Phone audio as source

[Dejv311]

I would really appreciate being able to connect my phone/pc to home assistant like a source (not over spotify/miracast, but like a bluetooth speaker).

The idea is, that there is no easy way to stream local phone music/pc game sounds/smart tv audio to HA, thus all the products need a separate playback system.

Please vote, if this is something you would like to see too...

[erkr]

Thanks for your request

[Torrax]

I really like this idea. Would it be possible to implement a music provider that sources from a local soundcard on the running system? I have an external bluetooth receiver with a button so people can quickly connect. It would be awesome to stream that audio though a sound card to the music assistant.

This would also allow us to connect things like projectors to your outdoor speakers, turn your home speakers into a PA system for events. Play from a record player to different zones all around your house. I think there are a bunch of great opportunities here. I'm going to try to take a shot at it myself but might need to pick some brains.

[OzGav]

Saw your Discord post as well. There has also been related discussion here https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/1169#discussioncomment-5793412

[arretx]

This can be done, but it requires a few things. You can use two of the Dante AVIO adapters to accomplish this goal. They have a Bluetooth receiver that you connect your mobile device to, and then it connects to your network switch. Then, you use a Dante Analog output to send that network based audio to an analog amplifier, like a whole house audio amplifier. Use Music Assistant to select the media player (for example, the Monoprice 6-channel amp creates 6 media players) and then adjust the source for that media-player to be the analog input that the Dante AVIO analog is connected to. Voila! You have networked audio. And, with Dante Virtual Sound Card, any of your computers (hard-wired ethernet) can transmit audio to the Dante network which the AVIO can convert to analog.

[OzGav]

The docs describe a way to stream to MA https://music-assistant.io/faq/stream-to/

[Hedda]

FYI, for reference, I have previously used the open-source ”Vinyl Cast” app on an Android phone/tablet with a USB Audio Device adapter (Behringer UCA202) for casting analog input from a vinyl record player / LP turntable to Chromecast Audio dongle using Google Cast but it has been very buggy.

https://vinylcast.schober.tech/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tech.schober.vinylcast.playstore

https://github.com/aschober/vinyl-cast

https://youtu.be/HBDkxEvCcHQ

PS: The initial release of the Vinyl Cast app also included using Audio ACR to detect the song being played, but unfortunately this feature relied on was discontinued in third-party library/service so the feature was removed.

[JHarding86]

This would be a very welcome addition in my household.

I could see this happening in a one of two ways.

1. Bluetooth music provider (Preffered method)

Create a bluetooth music provider that allows me to connect my phone / tablet / whatever via Bluetooth to the Music Assistant server. Then route this music to the player provider that I have chosen within Music Assistant.

2. Emulate a Chromecast / Airplay receiver

Create a music provider that emulates a Chromecast. Then from the device of my choosing I could cast my devices audio to the Music Assistant server which would the route the music to the player provider I have chosen within Music Assistant.

[N8schatten]

Yes, the Bluetooth method would also suit me very much

[djgenesis]

I am also interested in something like this. Pass audio from my phone to HA either via BT or do a Chromecast emulation.

[Rafael-Amonal]

I am more interested in the Chromecast or AirPlay emulator. Since my wife and I share a Bluetooth speaker for the shower, I use it for playing YouTube videos and she uses it for listening to music and connecting and disconnecting our phone is a pain. I'd prefer to transform the Bluetooth speaker into a home assistant media player and cast the audio to it.

[raphaeldelio]

By implementing bluetooth as an input source, we can also easily use any output source as a speaker for Alexa.

This would allow Homepods and Apple TVs to be used as an output source for Alexa.

[DanielKinsman]

I managed to get this working on a standalone sendspin server (outside of music assistant) with a small change to sendspin-cli and some pipewire magic.

I don't know if it will play well with music assistant also running at the same time, reading the spec it would seem multiple servers aren't handled all that well.

[Hedda]

I managed to get this working on a standalone sendspin server (outside of music assistant) with Sendspin/sendspin-cli#102 and some pipewire magic. I don't know if it will play well with music assistant also running at the same time, reading the spec it would seem multiple servers aren't handled all that well.

Sendspin specification developers have previously written that they have no plans to add support for multiple servers and that they instead plan to add a new source/sender role to Sendspin client-side, so you can have a single server and yet allow each client to also act a source too.

FYI; someone submitted a draft pull request which would add support for such a source/sender role to Sendspin-clients here:

• Add source@v1 role for audio input devices Sendspin/spec#52

For reference; there is also a direcly related discussion here about how support for audio input could be added to the Sendspin protocol spec:

• [QUESTION] Possible solutions for use case where embedded hardware can also have physical Line-Level Audio input and act as a Resonate audio stream source? Sendspin/spec#14