Restart stream on Chromecast after sending voice to it

chris400 · November 20, 2019, 12:33pm

Most of the time my various Google / Nest Home devices are streaming music (GPM, YTM) or radio (TuneIn).
I started playing around with gtts and it’s really promising.

Currently I’m a bit stucked:
While streaming to a Google Home I want to use it as a audio sink to play some text. After that text I want to switch back to the stream. How can I achieve this? I did not find any “thing” which represents the previous stream it was playing.

Sonos (which I don’t own) seems to work better.

When sending a notification it stops the musicstream, plays the notification and continues the stream afterwards. The user McMacaber said it only works when stream music, not when stream radio via TuneIn.

yfaway · November 20, 2019, 1:47pm

My understanding is that it is not possible to resume the original stream. I believe the TTS message is considered a new stream. I had to work around this by remembering the previous stream, estimate how long the TTS message will take, and then programmatically play the previous stream.

chris400 · November 20, 2019, 2:07pm

That’s the workaround I was thinking of. How do you get the Info about the previous stream though?!

yfaway · November 20, 2019, 2:19pm

I programmatically play a stream. That’s the how I know which URL it was fed in the first place. Here’s the code that I use.

github.com

yfaway/openhab-rules/blob/master/automation/jsr223/aaa_modules/cast_manager.py

'''
Contains functions that work with Google Chromecasts and Google Home.
@see ChromeCast
'''

import time

from org.slf4j import Logger, LoggerFactory
from core import osgi
from core.jsr223 import scope
from core.rules import rule
from core.triggers import when
from org.eclipse.smarthome.core.items import Metadata
from org.eclipse.smarthome.core.items import MetadataKey
from org.eclipse.smarthome.core.library.items import DimmerItem
from org.joda.time import DateTime

from org.eclipse.smarthome.model.script.actions import Audio
from org.eclipse.smarthome.model.script.actions import Voice

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chris400 · November 20, 2019, 2:29pm

I start the streams via Google Assistant, not openHAB.
You start the streams via openHAB - is that right?

yfaway · November 20, 2019, 2:36pm

Yup. That’s the only way I can track the stream.

chris400 · November 21, 2019, 2:59pm

Does the Chromecast Add-on support broadcasts yet? Maybe that would be an approach

Riza_Aslan · November 22, 2019, 10:46am

I have the same problem. I think i’ll solve that for me a littlebit different. I have many Google Home devices which are notifying me about different events. I’ll use the “idling” channel, so that I can check if the chromecast device is idle, and if yes, it will play the sound on that device. If not, the rule will check if the next device is free and so on.

I know…it is not the best solution, but at least better then starting the stream everytime again and again after every notification.

chris400 · November 22, 2019, 11:13am

That’s my next approach/workaround.
Would you mind sharing your rule?

Riza_Aslan · November 27, 2019, 8:25am

Sorry…it was just an idea for now. I haven’t even started to write that rule. I have some other issues which have to be fixed first. But I would love to see your work, if you have already started.

MDAR · November 27, 2019, 11:52am

Hi

I can’t get the following to work if my Chromecast is playing a TuneIN station, becuase the URL is not TuneIN.

But this might be a starting point for further development

chris400 · November 27, 2019, 2:29pm

I’ve found the feature request an github for it: https://github.com/openhab/openhab-addons/issues/2675

sirpreis · December 10, 2020, 11:22am

Any news on this? I’d also like to be able to resume my TuneIn streaming after sending notifications through a Chromecast speaker.