The addition of Chromecast to my setup has opened up even more automation opportunities. In particular, to improve the movie watching and media consumption experience.
These automations add a nice touch to your home cinema, allowing automatic light dimming based on Chromecast’s current state.
Refer to the Google Cast documentation on Home Assistant’s website to setup your Chromecast with Home Assistant.
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Check what entity id is assigned to it by opening the known_devices.yaml file after a server restart.
The following automation use the state component to trigger automations based on the state of the chromecast. Your chromecast can be in 3 states: idle, playing,paused and we can write automations that take advantage of these states.
- alias: Media player paused
trigger:
- platform: state
# entity_id: media_player.plex_web_chrome
entity_id: media_player.tv
to: 'paused'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{states.media_player.tv.attributes.media_content_type != 'music' }}"
action:
service: light.turn_on
entity_id: light.living_room_table_lamp
- alias: Media player idle
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: media_player.tv
to: 'idle'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{states.media_player.tv.attributes.media_content_type != 'music' }}"
action:
service: light.turn_on
entity_id: light.living_room_table_lamp
- alias: Media player playing
trigger:
platform: state
entity_id: media_player.tv
to: 'playing'
for:
seconds: 5
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{states.media_player.tv.attributes.media_content_type != 'music' }}"
action:
- service: media_player.turn_off
entity_id: media_player.soundtouch
- service: light.turn_off
entity_id: light.living_room_table_lampMY MISSION
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These automations turn a lamp on and off depending on Chromecasts playing state. The lamp is a placeholder as I am working on a LED controller for common anode RGB LED strips to replace the cheap remote control controller that came with my RGB LED strip.
I added a condition to my autmations using the condition template component, because I realised my actions would execute not only for movies and youtube videos (‘video’ content type) but also when casting music through Spotify. The conditions stop these automations from happening when casting music.
Feel free to adapt to your needs, I thought I should include it in case you find it useful.