This is pretty simple. I had started using noelportugal's really great node Google Home Notifier but was having some issues with stability.
I decided to write it in a language i know a bit better - python! yay. Python is your friend.
The gist is this:
This is a webservice that has two endpoints:
- /play/ - plays an mp3 on the google home that is in the static folder
- /say/ - uses googles unofficial google translate TTS service to say a notification
This uses flask and you should just be able to install the requirements: pip install -r requirements.txt and then run the webservice python main.py
You will have to edit main.py and change the device_name to one of your google home device's name. If you have more than 1 google home, I would recommend you put all your google homes into a play group and place the play groups name in the device_name variable.
/play/mp3name.mp3
This will play mp3name.mp3 over the google homes. I put two mp3s in the static dir for you to try out: JR.mp3 and doorbell1.mp3. Try them: /play/JR.mp3 or /play/doorbell1.mp3
/say/?text=Oh My God this is awesome
Just pass a GET variable to the /say/ endpoint and the google homes will say your text. It also caches this so that the second time it will be a bit quicker than the first time. yay.
You can also do other languages too:
/say/?text=猿も木から落ちる&lang=ja
I use docker to run it. It works pretty well. I even included some pretty good docker script that will make it easier. Please check that out for more help.
Google homes are just chromecasts! Who knew! You just have to treat them like chromecasts. They show up when you browse for chromecasts via python or any other code library. You can then just send audio their way.
- Break out the google home bits and make it easy to integrate into other projects and not just a webservice
@harper on twitter