Additional Attributes and Services for better Lovelace Cards

[rxritalin]

I originally posted this in Q&A section, but I dont think what I am looking to do is possible yet with MASS, so I am reposting here in the Feature Requests.

Whats already possible
I am pretty much finished or have gone as far as I can go at present with a full screen card.
This UI is intended to be a single player, on a single device and act as the main UI to interface with MASS. Its one of those odd 1920x720 touch displays, incase you are wondering why its so wide.
At present I am using the picture elements card as my base and "mini-media-player" card for most of the interactive elements, as it seems to offer the most flexibility. The layout is obviously based on Volumio's UI with a few changes to make it more touch friendly and easier to read at a distance.

I can obviously already use the core features of a media card;
cover art,
track
title,
album
playtime/runtime
play/pause, next, prev, shuffle and repeat
volume

I have also found a simple enough way to access the HASS media player options for Search, PlayLists, Artist, etc via popups housing an iFrame Card. This works but its not ideal as each pages needs to load in the iFrame each time its accessed. It makes the UI feel a bit clunky but at least it works.
This is about as far as I can push it right now.

New Features Request

1. Missing Services

• Add service.squeezebox.join to MASS so it can utilize the built in speaker grouping feature found in Mini-Media-Card. Or create some
  alternate accessible service to do the same and let us build our own interface.
• Add a service to allow for adding a current track to favorites.
• Add a service to allow for adding current track to a playlist. Not exactly sure how a we could utilize this in the lovelace UI, as it would
  require some sort of secondary popup to list out which playlist to it the tract to.

2. Missing Attributes

• Add an attribute that lists the name of the current playlist. The current attribute of "active_queue" outputs e0:51:d8:10:95:84, which as far
  as I can tell is useless to the end user. If I am wrong please correct me.
• Add an attribute that lists the name of the current service provider (spotify, apple, quobuz)
• Add an attribute that lists the current tracks bitrate
• Add an attribute that lists the current tracks file container (ogg, flac)

3. Missing Features
   Im not sure how this should best be handled, as these are not straight forward services or attributes, I believe they are a mix of the two.

• Add some way of accessing the current playlist.
  (dirty) Make the playlist popup in the MASS UI accessible directly via a URL, so that users can utilize an iFrame card to display and
  interact with the current playlist.
  (clean) Take the same route that "ytube_music_player" takes, which requires the user to create helper "input_selects". One would likely be
  required for each speaker. Once the input select is created with a specific name/syntax, MASS fills in the data.
  https://github.com/KoljaWindeler/ytube_music_player
  Suggested naming structure:
  input_select.mass_speakername_current_playlist,
• Add a "clean" way to browse through, playlists, albums, artists, tracks and stations inside of the lovelace UI. Again, you could take the
  route that "youtube_music_player" did and have the end user create helper input selects, and have MASS fill in the data.
  input_select.mass_playlists
  input_select.mass_albums
  input_select.mass_artists
  input_select.mass_tracks
  input_select.mass_stations.
• Add the ability to search directly from the lovelace UI without jumping through hoops. Being able to use something like "seach_card"
  directly from the lovelace UI would be greate. https://github.com/postlund/search-card
  If its not possible to utilize this card in its current form, perhaps creating one specific to the task.

I would love to be able to end up with something like this to finally finish off this card.

[Paul-Vdp]

If this is what it takes to be able to build the perfect Mass UI, then I'm all for it. And so should everybody ...

[wambs]

This is a really good start!!! Looking forward to using this!!

[marcelveldt]

MA is never playing a playlist but a queue of items. So there is never a single playlist because the tracks on the queue could be originated from everywhere. The best you could probably do is maybe remember the last X entries from the play_media request. So you at least know which albums/playlists/artists are added

[thekiwismarthome]

This is beautiful, how do I get my hands on the yaml? please

[chezpaul]

Did you ever release this anywhere? Looks really nice.

[tylerlucas]

@rxritalin did you get support on your requests? If MASS wants wide adoption then it undoubtedly needs good support from within HA, which is severely lacking right now.

