I have in my office a pretty good sound system connected to my work pc.
But now i want to link this to a streaming device controlled from HA…so i don’t need to power up my pc all time just to listen to a radio station of the internet…
Any suggestions of a good thing (i already looked at chromecast audio, but it seems they are not sold anymore…other thing i looked at was Belkin soundform…but it is reather expensive…and when i looked at the forum it seems to have problems connecting to HA.
I’m also running HA on a Intel NUC device with audio connector on it…maybe this is also an option?
I have several dots of various generations - all work. Some connect to speakers via bluetooth, some via 3.5mm headphone out.
Integration is by the Alexa media player:
Added bonus is that you can use the echo to control home assistant entities by voice and use text-to-speech for voice alerts (e.g. doors left open, alarm triggered etc).
The text to voice i already used on some sonos speakers in other places in the house…but the amplifier of sonos is just to expensive to buy for this purpose…
I will give one of the echo’s a try…
Hi,
sorry to bother you again…but i have a question about the echo dot…
So i went and purchased a echo dot…Got it yesterday. I added it to alexa app on phone, and then went to HA to add alexa media player and put mini media player in dashboard…all seemed fine…even my external speakers connected to it work fine…
now comes the problem i have.
When i click on the media player…i expected to get a browse media indicator as i get on my sonos media player button (and all other media players)…but i did not
So i cannot choose any music to play on it from within HA.
I can select it from the alexa app, use tunnelin to play radio…and it also shows in HA what is playing with background and info and all…
Do i have to do something special to get this browse media on it, or does this not work with the echo dot?
I’m going to answer my own question, sometimes it pays to go to all the info on internet about HA…
local streaming is not supported by Echo DOT…so that’s why there is no browse media…
But you can create automation’s etc to play eg. radio stations from Tune-In.
And another thing, and this is my solution now…you can add shortcuts to the mini-media-player card to start playing something. So now i have 2 shortcuts on the card for the echo dot (i usually listen to one of those 2). I now just click the shortcut …and it starts playing on my sound system in the office, that’s connected to the echo dot…
SO all i wanted is working just fine now (with some workarounds…but they are easier from to browse the media every time) and all of this for around 40€ and some time from me…BUT a lot cheaper than buying a sonos amp…
would you mind sharing how… dumb dumb here has been messing around with this thing for days and cant get to have it playing.
Getting the direct streaming not supported.
Im not clear on how to use it with the bluetooth… need more coffee!! : [
