity visible in my Lovelace UI and a new sensor noting down, how long the soundbar is playing per day. So basically everything was fine and on the first day, the soundbar was switched on for ~2 hours.

image

The next day, there was no switched-on-time registered anymore and I checked the state using the developer tools and the state remained ‘off’, although the soundbar was playing.
I restarted the HA instance, I removed the Cast integration and repeated everything, but it does not work anymore.

Current state:

  • after switching on the TV and the soundbar, Home Assistant does not recognize the new state
  • the volume cannot be changed using HA (it is possible using the Google Home app)

It seems that only if something is actively coming from the HA itself, like a message to speak, it switches on (in HA) and immediately switches back off after the signal is gone.

If it is like that, I could accept that, but why has it been like I expected before? Any ideas?

Thanks,
Fridolin

Hmm, new observation: in case I just stream from my mobile phone, the soundbar entity in HA becomes active. If ‘only’ the TV is running and the soundbar is activated using CEC, the status in HA is no longer switched to ‘playing’. Any idea why?