Home Assistant Bluetooth Speaker

The goal of this tutorial is to pair arbitrary bluetooth speaker and use with and the standard output for Home Assistant (HASSO)

Used installation:

• Proxmox
• Home Assitant (Supervisioned version) (I've being using currently Home Assistant 2023.6.3 -> Supervisor 2023.06.4 -> Operating System 10.3)
• any bluetooth spearker without auto-shutdown funciton when inactive (not playing for a longer time). Iv'e used Xiaomi Mi Compact Bluetooth Speaker 2
• https://mi-home.pl/cdn/shop/products/2591_micompactbluetoothspeaker2-640px-hero_5b1911e4-9fdb-489b-b76e-d159d0e9ba1f.png?v=1679760040&width=1440

I. Connection:

1. Identify your BT speaker's BT MAC Address & BT Name
2. Make sure that Proxmox - HA VM as Audio device added (for example: device=intel-hda, driver=none)
3. Install SSH addon into the HA and configure it
4. Switch off yout BT speaker
5. Loging into the HA using termina: login@IP_Adress
6. Type: bluetoothctl
7. Type: scan on
8. Switch on your BT speaker & enter it into paring mode
9. Check on the console if your BT speaker was detected (by name of MAC adress)
10. Type: pair MAC_ADRESS (for example: pair 00:11:22:33:44:55)
11. Type: trust MAC_ADRESS (for example: trust 00:11:22:33:44:55)
12. Type: connect MAC_ADRESS (for example: connect 00:11:22:33:44:55)
13. (in the case of any problems type help for more info)
14. At this point your BT should be connected to your HA

II. Installing requied add-ons & integrations

1. Goto HA and install Settings -> Add-in VLC Local a. Goto VLC Local -> Configuration b. Set the Telnet Password and Http Password (you can use the default mypasswrd as well) c. change the Audio-Output to the correspinding BT Name
2. Go back ot VLC-Local Info tab and enable Auto-Start
3. Go to HA Settings -> Devices & Services (Integrations) and Add New Integration
4. Search for VLC LAN select it and pick-up Local VLC Media player via Telnet
5. Enter the password Telnet Password and click Submit

III. Testing

1. Go to Developers Tools and Services and enter followings : a. Service: Media player: Play media c. Target: Search for VLC and select your one c. Content type: music d. Content ID: /local/your.mp3 (files your.mp3 should be located at the local/www/ folder of your HA installation) e. Press Call-Service