Google Home Mini integration issues

Configuration
1

I’ve looked around quite a bunch, but I haven’t seen other people with my issue - not exactly, at least.
I’m trying to simply set up a Google Home Mini to use TTS to notify me of events, but I can’t get HA to recognize the speaker. My HA instance is running on a virtual machine with an IP of 192.168.3.58, and the Google Home Mini is at 192.168.4.120. If I have the following lines in my config.yaml:

cast:
  media_player:
    host: 192.168.4.20

When I start HA, I’m notified that a new device has been discovered and an integration for Google Cast is created. I also have a new entity
name: config entry discovery
entity id: persistent_notification.config_entry_discovery.
integration: persistent integration
The settings say: This entity does not have a unique ID, therefore its settings cannot be managed from the UI.

I don’t know how to update this. Now, if I look in the log file, it warns me that the host option is being deprecated, so clearly I should remove that. However, if I remove it, then the device isn’t even discovered.

So the questions are:

  1. How do I get my device to be recognized without the host entry? Is it possible that my problem is caused by the fact that my HA computer is in the 192.168.3.x range, and my Google Home Mini is in the 192.168.4.x range?
  2. How do I resolve the entity ID problem?

Thanks in advance for your help.

2

Like many other integrations, cast uses mDNS for discovery, and you’ll need an mDNS relay or mDNS proxy to route the traffic.

3

I’ve turned on mDNS on my router, and removed the host entry from the config.yaml. I assume that the Google Home Mini is getting recognized, because I’m getting a notification of a new device discovery and a new integration is added for Google Cast. I also see a new entity
name: config entry discovery
entity id: persistent_notification.config_entry_discovery.
integration: persistent integration
The status is read-only, and when I click on the icon under status, the message under status says, “This entity does not have a unique ID, therefore its settings cannot be managed from the UI”

What steps should I take next to enable this device for TTS?

Thanks.

4

If you’ve set up Google Cast you should have new media_player entities in Developer tools -> States (or Configuration -> Entities). That’s your media player for TTS, it’s already “enabled” :wink:

All you need to do now is chose a TTS option and set that up, and you’re ready.

5

I don’t have that media player entity. All I get is the new config entry discovery entity.

6

Then you need to set up the integration…

7

The Google Cast integration requires the entity ID, which isn’t getting discovered. By the way, for what it’s worth, once I restart Home Assistant, the entity disappears completely. The only way to get it back is to delete the Google Cast integration, and restart the Home Assistant.
As an experiment last night, I reset my router, and temporarily removed all firewall rules to see if somehow they were blocking some crucial communication. It didn’t help.

8

The entity_id isn’t discovered, it’s assigned by HA.

It sounds like your mDNS relay/proxy isn’t behaving correctly, unfortunately there’s not a lot I can help with there. You could try asking in the #integrations channel of the Discord server, see if there’s others who can help. You’ll need to explain what mDNS relay/proxy you’re using, and provide details from your log file.