HASS.IO -> Some Device ->3.5 mm Aux Input on powered speaker - any ideas?

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

All tinkerers out there!

Here is the issue I am having and would like to seek some advice please?

I have a Yamaha WX-030 MusicCast speaker in the kitchen (Shows up as type media_player in HASS.IO), and I have been trying to play audio or TTS to it, but I cannot get this to work, the TTS MP3 gets downloaded, but no audio (I suspect that audio playback to a Yamaha MusicCast device is not supported, see: https://home-assistant.io/components/media_player.yamaha_musiccast/). So…

I would like to use HASS.IO and the TTS feature to broadcast/announce to an speaker I have spare, it is an old JBL iPod dock … with a 3.5 mm Aux input.

So my thoughts are: Mount this behind something in the kitchen (it is quite small), and have some receiver/device plugged into the aux port that HASS.IO can broadcast to.

I have a few spare RPi Zero’s that might work, but getting relative cheap hardware purchased is also an option. (Not a HomePod, although that would be nice!)

So, my question to all out there: Does anyone know what receiving device and setup would work well in this case? Requirements are that this will be dedicated speaker, need no/very little lag as it will be used for TTS announcements and stuff like a ding/dong doorbell, camera “motion at front has been detected”, etc.

Main HASS.IO is in the study, so need to be a wireless connection from HASS.IO to speaker.

Anyone have some creative ideas?

2

Google Chromecast Audio is perfect for this I used them until I got Home Minis around the place :slight_smile:

3

@CountParadox - thanks, will pick one up in the morning and have a go, thank you.

4

Hey m an how did it go, what you were after ?

5

Thank you for the reminder! Ihave been seriously busy but went out tonight, picked up a Google Cast Audio, plumbed it into an old iPod dock (soldering required! Always fun) and now off to connect my first Google Cast to HASS.IO. Fingers crossed !!!

6

No setup needed! If you have the discovery component enabled just restart home assistant and it should appear as a media player !

7

Got it, tested and I must say, the test audio “May the force be with you” using google TTS is not working for me so much. WAF either. Is there a way to change it? I have my tts: google set but there MUST be better voices, right?

8

OK, solution is to use Amazon Polly