Are there any plans to add the hub gateway into home assistant to expose the speaker entity?
2 Likes
That is a great idea and should be possible via matter.
2 Likes
As far as I can tell it’s not supported yet, but I feel it would be a benefit for aqara and home assistant if it could be implemented as then you have a decent hub for a bunch of devices, and a speaker that’s easily used for home notifications.
1 Like
You’re right. You can’t play audio streams on the M3 Hub.
I’m not sure about the M3 Hub, but with the Camera Hub G5 Pro, you can store up to five custom audio files in MP3 format in the hub’s settings. I think I remember the M3 having this option too. Upload a file or record something there.
Then go to
Automation > Scene > Add Scene > Add Action
select the hub and then select “Play custom audio”.
You can then share the scene with Home Assistant under
Profile > Connect to Ecosystem > Home Assistant (or Matter) > Scene and Signal Sync > Scene Sync
1 Like
That worked for the hub M3 however it’s a lot of steps and a lot of additional planning required for automations.
If they could add the speaker as an exposed entity then you could use LLMs output from home assistant to provide feedback to the house over just pre recorded messages.
I’m not saying the current way is bad, it’s a good first step and a nice way for just hub users but exposing the speaker would enable home assistant to expand on it’s capabilities without any additional resources on the hub being used up.
1 Like
I absolutely agree with the idea of being able to stream audio, as with the HomePod. I use it exactly as you described. It’s a great feature, and you can also use object recognition with cameras and convert it into an audio stream. That would never work with MP3 uploads.