Device Configuration Options
Device configuration options can be accessed from the Home Assistant UI SoundTouchPlus Integration Details page (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 - Home Assistant UI Integration Page
Click the ADD DEVICE button to manually add a new SoundTouch device using the Add Device Form.
Click the CONFIGURE button to access the Device Options Form for each device.
Configuration options are device specific, so you will need to add / configure each device separately.
The SoundTouchPlus Add Device Form (Figure 2) allows you to configure a new SoundTouch device. All fields are required; adjust the settings to your taste. Click the Submit button once you are finished to submit your changes, or the X button at the top right to cancel without saving.
Figure 2 - Add Device Form
The following fields are available for this form:
Enter the IPv4 Address of the SoundTouch device, which can be either a "decimal dot" address format (e.g. 192.168.1.130, etc) or a dns alias (e.g. "bosesoundbarbedroom.mynetwork.com").
It is recommended that you assign static IP addresses to all of your SoundTouch devices prior to adding them to the integration. This avoids the issue of a changing IP address, which will force you to reconfigure the device again when your routers' DHCP server assigns it a different address. Static IP address assignment is usually done in your router settings, and involves knowing the IP address that you want to assign as well as the MAC address of the SoundTouch device. Consult your router documentation for more details on how to assign a static IP address.
Enter the port number that the SoundTouch WebServices API server listens on for requests. This is normally hard-coded by the manufacturer, and is usually 8090.
Enter the port number that the SoundTouch WebSocket API server uses to communicate device status to interested parties. This is hard-coded by the manufacturer, and is usually 8080. You can also specify a value of zero (0) to disable websocket support.
Enabling websocket support (with a value of 8080) is more efficient, as the device will send status updates to the integration when something changes (e.g. volume level, now playing media content status, preset updates, and many more).
Disabling websocket support (with a value of 0) is inefficient, as it causes the integration to manually poll the device every 10 seconds for ALL status updates.
Enter the ping interval (in seconds) used to keep the websocket connection alive, or a value of zero to disable ping intervals. If enabled (e.g. not zero), the value must be in the range of 30 (seconds) to 3600 (60 minutes). It is recommended that you disable websocket pings, unless you have network issues that require it.
The SoundTouchPlus Device Options Form (Figure 3) allows you to customize various aspects of the integration. Adjust the settings to your taste. Click the Save button once you are finished to save your changes, or the X button at the top right to cancel without saving.
Figure 3 - SoundTouchPlus Device Options Form
The following fields are available for this form:
This multi-select listbox manages the source list that will be displayed in the HA UI for media players that support source selection. Check all sources that you would like to display in the list. Note that excluding an entry from the list does not disable any functionality for that source; it simply prevents the entry from showing up in the media player source list.
If no selections are made, then ALL available sources will be displayed by default.
A note about source selection from the media player UI ... for sources that require a station or location (e.g. PANDORA, SPOTIFY, TUNEIN, etc), a lookup is performed on the recent stations activity to retrieve the last station that was played on that source. Note that the source WILL NOT BE SWITCHED if there are no recently played items for that source. Regarding source that do not require a station or location (e.g. BLUETOOTH, AUX, etc), the source is switched immediately.
Figure 3a - Source List Selection
This entity selector listbox allows you to select the SpotifyPlus integration media player that will be used to retrieve data from it's associated Spotify user account for play on your SoundTouch device.
The selection can be left blank if you do not utilize the Spotify music service.
The SpotifyPlus integration must be installed and configured prior to changing this option, otherwise the list will be empty.
For more information about how this setting is used, please refer to the Spotify Content section of the Media Library Browser wiki document.
Figure 3b - SpotifyPlus Integration Selection
This integer specifies the maximum number of items to store in the recently played list cache; older items are automatically removed from the cache once the maximum number of items has been reached. A value of 1 is assigned if the value is less than 1.
For more information about recently played list cache, please refer to the Get Recent List Cache documentation.
This boolean selector switch allows you to force all TTS announcements to use the Google Translate service when converting a text message to a playable announcement. If set to False, the specified TTS service (e.g. Google Cloud, Amazon poly, etc) is used to convert the text.
The current device volume level is used when playing the announcement. If you wish to increase the volume prior to the announcement, use the media_player.set_volume service call prior to calling the tts service.
This functionality was provided because the SoundTouch device could not play the MP3 file generated by some TTS services due to bitrate limitations. These includes tts.speak, tts.cloud_say, etc.
The SoundTouchPlus Play TTS service is used to play the TTS message in the selected language. This service in turn calls the SoundTouch device play_info service, which supports the following file formats and bit rates:
- MP3: 8 kbit/s ~ 320 kbit/s
- AAC: 24 kbit/s ~ 128 kbit/s
- HE-AAC: 48 kbit/s ~ 64 kbit/s
- WMA: 8 kbit/s ~ 329 kbit/s
- Vorbis: 32 kbit/S ~ 500 kbit/s
- FLAC: VBR: 0bit/s ~ 1.4 Mbit/s, up to CD quality (2 channels / 48 kHz / 16 bit)
- ALAC: 300 kbit/s ~ 5 Mbit/s, HD (2 channels / 96 kHz / 32 bit)
If the TTS service you are using does not generate a file format for one of the above, then you will need to force TTS messages to use Google Translate.
The following limitations should be expected when forcing Google Translate.
- converted TTS sound files are not cached; a real-time TTS conversion is performed each time.
- some language codes are not supported; the
Irish (Ireland)for one - I am sure there are others, as I have not check every one. - some extended options will not work, as Google Translate does not support them (e.g. specific voices, male vs female voice, volume, etc).
Figure 3c - Force TTS Google Translate Option
