TTS to send hey google message to other devices

Configuration Voice Assistant
1

I’m having some issues with an automation and haven’t been able to find a solution in the forums. I’m trying to start playing a certain online station on a Google home mini. The best way I’ve found, so far, is to use TTS. So I have an automation that uses TTS to say, “hey google play xxxx station on iheartradio on xxxx mini.” It works, and the station starts playing, but there is one issue. The TTS message volume gets turned down right after it says “hey google play.” So the speaker across the room only hears that part of the message.

I’ve tried to mute the the mic on the sending mini. I’ve tried to disable the “lower volume when listening” setting in google home. I’ve tried using different devices (minis, google home hub, other) to speak the message. No luck. If I remove the “hey” from the message, it plays fine. Is there any way to get it to play the whole message at the same volume or is this something google has done to stop me from doing what I’m trying to do? The only thing I can think of is to put 2 devices right next to each other so they can hear each other even when the volume is lowered (tried that and it does work). Any suggestions? I also have the Google assistant relay installed but I think that only broadcasts to all devices so I haven’t tried with that. Still brand new to HA so learning a lot from others’ examples. Thanks!

2

You don’t need to use TTS to achieve playing a station on the device.

Just use a service call, like this example

service: media_player.play_media
entity_id: media_player.YOUR_MINI
media_content_id: http://playerservices.streamtheworld.com/api/livestream-redirect/NOVA_937_AAC48.aac?
media_content_type: 'audio/mp4'

Have a look at this.

3

Thanks for the quick reply! I got it working with that… At least getting it to start playing. Much better than the ‘hack’ way I was attempting. I just need to add it to my automation now but I think that should be fairly simple with your example. Will have to wait for the kids to go to bed before I can mess with it more though! Thanks again.

4

Sorry but another question… I’m getting an error. I have this in the automation:

service: media_player.play_media
entity_id: media_player.office_mini
media_content_id: https://18233.live.streamtheworld.com/KABCAMAAC.aac
media_content_type: ‘audio/mp4’

It says message malformed extra keys not allowed @data action 0 media_content_id

Thanks!

5

change it to this:

service: media_player.play_media
data:
  entity_id: media_player.office_mini
  media_content_id: https://18233.live.streamtheworld.com/KABCAMAAC.aac 
  media_content_type: ‘audio/mp4’
1 Like
6

Awesome! Thanks!