I thought this was going to be an easy one, but so far it has proven extremely frustrating. Basically…
What I have tried…
I have:
- A Yamaha MusicCast capable receiver
- An AppleTV connected to the Yamaha receiver
- A Plex Server (running on an Unraid server) with music (also works as a DLNA server)
- Local Media on my Home Assistant (ODROID running Hassio)
- A bunch of different streaming services (like Youtube Music Premium, Amazon Music (but no Unlimited), Spotify (but only free)
And I want to:
- Play some kind of playlist (could be everything of one folder, or an m3u playlist, or a playlist I can create on any of the listed streaming services) on my Yamaha Receiver
However, despite all my efforts, I’m not able to get any playlists running, because:
- Even though the Yamaha Receiver connects to my Amazon Music account, it’s unable to stream a user defined playlist (seems like a Yamaha Bug)
- There seems to be no easy / reliable option to play Youtube Music via Home Assistant
- All Spotify based solutions I found require a premium membership (which I don’t want)
- The Plex integration would require me to turn on the Apple TV (which seems impossible) and launch the Plex app on the Apple TV (which I couldn’t figure out how)
- The Yamaha MusicCast integration provided by HomeAssistant only seems to be able to play a single audio file or switch to a preset - at least that’s the only thing I got working from the documentation.
- Local playback isn’t working either: My unraid server doesn’t have audio support in the kernel (and I don’t think setting up an extra VM with passthrough is the right solution) and the ODROID Hassio VLC player isn’t able to playback anything via the HDMI out
So right now, the only solution that I haven’t ruled out is via DLNA Home Assistant integration. However, I can’t find out the correct media source URI. I can stream files via the Media tab (select the Yamaha DLNA player and then use the Plex DLNA server as a source), but how do I figure out the correct service call to start playing back from a playlist or a folder?
The documentation gives some hints, but isn’t detailed enough in my opinion. E.g. where do I get the Object IDs from?
TLDR;
- Is there an easy solution to playing back a playlist on a Yamaha Musiccast receiver that doesn’t require additional hardware / premium account subscriptions?
- How can I get the Object IDs / file path for a Home Assistant DLNA DMS connected to a Plex Media Server (DLNA support enabled) so that I can use it to playback a playlist on my Yamaha Receiver which is connected to Home Assistant via the DLNA DMR integration?