How to configure a Google Home Mini?

Configuration
1

I have two Google Home Mini devices, connected and operational.

I would like to use them in HA as speakers to either send some messages via tts or stream some internet radio using it as a media player.

I found examples on how to use them in both cases but for some reason I cannot find out how to configure them so that HA sees them as media_player.office and media_player.salon.

They are on the same network as HA but they do not show up in the list of devices (there can be numerous reasons for that) and therefore I wanted to hard wire them in the configuration.

I found one place whihc seems to be relevant: the advances configuration for Google Cast (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/cast/#advanced-use). The proposed entry is

# Example configuration.yaml entry
cast:
  media_player:
    - host: 192.168.1.10

How does this map with a media_player.office entry? Where can I say that 192.168.1.10 is the Google Home associated with office?

2

Have you followed this? https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant/

3

@echopage this is for full-fledged Home Assistant, right?
I do not want (yet at least) to use the minis to send orders to HA. I want to use them as speakers only.

4

Ok, have you tried the integrations page inside the configuration panel?

5

The integration of what, exactly? My question is exactly about that: how to integrate the Google Home Mini into HA so that it is visible as media_player.something.

Please let me know what is unclear in my question so that I can fix it.

6

Go Configuration Page > Integrations > Google Cast

remove first the item in the configuration.yaml

7

Ah ok, sorry, I did not catch that you were talking about the integrations page in HA.

Yes, I have tried this already, no devices are found. I do not have any cast items in configuration.yaml.

That was also the reason I wanted to go the configuration.yaml way.

8

Have the speakers set up with correct name first.

Then, remove the cast lines in YAML. Restart HA. In integration page, it should have discovered google cast and waiting to be set up.

9

You mean in the Android app “Home”? Their names are set up in Settings → Name (translated from French). One of them is called “Bureau” and the other “Salon Cuisine”.

DHCP/DNS wise, they do not register themselves correctly: one is Google-Home-Mini and the other does not present its name. I can force the name in my DHCP server if needed.

They are on the same L2 network as the server (Wi-Fi and wired are bridged), within the name network, but I doubt the discovery will be successful as HA runs in a docker container not in host mode (so it does not see the broadcasts).

This is why I wanted to hardcode the configuration (similar to, say , my Harmony Hub)

There are no cast: entries in my configuration file. But as mentioned earlier, it is not likely that a broadcast discovery works.

10

You say you have already configured Cast earlier. Try removing it, restart HA, and try to add it again. You should get persistent notification to tell you: new integration has been discovered.

Have you got default_config: in your configuration.yaml?

I think most people would have done it through integration. You can still change its entity name afterwards.

Home Assistant image provided on the website also runs the core program in docker. I’m also running HA-core in Docker, along with their Supervisor docker container, it discovers everything it should discover.

11

If you have in mind the example in my question - that was just an example, the one I found in the docs. I was wondering whether this is the right way to manually add google home devices and how that related to the name later used in configurations.

No, I added it, restarted but it did not change anything.

I guess you are running it in network: host mode - in which case you have access to the L2 of the host. I use traefik to dispatch traffic to containers. I will have to try to run a file based dynamic configuration with network: host but this not exactly obvious to set up.

This is why I was hoping for a manual setup.

12

I ended up trying the suggested configuration

cast:
  media_player:
    - host: 192.168.1.10
    - host: 192.168.1.11

and both devices were spontaneously recognized as Google Home speakers. They were named after their names in the Home app (with an underscore replacing a space), such as media_player.cuisine_salon.

3 Likes
13

wel they for sure are detected when the internal intel network card of the laptop running hassio in hyperv is the network card for hassio,; i Didnt get to detect them when i used a realtek usb nic. tried al settings azbout mdns multicast etcetera. appears some of the network cards are not compatible cause of bugs

14

Can I use google home mini to play my local mp3s or tts?

1 Like
15

Did you require any other configuration to get this running? I’m running HA core on Docker on OSX, so host networking is not available. HA can see 192.168.0.0/24 and I have added this to configuration.yaml but HA still cannot find my Google Home devices

Edit: It looks like in 0.109, the mDNS change also stopped specifying the IP addresses from working. Will have a look at forwarding mDNS into the container

16

so do we have a final solution to use google mini speakers just for paying mp3 files?
If yes please post the yaml script, thank you.