Might now be the right forum, sorry if it isn’t. I’m looking to build a multi room audio compatible with Openhab. It seems it is popular on the forum.
What I want is to be able to send the audio from openhab, from a bluetooth, chromecast, wifidirect or direct (from 3.5mm or speaker out) and send it in specifics room. Like one room listen to bluetooth, another radio, and have openhab send broadcast / direct notification to these rooms.
This is not how OH works. OH can interact with devices (say amplifiers), but OH2 does not direct audio streams directly. You will need to connect to a system that handles audio streams, Squeezebox is one of them, chromecast is another one. You can then set station, volume, favorites and the like, but only within this system. Multiroom works also well with squeezebox for example, but not with the tech mix you are looking at. You likely have to settle on one system. While OH can control many (not all) of the technology you mentioned, to mix and match the audio streams going through those technology is not something that OH2 can do.
I might have badly express myself, language barrier sorry. I don’t want openhab to stream the audio. Like you said, I want openhab to be able to use that system. A bit like I do right now with my tv and audio system, I can through openhab open/close them but also change channel, volume and such. But it’s not multiroom, it’s just a home theater.
I’ll check squeeze box. I really don’t know anything on multiroom, all I know if put speaker in multiple room and put a switch box, but these aren’t very good for homeautomation and such since it’s physical.
I use squeezebox. and i have audio in my bathroom , study and main bedroom.
Bathroom and master bedroom run of of one pi.(have my stereo split using 2 relays.)
so that i can have ether the room or bathroom . or both. and the study is a separate stream.
so can play music in study and have classics playing in the room and bathroom.
YEs, OH2 can control squeezebox and the players; and you can use the say command to have notifications broadcast. However, it is easiest if the text is static (hard coded). In other words, it is difficult to set it up in a way that you can type in any message you want.
You may also want to look at Alexa from Amazon or similar, Alexa can do multi-room audio too, and notifications, and is very flexible in using voice commands. You can also control Alexa’s from OH2.
Good to know squeeze box can be use. It will be for static stuff so no problem. For exemple, I’ve connected it to my alarm system and I want it to broadcast “FIRE PLEASE EVACUATE” in loop, or “the dryer has finish, please empty and fold” (yeah my wfie’s gonna kill me).
I’ve check on Amazon but I’m already connected to the Google system (without any google home speaker) and I want something offline, and Squeezebox seems to be the answer to that.
Hmmm… when I google squeezebox, it return me the logitech squeezebox that is discontinued since 2012. I guess it’s not that squeezebox you guys talk about?
That is the squeezebox, we are talking about, there is a binding for it in OH2 and there has been quite a lively open-source community that continued to develop what used to be Logitech Media Server, once logitech stopped its commercialization and turned everything open-source. There are other systems out there, but they are not well or not at all integrated into OH2 (hence no “say” functionality). Check out Volumio.org if you want, but this and most other multi-room audio systems come with a subscription model. squeezebox is free. (and read up the binding info too)
OK, I’m a bit lost. piCoreplayer is an audio player that work through Logitech Server. I see squeezelite as one. I myself already have an emby server for movies and music. does piCore and max2play use something else then logitech server? Do I need the squeezebox hardware to run the server?
you may need to read up a little more on all of that. This is server-based audio system, which means you need a server (logitech media server) and then connect that with suitable players (squeezelite normally that comes from mx2play, picoreplayer, and others). Just google around and read a little more on all of that.
In question of squeezebox: there is a freeware called squeezelite which emulates a squeezebox.
I’m using squeezelite in combination with an eight channel soundcard (four instances, four stereo amps behind the soundcard)
squeezebox-server is the center to create playlists, get internet streams and so on.
There are some diy boxes which also use squeezelite as software.
squeezelite is alsa only, but there is also a version which is compatible to pulse audio (not packaged for apt yet)
As an alternative, you can also use mpd (there is a brand new binding for mpd). When using pulse audio, it’s possible to control input and output via pulse addon. But it will be a huge amount of work to build a complete set of inputs, outputs and everything…
It’s even possible to create bluetooth in and out (via pulse audio and icecast server…
to build a complete set of inputs, outputs and everything…