Album Art & Home Assistant

SharpTools.io (web)
1

I’ve started my journey from Smartthings to Home Assistant and I’ve currently transferred over web capabilities of Evohome Heating and Google Cast capabilities.

With respect to Google Cast the Album Art tile displays the Artist and Song but this does not translate into Album Art being displayed.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a known current limitation ?

2

Can you share some screenshots of the device details as reported in SharpTools? I’m curious what capabilities and attributes it’s reporting.

  1. Open your SharpTools.io User Page
  2. Tap the ... next to the location in question
  3. Scroll down and tap on the device
3

So polite in not saying I’d done something wrong :smile:

Thanks !

4

LOL. That’s yet to be decided! :grin:

All kidding aside, I haven’t tried a Google Cast device from Home Assistant recently, so I can’t recall what attributes and capabilities it reports. We had to make some adjustments for another device which was only reporting that it supported album art while music was playing. So if that device was synced over while music was playing, all was good… otherwise album art wouldn’t work if the device was synced over while music was stopped.

Some of the Home Assistant integrations are a bit quirky about how they report attributes and supported features.

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5

@josh I was hoping I wasn’t going to need to come back…but…

SET UP 1
Smartthings

  1. Smartthings
  2. Cast-Web-Api running on RP4
  3. Sharp Tools - Rule to force cycle between Cast-Web-Api and Smartthings every 15 seconds
  4. Sharp Tools Dashboard Album Art and Media Playback
  • Both tiles populated correctly (within 15 seconds based on forced recycle) with Album Art, Next Buttons, Pause/Play, Track, Artist and Media Source (Spotify)

SET UP 2
Home Assistant

  1. Home Assistant
  2. Google Cast integration
  3. Sharp Tools Dashboard Album Art and Media Playback
  • Initially both tiles initially populated with Album Art, Pause/Play, Track, Artist
  • No Next Buttons, Media Source (Spotify)
  • When playing a continuous Album for the second song no Album Art or Artist is displayed
  • When playing a playlist for the second song the Album Art, Pause/Play, Track, Artist is displayed

EDIT Home Assistant Dashboard continues to show the second track Art and Artist on it’s internal Dashboard Tile.

So my questions are…

  • Am I doing something stupid ?
  • Is this a known issue ?
  • Is there a config fix ?
  • Is there anything else you want me to provide (with easy instructions…) ?
6

Bit of further digging.

Finding 1
The Services / Triggers shown between HA and SharpTools are different. I don’t know whether this is because the internal and externally exposed Triggers in HA are different or something limiting Triggers in Sharptools.

HA Services

HA Media Services 2
HA Media Services 21161×556 111 KB

Smarthings Services

ST Media Services
ST Media Services3000×2000 185 KB

7

Can you clarify how you are casting an album or from what source?

I just tried “Hey Google, Play Rock Music” and I have the ability to skip tracks and the album art updates with each new track (although each one is a new artist/album for the playlist I’m using):

image

Edit: I noticed that if I sync the devices over while my Google Speaker isn’t playing anything, the track control capability doesn’t get synced over. I’ll take a look at what features the Google Cast integration is reporting and if we can infer it somehow or if we just need to hardcode it.

10

Thanks for the update Josh.

I ask Google Mini and the default speakers is a ChromeCast Audio playing Spotify. The Chrome Cast Audio is the device I have in the Dashboard.

As discussed this is definitely a HA issue with Google Cast info Sharptools.

I also have the HA Spotify direct Integration which exposes Prev/Next track to Sharptools. Album Art is still a bit hit and miss though…

11

@josh I have been familiarizing with HA and integration the AppleTV HomePods. First off, really impressed with the SharpTools support. :slight_smile:

However, it looks like the volume_level in the media_player is not handled correctly and will not display. It is a float with range 0…1 so SharpTools is just rounding to zero.

volume_level: 0.22
media_content_type: music
media_duration: 150
media_position: 0
media_position_updated_at: "2024-06-02T11:27:49.049916+00:00"
media_title: Going Places
media_artist: Travis Denning
media_album_name: Roads That Go Nowhere
app_id: com.apple.Music
app_name: AirMusic
entity_picture: >-
  /api/media_player_proxy/media_player.guest_bedroom_homepod?token=e9134d&cache=https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music116/v4/e8/ed/39/e8144b/24UG2.rgb.jpg/{w}x{h}{c}.{f}
friendly_name: Guest Bedroom HomePod
supported_features: 448439

image
image738×462 36.1 KB

12

I just pushed an update which should resolve this. You may need to reauthorize your devices from the SharpTools HASS Add-on to sync over the updated data.

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13

Awesome. Looks good. Thank you for the quick turn.

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