Help to play a random sound file

jon1 · July 17, 2021, 1:37am

Hi,
I am hoping for help with a project. I have been doing a lot of research and just can’t quite figure it out.

I have a folder of sound files. When my automation is fired, I want it to play a random one.

What I was thinking is:

have home assistant read the files in the folder and save them in an array
pick a random number and use that to select the item in the array

after that, i can handle playing the file and whatever else.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

tom_l · July 17, 2021, 1:58am

As far as I am aware, Home Assistant cant do point 1 through the services available. You would probably need a Python script for that.

jon1 · July 17, 2021, 2:40am

I’m thinking there might be a way with the command line sensor? can i just use ‘ls /path/to/folder’ and then feed that sensor data through a template to split the file names into discrete data points and then make an array?

tom_l · July 17, 2021, 2:45am

That could work, as long as the result is under the 255 character limit for states.