Recently, I stumbled upon a new self hosted music player which supported both Sonos(Airplay) and chromecast. I had previously looked into Snapcast. But I wanted to use the nice Nest Audio and Ikea Symfonisk Picture Frame Speakers I had and not have RPIs scattered around the house to run SnapCast Clients. This is where Owntone came up. This is a selfhosted music server which can stream local music from your server to one or many chromecast/Sonos speakers all at onces while maintaining sync across all the devices.
Setup Owntone
Owntone can be setup using docker and thats what I did.
daapd:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/daapd:latest
container_name: daapd
network_mode: host
environment:
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/Los_Angeles
volumes:
- ./owntone:/config
- ~/media/music:/music
restart: unless-stopped
This will setup the owntone running on your server. Note: Running owntone in network=host mode is critical for it to recognize cast and other wifi speakers in the WI-FI network. This will also run a UI and API on port 3689
Home Assistant Setup
Once you have Owntone server running: Next we will link it with HA
Homeassistant already has a built-in integration for Owntone. This can be setup by going into Settings -> Devices & Services -> Click on Add Integration and Search for Owntone. More Info can be found on the home assistant integration page.
![[Screenshot 2023-06-26 at 5.25.54 PM.png]]
Pipes
The HA owntone integration supports playing music using pipes similar to how MPD and snapcast supports it. So we can send any audio stream into Owntone from HA.
Currently, HA integration only supports a static pipe called librespot-java and a metadata pipe called librespot-java.metadata. These two pipes will be used to send audio stream contents and audio metadata to Owntone. More info here
The pipe needs to be created inside the music folder that we are sharing with owntone as our music library. In my case that path was ~/media/music. So I went ahead and logged into my server to create this pipe. Once you create the pipe, Homeassistantâs owntone integration will automatically detect it.
cd ~/media/music
mkfifo librespot-java
mkfifo librespot-java.metadata
![[Screenshot 2023-06-26 at 5.34.00 PM.png]]
It will also expose all your cast and sonos speakers as its own media_player entities like this
![[Screenshot 2023-06-26 at 5.36.30 PM.png]]
At this point, you can use HA to stream any local music in sync throughout the house using owntone.
YT Music Integration
But I wanted to stream from YT-Music with multiroom-audio and wanted the music to follow me in my house as I move around. So I digged more to find the YT-Music Integration in HACS. This setup is very well explained in the guide, so I will just link it here
Once you have setup the YT Music Integration, all we have to do is take the stream from the media player entity which the YT Music integration creates, (in my case it is media_player.ytube_music_player) and pipe it to owntone.
Hence I created this automation which sets the owntone media player as source for the ytube music player integration.
automation
- id: ytube_owntone
alias: Youtube to Owntone
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- media_player.ytube_music_player
to: playing
id: playing
- platform: state
entity_id:
- media_player.ytube_music_player
to:
- idle
- 'off'
- paused
id: 'off'
action:
choose:
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: playing
sequence:
- service: media_player.select_source
data:
source: media_player.owntone_server
entity_id: media_player.ytube_music_player
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: 'off'
sequence:
- service: media_player.turn_off
entity_id: media_player.owntone_server
This automation will send the audio streaming from youtube music straight to the owntone server.
MultiRoom Audio
Once we have music streaming to media_player.owntone_speaker. Now I created an automation to make the music follow me around the house.
These are the speakers I have around my house.
- Living Room
media_player.living_room_speakermedia_player.living_room_speaker_2
- Bedroom
-
media_player.bedroom
I also have presence sensors around my home, so I decided to use the presence to stream music to the dedicated speakers in the room.
There are two automations which will cover two cases,
-
- One will handle routing music to the speaker where there is presence when owntone speaker receives a new audio stream.
automation:
- id: select_multiroom_audio
alias: Select Multiroom Audio
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_server
to: playing
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id:
- input_boolean.multiroom_audio
state: 'on'
action:
choose:
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.bedroom_presence
state: 'on'
sequence:
- service: media_player.turn_on
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_output_bedroom
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.living_room_presence_presence
state: 'on'
sequence:
- service: media_player.turn_on
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_output_living_room_speaker
- media_player.owntone_output_living_room_speaker_2
Secondly, once I start moving around the house, I wanted the music to stop playing in the room that I left and start playing in the room that I entered.
automation:
- id: move_music_bw_rooms
alias: Move Music between rooms
trigger:
- platform: state
to: 'on'
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.bedroom_presence
id: bedroom_presence_on
- platform: state
to: 'off'
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.bedroom_presence
id: bedroom_presence_off
- platform: state
to: 'on'
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.living_room_presence_presence
id: living_room_presence_on
- platform: state
to: 'off'
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.living_room_presence_presence
id: living_room_presence_off
condition:
- condition: and
conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id:
- input_boolean.multiroom_audio
state: 'on'
- condition: state
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_server
state: playing
action:
choose:
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: bedroom_presence_on
sequence:
- service: media_player.turn_on
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_output_bedroom
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: bedroom_presence_off
sequence:
- service: media_player.turn_off
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_output_bedroom
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: living_room_presence_on
sequence:
- service: media_player.turn_on
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_output_living_room_speaker
- media_player.owntone_output_living_room_speaker_2
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: living_room_presence_off
sequence:
- service: media_player.turn_off
entity_id:
- media_player.owntone_output_living_room_speaker
- media_player.owntone_output_living_room_speaker_2
Now voila!, we have multiroom-audio following presence in each room.
Let me know if there is any questions/need more info on getting this setup.
Sorry for any mistakes in this write up.
