Hello Home Assistant Community,
I need a speaker so I can play tts messages. The speaker doesn’t have to have a particularly good sound, but it should be easy to integrate into home assistant. Maybe one of you knows what the solution would be.
Best regards ET Craft
If you already have some speakers with Aux/optical in in then you can look at one of these to plug in and tell HA to stream to: https://www.amazon.com/WiiM-Mini-Multiroom-Preamplifier-Assistants/dp/B09HC5GRKY, else just get a USB speaker to plug into the host device like this one that I use for my setup to load up white noise when I am heading to sleep and play my doorbell chime through: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Speakers-Desktop-Crystal-Included/dp/B09NX6G7L1.
How do I set up the USB speaker on the HA host?
You just plug it in and set the volume, I have mine set to 80% in windows on my nuc since my HA instance is running in a virtualbox instance.
I installed homeassistant on a NUC without a virtual box but as the main operating system
You manage the volume via the automation then when you set the speaker as the output once you have tested that its working.
Do I need an integration?
To play audio you will need to have the VLC plugin installed at least, I have that and the spotify plugin’s installed for my uses.
The VLC plugin allows me to play my doorbell chime file saved to the media folder (you can use files via network share if you have that setup in the share settings of your HA install).
Keep in mind if you want to have the same audio file play on your phone or other device you need to have that file on said device and call the channel it will be tied to at the time in the companion app in the automation. i.e
I have my VLC integration labeled as speaker for ease of assignment in automations.
For TTS you will use this:
Thank you very much, you helped me a lot
I’m also running HA on a NUC by itself–no containers.
I’m confused by “VLC plugin” and “VLC integration” in your post. Are they the same thing?
And when I search for “VLC” I get two integrations:
Which one?
You install the first one to have native media player in HA, the second is controlled via SSH.
Thank you. You’re referring to the numbered things, correct? And the first is what you called the VLC plugin, or is the VLC plugin something else?
Yes, I found that a while ago and find it to be very cryptic. Is that integration what you were calling the VLC plugin?
Please have pity on us newbies. The lingo is very confusing.
Yes, unless I specifically state and link something else entirely its exactly what I refer to.
It failed at the first step (it appeared sketchy to start, with only three active installations). I followed the instructions:
To add a VLC media player to your installation, add the following to your
configuration.yamlfile. After changing theconfiguration.yamlfile, restart Home Assistant to apply the changes. The integration is now shown on the integrations page under Settings > Devices & services. Its entities are listed on the integration card itself and on the Entities tab.
# Example configuration.yaml entry
media_player:
- platform: vlc
…restarted, and the VLC integration does not appear as promised. I checked to see that I had saved configuration.yaml. I try to add VLC media player (not with telnet, as you did not link to that) as a new integration, but it is only a link to send me back to the page you linked to.
I finally figured that out myself last night, but that’s not what you linked to. You linked to “something else entirely”:
So you mentioned a “plug-in,” I asked if you were referring to an integration, you confirmed that and even linked to the integration, and even wrote:
Today it turns out that you were “exactly” referring to an integration, but meant an add-on.
Is it any wonder that people get frustrated? Thanks for trying.
