If you were starting from a blank slate and the only objective you had was to automatically play a particular podcast each morning when your alarm goes off, how would you do it and what hardware would you use?
Home Assistant already opens my blinds when my morning alarm goes off, I’d like it to play the latest Shipping Forecast also, which is available each day via several different podcast apps.
The only thing I object to is having something like an Alexa in my bedroom.
What hardware would you suggest using to play the media? My HA experience is limited to Zigbee devices (sensors and basic actuators), I’m guessing I’d need HA to cast to some kind of audio device, presumably connected by wifi?
I created script, that takes user-pronounced input (from Assist, for example), and processing that through OpenAI conversation (or Gemini, it works pretty well too) to convert into JSON with artist/album/track info. Then it is searching exact media url through Music Assistant search service, and plays it on Music Assistant player in given area (area picked from the satellite, or from user speech explicitly).
In result, I can play music through Assistant pretty much similar to how it was played with Alexa. Works pretty good.
Regarding players: you can either use given tutorial for Squeezelite player, or use ESPHome to create actual HA media_player, and expose that to Music Assistant.
There’s also plenty Raspberry-based solutions, like Snapcast, Moode etc. If you want really multiroom sound, check Pi players with Snapcast.
I decided, that it’s enough for me to use ESP32.
I use Google nest speakers for stuff like that. Super easy, show right up in the cast integration, treat them as media players. Also great for TTS and doorbell chimes.
