Got a Voice Assistant PE, and trying to create a automation that allows me to start playing music via Music Assistant. However, whenever I try to send the media to Music Assistant, it seems to not go through, because Home Assistant decides to instead play either the conversation response, or 'Done', which takes over the media_player. Setting a delay or anything else also doesn't work- the 'response' plays at the end of the automation, regardless of how you set it up.
#How to play music from a voice assistant automation?
slender wing
This is my automation (with sections taken from Music Assistant's current WIP local-only voice support)
alias: Music Assistant - Local(only) Voice Support
description: ""
triggers:
- trigger: conversation
command:
- >-
(play|listen to) [the ](album|ep|record|compilation|single) {media_name}
[by [the ](artist|band|group) {artist}] [(in|on|using) [the
]{area_or_player_name}][ (with|using) {radio_mode}]
id: album
- trigger: conversation
command:
- >-
(play|listen to) [the ][(track|song) ]{media_name} [by [the
][(artist|band|group) ]{artist}] [(in|on|using) [the
]{area_or_player_name}][ (with|using) {radio_mode}]
id: track
- trigger: conversation
command:
- >-
(play|listen to) [the ](artist|band|group) {media_name} [(in|on|using)
[the ]{area_or_player_name}][ (with|using) {radio_mode}]
id: artist
- trigger: conversation
command:
- >-
(play|listen to) [the ]((radio station)|(radio)|(station)) {media_name}
[(in|on|using) [the ]{area_or_player_name}]
id: radio
- trigger: conversation
command:
- >-
(play|listen to) [the ]playlist {media_name} [(in|on|using) [the
]{area_or_player_name}][ (with|using) {radio_mode}]
id: playlist
actions:
- alias: Define variables to be used in the automation
variables:
version: 20250128
assist_device_id: "{{ trigger.device_id }}"
default_player_entity_id: >-
{{ (device_entities(assist_device_id) | expand | selectattr('entity_id',
'match', '^media_player') | map(attribute='entity_id') | list)[0] |
default('media_player.navi_intercom_media_player_2') }}
trigger_id: "{{ trigger.id }}"
area_or_player_name: "{{ trigger.slots.area_or_player_name | default }}"
action_data:
media_id: "{{ trigger.slots.media_name }}"
media_type: "{{ 'radio' if 'radio' in media_name | lower else trigger_id }}"
artist: "{{ trigger.slots.artist | default }}"
radio_mode: "{{ 'radio' in trigger.slots.radio_mode | default | lower }}"
player_entity_id_by_player_name: |
{{ integration_entities('music_assistant') | expand
| selectattr('name', 'match', area_or_player_name ~ '$', ignorecase=true)
| map(attribute='entity_id') | list }}
player_entity_id_by_area_name: >
{{ areas() | map('area_name') | select('match', area_or_player_name ~
'$', ignorecase=true) | map('area_entities') | sum(start=[]) |
select('in', integration_entities('music_assistant')) | list }}
player_entity_id_by_assist_area: >
{{ area_entities(area_id(trigger.device_id)) | select('in',
integration_entities('music_assistant')) | list }}
mass_player_entity_id: |
{{ player_entity_id_by_player_name or player_entity_id_by_area_name
or player_entity_id_by_assist_area or [default_player_entity_id] }}
mass_player_name: >-
{{ mass_player_entity_id | map('state_attr', 'friendly_name') | join(',
') }}
- alias: Send back the response
set_conversation_response: "{{ trigger.slots.media_name }} playing on {{ mass_player_name }}"
enabled: true
- alias: Send media to selected Music Assistant Player
action: music_assistant.play_media
data: "{{ dict(action_data.items() | selectattr('1')) }}"
target:
entity_id: "{{ mass_player_entity_id }}"
mode: single
no errors or anything in the logs/traces/history, as far as I can tell the action is just getting eaten by homeassistant insisting on having some kind of end-of-automation playback that happens after the automation triggers, I think
wet temple
if its saying "done" its likely erroring/failing somewhere. most likely the answer will be in the trace somewhere
slender wing
Nah, the 'done' is just if I remove the 'set_conversation_response'
otherwise it says 'playing XYZ on ABC' but then never actually does anything
if I disable set_conversation_response, it says 'done' at the end, which also clobbers the actual media playback
actually hang on, let me try setting the conversation response to ""
wet temple
as long as your using the music assistant generated media player entity it should handle TTS over playback
slender wing
that's the problem- it IS
in the automation, it sends the music to the VA PE
then immediately changes the playback to whatever the response is
wet temple
i just imported the blueprint to compare what it generates for me
did you manually template the default_player_entity_idsection?
slender wing
yeah
I also just modified it to try the secondary media player for the device- they have two, one for MusicAssistant and one for ESPHome that seem to be tied together
works the same way regardless of which you send it to
e.g. if it resolves to 'media_player.navi_intercom_media_player' (the esphome media player) or 'media_player.navi_intercom_media_player_2' ( the musicassistant media player) it doesn't matter, behaves the same way
wet temple
what happens if you scrap the templating and just have
default_player_entity_id: media_player.navi_intercom_media_player_2
when your sending data to to music assistant you only ever want to use the music assistant player anyway which will likely be the _2 one
slender wing
hmm. so I think I tracked down the issue testing your suggestion
if I hard set default_player_entity_id, it doesn't work.
if I hard set the target:entity_id in the 'send media', it does
and I think it's because in mass_player_entity_id, for some reason the chunk of code I copied from musicassistant has the default_player_entity_id being passed as an array?
lemme see if this works
and it does!
sounds like I XY Problem'd myself.