I’ve struggled since Music Assistant became incompatible with the current version of HA despite installing the beta add-on and attempting to use it.
We have three Google Home devices that we want to get rid of. If we ask Google to play music, it uses Spotify to pipe music through one of those if not all of those speakers. That’s NOT what we want.
We have a Monoprice 6 Zone amp, but the amp is useless without input. Currently the only inputs I’m feeding the amp are two Raspberry Pi3’s running PiCorePlayer.
Getting music or sound effects to play through these devices is relatively simple when we know the source (i.e. the spotify url), but that requires knowing the url.
The expectation is that I can use Music Assistant to browse, search for, and play Spotify playlists and songs on Spotify, etc. My experience is that it’s extremely unreliable and songs stop in the middle for no reason. The interface is terrible, and overall, I’m losing hope in it ever being something worth using.
Knowing that, if you’re not using Music Assistant to control your streaming content, how are you doing it, while making sure that you’re not dependent upon any cloud-based speakers with limitations.
If Google Home had a hard-wired output (and I’m actually about to cannibalize it and re-wire the speaker output to feed my amp) then I could just patch it into the amp.
If I’m not mistaken, Chromecast devices require that you be tied to Google in some way. I’m okay with needing to subscribe to Spotify, but I’m trying to remove cloud services from my network. I don’t want google listening in anymore, and none of my media is hosted locally, so I don’t see any value in using Plex or any other DLNA media server.
I’m more interested in knowing what interface you use to browse streaming material and whether or not it works inside of Home Assistant’s UI.
Hi Jon, this is how I’m doing it.
My idea is to use the application what it is intended for.
Long before starting with HA I already discovered LMS (Logitech Media Server).
Having a collection of 30k songs I was looking for a solution that would fit the bill and LMS is it.
With 5 pCP’s (piCorePlayer) this is perfect for playing local music & streams.
In the meantime LMS is integrated in HA and I control basic things as volume up/down, mute/unmute, next song, manually with zigbee remotes or automations.
Main control is done by the LMS mobile app. (Material UI for LMS - it’s installed as an LMS plugin, thanks @reste_narquois for adding this since this is what I do too)
Because music is playing almost all the time (not much TV) having something reliable was a must.
I see a lot of topics of users that integrate ‘everything’ in HA and even my HA is super stable, it has to be rebooted with every update.
My LMS reboots very rarely, a lot less then HA, so this gives me the availability I want.
I’m running both HA and LMS as separate virtual instances on my server.
Just to add that if doing as both Nicks suggest (which I do as well), make sure to use the Material UI for LMS - it’s installed as an LMS plugin, and as well as being constantly updated, beats the original LMS UI by miles.
Given the squeezebox.call_query service that comes with the LMS integration, the possibilities are theoretically endless in terms of integrating LMS features into HA. For example, I use it to deploy voice control to play the latest episode of my favourited podcast, or play a random playlist from Spotify, or play SugarCube or Bliss mixes from my local library.
This means if you were thinking of moving to other online streaming services like Tidal or Qobuz, they could also very easily be integrated into HA via their respective LMS plugins.
You configure the devices using the Google home app to get them on your network, and then they are addressed locally.
As for “listening in”, they don’t even have microphones - or speakers - so I have no clue what you’re on about there…
To browse streaming material I use plex. There’s no interface inside HA that I’m aware of. I just have the app loaded on all my devices. Though I suppose you could run it as an iframe if you wanted to…
Nick, are you running LMS as a separate virtual server, or in a docker container? What VE are you working with? I’m using Unraid and the confusion I have is whether or not I should install LMS on one of the Picore devices or not.
I know that in my experience, if I have LMS running somewhere, I have to point the Picore players to that server and thus lose the ability to control the music with Music Assistant inside of HA, but I guess that’s the trade off I’m looking at? I have no experience with Material UI for LMS so I’ll have to dig in and figure it out. I think I also ran into a problem with the docker template in Unraid for LMS at one point, so I installed it on one of the Picore players. Not sure exactly what direction to go, but at least I have some new ideas to try.
I’m using Proxmox VE and run both HA and LMS in separate LXC’s
Material UI for LMS is just a fancy, worth using though, plugin.
I have my music on a share on my server and the LMS instance so my only point of failure is my server.
Having a server, for me, means putting network wide related services on it and not on something like a RPi but you could run LMS on a RPi and point to a share as well.
As nickrout wrote: what’s the point of MA if you’re considering LMS anyway.