Home Assistant Podcast Appearance
It’s been a minute since I’ve updated my site. I figure it’s a great time to add in some things I’ve been up to.
Back in September 2023 Phil and Rohan from the Home Assistant Podcast had me on as a guest for episode 118. This started off with a competition to send in your coolest automation for the Home Assistant Podcast birthday. I sent in mine and got runner up! It was great to be on the podcast, and wonderful to meet Phil and Rohan.
The Submission
The submission revolved around automatically displaying a Unifi camera I have mounted in my twins room. When nap time starts I wanted to have that RTSP stream show up on on the TV downstairs in the living room. This has gone through some iterations since my discussion on the podcast. But the latest iteration looks like so:
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- alias: Show Nursery Camera on TV automatically
id: nursery_show_camera_automatically
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: input_boolean.nap_mode
to: "on"
condition:
not:
- condition: state
entity_id: media_player.apple_tv_living_room
state: "playing"
action:
- service: homeassistant.turn_on
entity_id: remote.apple_tv_living_room
- service: remote.send_command
target:
entity_id: remote.apple_tv_living_room
data:
command: "wakeup"
- delay:
seconds: 30
- event: homekit_faux_camera_event
- delay:
seconds: 5
- service: remote.send_command
target:
entity_id: remote.apple_tv_living_room
data:
command: "home"
This fakes an input into HomeKit to display a linked camera1 This forces the camera feed to pop up on the AppleTV display, and with some some brittle (but fingers cross Apple doesn’t break this on me) timing events to use the AppleTV Remote input to force it to go full screen.
Previous Version
Before I picked up an AppleTV an old MiBox S was running the show. It would used the Android debugger tool adb to send the commands. This would power on the system, set the set the RTSP stream directly. More direct and straightforward than the AppleTVs timing method. Hopefully Apple will allow a direct RTSP stream one day for less brittle timing in the future. It looked like so:
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- alias: Toggle TV Monitor
trigger:
platform: state
entity_id: input_boolean.nap_mode
condition:
- condition: time
after: "08:00:00"
action:
- wait_template: "{{ not is_state('media_player.living_room_mi_box_s', 'unavailable') }}"
continue_on_timeout: false
timeout: "00:20:00"
- choose:
# Turning nap on
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.nap_mode
state: "on"
sequence:
- choose:
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id: media_player.living_room_mi_box_s
state: "off"
sequence:
- service: androidtv.adb_command
data:
entity_id: media_player.living_room_mi_box_s
command: "POWER"
- service: androidtv.adb_command
data:
entity_id: media_player.living_room_mi_box_s
command: !secret baby_cam_adb_command
- service: androidtv.adb_command
data:
entity_id: media_player.living_room_mi_box_s
command: "adb shell media volume --set 0"
default:
- service: androidtv.adb_command
data:
entity_id: media_player.living_room_mi_box_s
command: !secret baby_cam_adb_command
# Turning nap off
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.nap_mode
state: "off"
sequence:
- wait_template: "{{ not is_state('media_player.living_room_mi_box_s', 'unavailable') }}"
continue_on_timeout: false
timeout: "00:20:00"
- choose:
- conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ not is_state('media_player.living_room_mi_box_s', 'off') }}"
sequence:
- service: androidtv.adb_command
data:
entity_id: media_player.living_room_mi_box_s
command: "HOME"
- service: androidtv.adb_command
data:
entity_id: media_player.living_room_mi_box_s
command: "POWER"
Video
Here’s the YouTube version of the podcast.