Google Speaker Group Volume Control in Script/Automations

Configuration
1

Hey. I’m stumped. I gone through:

HowTo: Control Group Volume on Google Home / Nest Speakers (SONOS patent lawsuit)

and

Google Cast Integration - Removing Speaker Group Volume Controls?!? Jan 2022

but have not been able to solve this… I’m hoping people smarter than I have some ideas.

I have a script that runs spotcast to play sleep playlist in my daughters room. They have 3 Google speakers that were/ are in a group. I know Google killed the group volume control and that has messed everything up.

But this is where I have hope/ am confused.

  1. While my script no longer sets volume for media_player.girls_room the lovelace entity card’s volume control still works.

  2. When I play through spotcast to a group (so they are all in sync), individually adjusting each devices volume through a script or automation also doesn’t seem to work?

sleep_sounds:
  alias: Plays the Rain Playlist
  sequence:
  - service: spotcast.start
    data:
      entity_id: media_player.girls_room
      uri: spotify:playlist:###########
      random_song: true
      shuffle: true
  - delay:
      seconds: 20
  - service: media_player.volume_set
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.girl1_hub
    data:
      volume_level: 0.6
  - service: media_player.volume_set
    target:
      entity_id: 
        - media_player.girls_bedroom_wifi
        - media_player.girl2_hub
    data:
      volume_level: 0.4

Nothing happens here. no speaker change… it doesn’t even seem to try.

If I change the volume_set back to the speaker group the hubs display the volume, but do not change it. Again, I can go to the lovelace card and adjust the slider to change the speaker group as a whole.

Ideally, I’d prefer to individually adjust the speakers volume as one daughter likes it louder than the other, but would be happy with a way to adjust the overall volume of the group.

The same thing happens when I try and remove the volume change from the script and move it to an automation that calls the script. Any Idea’s?

2

Does it work if you go to developer tools → call service and set the same things? Should be working. At least it’s for me.

3

Individually this works, but the group volume does not change when I set volume from dev tools. Immediately after trying I went back to the group entities card and tested it and it worked perfectly… I can even send the text to speak and it plays through all of the speakers.

There’s obviously a way for this to work, but I don;t know how to see the code of what is actually happening through the lovelace card (assuming that would even help me)!

4

FWIW, the Lovelace card seems to use the Google Cast integration… looking at the documentation, I am not sure how that helps me as Google Cast doesn’t support Spotify or have built in volume controls.

5

So… I think I got it. AND… I think I am an idiot.

My automation includes a mute at the beginning to stop the annoying beeps from the speakers as volumes change and casts start. I assumed (wrongfully) that setting the volume would override the mute. It doesn’t seem so. I have added an unmute at the end of the automation and now all individual speakers return to their settings in the script.

2 Likes