It is ok to link something, but could you take a moment to add just a few lines to explain what your WTH is?
The WTH is that it is quite hard to do something as simple as that. That was my first use-case with Home Assistant and not a good start.
I don’t want/need to launch another add-on (like VLC) that would consume resources, potentially hang and in general be an overkill for this kind of task.
On a wider context: in my case HA automations are used in a house inhabited by elderly people. As you can imagine, they are not that digital and are not into apps/dashboards/notifications. The way to go to inform them about something is a plain USB speaker (I don’t want to replace batteries and/or have potential wireless transmission problems), playing back local sound files (potentially using TTS in the future).
Local playback is difficult to accomplish using something that would be associated with the web browser that the user is accessing home assistant with. While, for example, solutions like Browser Mod exist today, they require interactions with the page before you can target them as media players, due to limitations of how browsers accept auto-play of media.
If all you want is announcements, your best bet is to find a speaker that is powered by a squeeze-lite compatible media player. Those can be added to home assistant and then you can play back whatever you want to those speakers.
As someone just starting in HA, I have to agree that this is a huge WTH. I’m finding lots of threads on this subject that do not offer solutions.
I am familiar with VLC on computers, so I can try that; however, local-vlc seems like the best bet, but it hasn’t been updated in 4 years. Does it still work?
I’m not following you. That doesn’t seem relevant since we’re having trouble with the software complexity required to use a speaker simply and directly connected to the computer running HA, not a web browser accessing it.
If I’m missing something, can you explain more?
I don’t know what a “squeeze-lite compatible media player” is–do you mean LMS?
It’s also WTH to have to find a new speaker when I have perfectly good speakers lying around–both for a 3.5-mm headphone jack and USB. My NUC has a jack and open USB ports.
You know what would be kickass? Like, absolutely kickass?
If MA could cast via Bluetooth. A Bluetooth player provider!
That would enable MA to become THE Music Player of choice.
I’m thinking it oughta be possible with an ESPHome device plus a custom component for it. Then MA can just speak ESPHome API over TCP/IP to it. No complicated and flaky Linux Bluetooth stack shit.
I just want to plug a speaker into the headphone jack and play TTS messages with a nice selection of local (stored on the HA system) voice fonts. Local means local.
If you have a USB speaker, I managed to figure that out:
It didn’t work as well for one plugged into the host’s headphone jack.
The headphone jack allows easy connection to a whole-house music amp or similiar equipment. A USB speaker would need to be hacked to get line level audio out. Maybe a USB external sound card?
No, I mean a USB speaker plugged into a USB port of the host computer.
I don’t need a speaker plugged into the host computer. I need local line leval audio out of a headphone jack (or similiar alternative) that can be fed into other equipment such as a whole-house audio amp.
I am simply trying to be helpful and supply what I had figured out.
That’s why I started with, “If you have a USB speaker…” and noted that it didn’t work as well for the headphone jack. It did, however work once, so you just might want to consider it.
Yes thanks for confirming that option works and I know I can modify a USB speaker to provide a line out so it is still a viable alternative. I just wanted to put it out there that a native line out solution would still be nice.
Same need as well. Audible door chime every time a door contact sensor opens when home.
And I mentioned that the line out worked at least once for me after linking to instructions that said the same thing! It could be that the only problem is with switching outputs.