Bluesound

The Bluesound integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] allows you to control your Bluesound and other BluOS players from Home Assistant.

Use cases

• Control your players from your Home Assistant dashboards, next to the rest of your home.
• Group players in different rooms, so the same music plays throughout your home.
• Start a BluOS preset or the sleep timer from an automation.
• Use the playback, volume, and source of a player in your automations.

Supported devices

The integration supports players that run BluOS:

• Bluesound wireless speakers, such as the PULSE and the PULSE FLEX
• Bluesound streamers and amplifiers, such as the NODE, the POWERNODE, and the VAULT
• Players from other brands that run BluOS

Configuration

To add the Bluesound device to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Bluesound can be auto-discovered by Home Assistant. If an instance was found, it will be shown as Discovered. You can then set it up right away.

Home Assistant discovers your players automatically. If a player is not discovered, add it manually with these fields:

Supported functionality

The integration creates one device for each player, with the following entities.

Media player

The media player entity has the name of your player. With it, you can:

• See what is playing: the title, artist, album, cover art, and the position in the track
• Play, pause, and stop playback
• Skip to the next or previous track
• Seek within a track, when the current stream allows it
• Turn shuffle on or off
• Change the volume and mute the player
• Select a source: the presets and inputs of your player
• Play media and browse the audio sources of Home Assistant, such as Radio Browser or your local media
• Group players with the Join media players and Unjoin media player actions
• Clear the play queue

Buttons

These are the available button entities:

• button.speaker_name_set_sleep_timer: Setting a sleep timer.
• button.speaker_name_clear_sleep_timer: Clearing the sleep timer.

Replace speaker_name with the name of your speaker.

Button button.speaker_name_set_sleep_timer

Sets a sleep timer that stops playback when it runs out. Each press moves the timer to the next step: 15, 30, 45, 60, and 90 minutes. Pressing it again at 90 minutes removes the timer.

If a timer is already running, a press moves it up to the next step. For example, with 13 minutes left, the timer is set to 15 minutes.

Button button.speaker_name_clear_sleep_timer

Clear the sleep timer on a speaker, if one is set.

Bluesound automation examples

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Automation: Stop the music when everyone leaves home

When the last person leaves home, this automation stops the music on your players. Select all your players as the target.

• Trigger: Zone occupancy cleared
  • Zone: Home (zone.home)
• Action: Stop media
  • Target: Living room (media_player.living_room) and Kitchen (media_player.kitchen)

alias: "Stop the music when everyone leaves home"
triggers:
  - trigger: zone.occupancy_cleared
    options:
      zone: zone.home
actions:
  - action: media_player.media_stop
    target:
      entity_id:
        - media_player.living_room
        - media_player.kitchen

Automation: Start a preset in the morning

Every morning at 7:00, this automation sets the volume of the kitchen player and starts one of its BluOS presets. Presets appear as sources of the player, so you select them by their name in BluOS.

• Trigger: Time, at 07:00
• Actions:
  • Set media player volume
    • Target: Kitchen (media_player.kitchen)
    • Level: 0.2
  • Select media player source
    • Target: Kitchen (media_player.kitchen)
    • Source: The name of your preset, for example Morning radio

alias: "Start a preset in the morning"
triggers:
  - trigger: time
    at: "07:00:00"
actions:
  - action: media_player.volume_set
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.kitchen
    data:
      volume_level: 0.2
  - action: media_player.select_source
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.kitchen
    data:
      source: "Morning radio"

Automation: Reset the volume when the TV turns on

If your TV plays its sound through a Bluesound player, the volume might still be loud from the last time you played music. When the TV turns on, this automation sets the player to a comfortable volume.

• Trigger: Media player turned on
  • Target: Living room TV (media_player.living_room_tv)
• Action: Set media player volume
  • Target: Living room (media_player.living_room)
  • Level: 0.3

alias: "Reset the volume when the TV turns on"
triggers:
  - trigger: media_player.turned_on
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
actions:
  - action: media_player.volume_set
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.living_room
    data:
      volume_level: 0.3

Data updates

The integration asks each player for changes, and the player answers as soon as something changes. This way, changes to playback, volume, and groups show in Home Assistant almost immediately. The integration pollsData polling is the process of querying a device or service at regular intervals to check for updates or retrieve data. By defining a custom polling interval, you can control how frequently your system checks for new data, which can help optimize performance and reduce unnecessary network traffic. [Learn more] the presets and inputs of each player every 15 minutes.

If a player can’t be reached, the integration marks it as unavailable and tries again every 3 minutes.

Known limitations

• The integration only connects to players over IPv4. When you add a player manually, use its IPv4 address. A player that is discovered with only an IPv6 address is not offered for setup.
• When a player is part of a group and is not the leader, it shows as idle and does not show what is playing. It only offers volume, mute, and grouping controls. To see what is playing and to control playback, use the group leader instead.
• While a player indexes its music library, the playback controls and source selection are not available.
• When the volume of a player is fixed in BluOS, the volume controls are not available.
• The media browser shows the audio sources of Home Assistant, not the music library or streaming services of BluOS.

Troubleshooting

Symptom: The player is not discovered

Description

Home Assistant finds players with mDNS. If mDNS does not reach Home Assistant, for example because the player is on a different network or VLAN, the player is not discovered.

Resolution

1. Make sure mDNS traffic from the player reaches Home Assistant. For example, put both on the same network, or turn on the mDNS proxy or reflector of your router to forward mDNS between your networks.
2. If that is not possible, add the player manually with its IP address.

Symptom: “Failed to connect” or the player is unavailable

Description

Home Assistant can’t reach the player on its IP address and port. This happens when the player has no power or has lost its network connection, has changed its IP address, or port 11000 is blocked between Home Assistant and the player.

Resolution

1. Make sure the player is plugged in and connected to your network.
2. If you added the player manually, check that its IP address has not changed. Give the player a fixed IP address in your router, so that its address stays the same.
3. Make sure port 11000 on the player is reachable from Home Assistant.

Removing the integration

This integration follows standard integration removal. No extra steps are required.

To remove an integration instance from Home Assistant

1. Go to Settings > Devices & services and select the integration card.
2. Next to the entry you want to remove, select the three dots menu. Then, select Delete.
   • Depending on the integration, the entries are listed under one of the following headings:
     • Devices
     • Hubs
     • Services
     • Integration entries
3. To confirm, select Delete.
   • Home Assistant also deletes the devices and entities of the entry.
4. If Home Assistant asks you to restart, restart Home Assistant.
5. If Home Assistant asks whether to also delete the application credentials, select Remove or Keep.
   • If you keep them, Home Assistant uses them automatically when you add the integration again.
   • To delete them later, refer to Deleting application credentials.