we’ve been using the Alexa ecosystem entirely as our voice control system for everything:
Controlling our home (all provided through HA as the central hub)
Asking about trivia (“When was XY born?”)
Intercom between rooms (Drop-In)
and most importantly: Listening to music via Prime music
The whole family is very much used to it by now and likes the simplicity of the commands. For example, playing any music is an easy phrase that won’t need any definition of service, source, …we simply can say: “Alexa, play XY”.
In our living room area, I’ve connected an Echo dot to an AVR and it works just fine.
But, now with the limited features of Prime Music (no on demand lsitening, e.g.) we need to change something. As I am already paying for YT Premium, we will go with YT Music.
I’m now wondering how that could be done?
Is there a way to trigger YT music with an Alexa command using a Home Assistant work around?
Should we switch to a Google ecosystem instead of Alexa?
If Google: All devices, that I have found connect solely via Bluetooth to the AVR. I do not prefer that solution as it is not 100% reliable and it will only stream music to the AVR. All other answers go straight through the built in speaker.
I was trying to create a raspberry pi with Google Assistant and YT music, but it is a high maintenance solution. Also tweaking an old android phone with external microphone is not working really well.
Recently, they have revamped it to run as an add-on rather than an integration, so it may not be quite fully ready yet, but it will be better for it. It is purported to work with many speakers and streaming services, including YT Music, and of course, more will be added in the future. I have been waiting patiently for it to be ready and haven’t gotten it up and running for myself yet, so I don’t really know all the details. However, it did work well with my Google Home Hub smart screen before Home Assistant broke with it a couple months back, though I didn’t try anything but local storage.
As for working with voice assistants, I don’t know that it currently does, even with the new features in the add-on, but I would expect this to get better along with the rest of the integration of voice assistants into Home Assistant that is being worked on this year.
I’m totally not an programmer, and I only know to set up or configure things with somekind of guidelines. I worked with AWS and the console a few times to setup things as HAASKA etc.
But I was wondering…
Previousely I could play podcast to play music on my Alexa devices. Or just play music from my Plex server (other topic, but I believe Plex suddenly dissapeared from the Alexa Skill list? It’s not there annymore).
But I was thinking, should it be possible to run Youtube Music from something cheap, small and low power consumption PCB as an Raspberry Pi zero? Then play around in AWS and console a bit, and adress the “zero” as “podcast” or something similar?
So it would see the “Zero” as podcast when you say “play music”. It would play continuesly as a “radio”, but this should be not a huge problem in manny cases I guess. I believe that Youtube Music is pretty capable of holding and keeping things in the same genres and keeping it close to the music preferences you like.
Maybe next controlls could be added in Home Assistant to controll the Zero playback, or it could be controlled with something as VNC (maybe also possible to integrate in HASS).
I am attempting to do something similar yet very different…and maybe someone here fan help me…
I own several Chromecast Audio devices. I usually use them with Google Home, but would like to use them with Alexa as well.
How, I am running Music Assistant 2.0 beta and that works and is found by Alexa. I can see my Speakers in the Alexa app. Now, if I stream something from Music Assistant then I can see that the player turns on in Alexa, but I can’t get Alexa to send Audio to the Speakers. If I use Voice commands it claims to not find the Speaker.
I hop my explanation makes sense. Does anyone know a solution?
I don’t use Alexa so I can’t test anything for myself, but I do have a basic question that could possibly be the answer. Have you exposed the speakers in Home Assistant to the voice assistants? It’s in each entity’s settings now and to be able to use them with voice assistants has to be manually enabled. I discovered the change a while back when I was no longer able to turn my lights on using Google Assistant.
I have done that, yes. The Alexa app does show the Speaker, but then refuses to play through it. It’s not that important, but would have been a neat way to get the two ecosystems to talk to each other.
I think that probably just means that Home Assistant’s voice assistant integrations aren’t there yet. They’re slowly rolling out more capabilities, and I had a feeling that it wasn’t currently, or at least automatically, possible.
Though, on the July update, they did add things like a sentence trigger for automations to use with Assist (and I would assume other voice assistants) that might be an avenue to get it working. I’ve been wanting to test it out, but I had a busy week/weekend with my nephew’s birthday party and just haven’t bothered with the install. If you try it, you may need to expose the automation to the voice assistants, as well, since that is also in their settings.
Hey,
My issue was similar to your: I want to play music from spotify through Alexa echo devices.
I used Alexa Media Player plugin. Now I can reproduce music on the automation and make the speaker do some announcements and other cool stuff (when it detects me ask me to turn on tv and stuff like that).
Hope it helps
alias: Accendi TV Alexa routine
description: Ask to turn on TV when somebody sit on couch, then start the Alexa routine
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.livingroom_detection_zone_tv
to: "on"
from: "off"
for:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 5
condition:
put your own conditions
action:
- service: script.activate_alexa_actionable_notification
data:
text: Should I turn ON TV?
event_id: alexa_actionable_notification
alexa_device: media_player.livingroom_echo_studio
- wait_for_trigger:
- platform: event
event_type: alexa_actionable_notification
event_data:
event_id: alexa_actionable_notification
event_response_type: ResponseYes
- if:
- type: is_illuminance
condition: device
device_id: f013746628017ae
entity_id: 62d0b65078964c093f
domain: sensor
below: 30
then:
- service: light.turn_on
data:
brightness_pct: 60
target:
entity_id: light.livingroom_lights_film_group
else:
- if:
- type: is_illuminance
condition: device
device_id: f013cbe0b746628017ae
entity_id: 62d0b60a515078964c093f
domain: sensor
above: 10
then:
- service: light.turn_on
data:
brightness_pct: 50
target:
entity_id: light.livingroom_lights_film_group
- service: switch.turn_on
data: {}
target:
entity_id:
- switch.livingroom_power_strip_soundbar_east
- switch.livingroom_power_strip_tv_east
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 10
milliseconds: 0
- service: wake_on_lan.send_magic_packet
data:
mac: 00-12-45-67-89-01
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 10
milliseconds: 0
- service: webostv.button
data:
entity_id: media_player.livingroom_tv_oled65
button: NETFLIX
mode: restart
I use the alexa actionable notification. Its a 1H installation and configuration a bit tech but easily accomplish by anyone.
After that you can make alexa said what you want when trigger happens.
One more example is Alexa warn me when my electricity counter is above 5KWh so I can turn off my hoven or other devices before the counter goes off and turn off my house
Here are the links I followed to accomplish all of this:
this one for get feedback by alexa when something happens
this one to bring all my home assistant device into the alexa app so I can controll a zigbee device or whatever using voice with alexa device
