Grouping network speakers

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I have several small home-made network speakers that use an ESP32 loaded with ESPHome. They work independently very well; I can send audio from any of the audio sources on the Media tab to them or use them in automated announcements.

I would like to group them all together to keep from having to write duplicate automations for each room when HA makes an announcement. I was able to create a helper, which does group them all together into one media_player entity, but I have yet found anywhere it can be used.

Does anyone know why the helper group only plays through one of the speakers when used in an automation, and does not show in the speaker selections when playing audio directly from the Media tab?

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Anyone? I have a lot of automations that announce various things, and if I want to add another speaker it takes hours to do it the only way I know how, which is to duplicate the code for another speaker and edit it for the new speaker. It would be soooo much easier if I could just add the new speaker to the speaker group. Is there an easier way to do this without grouping speakers?