TTS Bluetooth Speaker for Home Assistant

This project provides a media player (custom component) for Home Assistant that plays TTS (text-to-speech) via a Bluetooth speaker.

If you're using HA's Bluetooth device tracker (for presence detection), this project also provides a replacement Bluetooth tracker that allows both components to play nciely together.

Since the Bluetooth tracker constantly scans for devices, playback of audio on the Bluetooth speaker may be disrupted / become choppy while scanning. These custom components work together to ensure only one of them is accessing Bluetooth at any givem time.

The flow is something like this:

• Bluetooth tracker component continually scans for devices (presence detection)
• TTS service gets called to play something on the Bluetooth speaker
• TTS Bluetooth speaker component disables Bluetooth tracker component
• Bluetooth tracker component terminates any running Bluetooth scans
• TTS Bluetooth speaker component plays the TTS MP3 file
• TTS Bluetooth speaker component enables Bluetooth tracker component
• Bluetooth tracker component continues scanning for devices (presence detection)

Getting Started

1) Install Pulse Audio (with Bluetooth support), MPlayer and SoX (with MP3 support)

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth bluez mplayer sox libsox-fmt-mp3

2) Add HA user to 'pulse-access' group

The example assumes that HA runs under the 'pi' account, so make sure you add the appropriate user in your case.

sudo adduser pi pulse-access

3) Add Bluetooth discovery to Pulse Audio

In /etc/pulse/system.pa, add the following to the bottom of the file:

### Bluetooth Support
.ifexists module-bluetooth-discover.so
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
.endif

4) Create a service to run Pulse Audio at startup

Create the file /etc/systemd/system/pulseaudio.service and add the following to it:

[Unit]
Description=Pulse Audio

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --disallow-exit --disable-shm --exit-idle-time=-1

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable the service to start at boot time.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable pulseaudio.service

5) Create a script to pair the Bluetooth speaker at startup

This step assumes you have already trusted and paired your Bluetooth speaker (using bluetoothctl). That utility will also display the Bluetooth address for your speaker.

Create the file [PATH_TO_YOUR_HOME_ASSSISTANT]/scripts/pair_bluetooth.sh and add the following to it. Make sure to replace the Bluetooth address with that of your Bluetooth speaker.

#!/bin/bash

bluetoothctl << EOF
connect 00:2F:AD:12:0D:42
EOF

Make sure to grant execute permissions for the script.

chmod a+x [PATH_TO_YOUR_HOME_ASSSISTANT]/scripts/pair_bluetooth.sh

In /etc/rc.local, add the following to the end of the file to run the script at startup:

# Pair Bluetooth devices
[PATH_TO_YOUR_HOME_ASSSISTANT]/scripts/pair_bluetooth.sh

exit 0

6) Add the TTS Bluetooth Speaker to HA

Copy the TTS Bluetooth Speaker component (from this GitHub repo) and save it to your Home Assistant config directory.

custom_components/media_player/tts_bluetooth_speaker.py

7) Optional - Add the (new) Bluetooth Tracker to HA

This step only applies if you're using the Bluetooth tracker.

Copy the Bluetooth Tracker component and save it to your Home Assistant config directory.

custom_components/device_tracker/bluetooth_tracker.py

8) Start using it in HA

By this stage (after a reboot), you should be able to start using the TTS Bluetooth speaker in HA.

Below is an example of how the component is configured. You need to specify the Bluetooth address of your speaker, and optionally set the volume level (must be between 0 and 1). If you find your speaker is not playing the first part of the audio (i.e. first second is missing when played back), then you can optionally add some silence before and/or after the original TTS audio hsing the pre_silence_duration and post_silence_duration options (must be between 0 and 60 seconds). If you've change your TTS cache directory (in your TTS config), then you should set the cache_dir here to match.

media_player:
  - platform: tts_bluetooth_speaker
    address: [BLUETOOTH_ADDRESS]   # Required - for example, 00:2F:AD:12:0D:42
    volume: 0.45                   # Optional - default is 0.5
#    pre_silence_duration: 1       # Optional - No. of seconds silence before the TTS (default is 0)
#    post_silence_duration: 0.5    # Optional - No. of seconds silence after the TTS (default is 0)
#    cache_dir: /tmp/tts           # Optional - make sure it matches the same setting in TTS config

If you're using the Bluetooth tracker, you probably already have this in your config:

device_tracker:
  - platform: bluetooth_tracker

To test that it's all working, you can use Developer Tools > Services in the HA frontend to play a TTS message through your Bluetooth speaker:

Another way to test it is to add an automation that plays a TTS message whenever HA is started:

automation: 
  - alias: Home Assistant Start
    trigger:
      platform: homeassistant
      event: start
    action:
      - delay: '00:00:10'
      - service: tts.google_say
        data:
          entity_id: media_player.tts_bluetooth_speaker
          message: 'Home Assistant has started'