[tylerlucas]

What support is there today? If there is any way to get Music Assistant visibility/control into Home Assistant, it is not clearly documented or, I'd venture to guess, widely known.

Searching Google for "music assistant lovelace home assistant" gives these top results:

1. A link to a bunch of MA feature requests which don't appear to provide solutions - e.g.: this post, and Link
2. A bunch of Reddit threads with people either: (1) asking how to integrate MA into Home Assistant, and; (2) people linking to this GitHub request
3. Links to the MA site, but I'm not seeing any instructions/info on how to actually add it to Home Assistant

TL;DR: If there is a way to add MA into HA, users are not understanding how.

Considering that this particular GitHub request is so widely shared/seen - I'm curious if any support was given to @rxritalin. He's clearly invested in adding support into HA, so it would great to see him get what he needs if/when the team has free cycles. Just my .02!

[OzGav]

So just to summarise support for HA is “severely lacking“ because there isn’t a Lovelace card despite the fact that:

• You can use any of the existing media player card to control the MA players
• MA can play to HA players
• Four actions are available to play, search, make announcements and transfer queues between players
• HA announcements pause and resume the currently playing music
• Voice/Assist control is available
• The MA project worked with HA to include more of the media player actions as voice controllable in core
• We provide examples of how to include all of the other media player actions as custom sentences

Looking forward to your contributions to fill the gaps.

[tylerlucas]

@OzGav @marcelveldt apologies if my initial comment was too harsh. I am a huge fan of what you've built with Music Assistant and am excited about it. I was trying to point out that many users (including myself) do not know how to use Music Assistant from within Home Assistant.

Is there any documentation on how to use MA within HA with existing cards, like the Media Player Card that you mention? Please point me. I've used HA pretty extensively for years, but haven't ever used a Media Player card -- I'm guessing there are others like me out there, hence why people are looking for solutions on Reddit etc.

Getting a custom Lovelace card like @rxritalin was attempting would be great and help adoption. Understood that there aren't resources to work on it right now.

[OzGav]

You don’t need anything clever to use a media player card. Add the card to your config and use the MA media player entity.

If you want to get clever then you could do this https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/954#discussioncomment-10793120

Of course the whole MA UI is available via ingress (HAOS users) or iframe (docker users)

Then there are custom media players cards like

https://github.com/kalkih/mini-media-player
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/maxi-media-player/705007

[tylerlucas]

Awesome, thanks for the suggestions!

[chezpaul]

I think the integration is great. What is missing is a really nice lovelace card. Most of us. At least all the people I get inspired from their dashboards will all use an integration as a card on their dashboard. And most of us have their menu's hidden. So we need a lovelace card that looks as cool if not way better than what's out there right now. I have had Music Assistant integrated in my HA setup for as along as I can remember (many updates) but I have NEVER used it because I can't access it yet. I'm still waiting for the lovelace card. At least that's how I see it. Great work on everything working together though. You guys make it so easy to add your providers and your speakers and it all works. But not on my dashboard. Thanks for everything though. I don't want to sound like I'm dissing you guys. Not at all.

[thekiwismarthome]

I use Music Assistant all the time at home and with voice, I am part of an awesome project called View Assist (Git & Wiki) which also uses it.
What I would love is a beautiful very usable intuitive card like the above for manual interaction, more for the kids and wife, the wife struggles with voice commands on all platforms.
If we could get the current building blocks for the above UI, I am sure the community can help sort the rest out.

[chezpaul]

I also think it might be different kinds of people who make great UI's than those who make the backend/programming of a great integration.
Music Assistant is a great product. What rxritalin is working on could become a great UI for Music Assistant. And once released, I bet way more people will jump onto using Music assistant.

Why not try to implement some of rxritalin's ideas in order to make the UI work as it should and hence make Music Assistant incredible?

[OzGav]

Why not try to implement some of rxritalin's ideas

It’s not a matter of trying, that suggests we are refusing to help him, its workload. This is OPEN SOURCE so anyone can contribute.

[chezpaul]

Yeah, I didn't even think of that. My bad. ha!
Well I hope someone at some point will have fun with it. 🤷🏼‍♂️
I'll be waiting on the sidelines rooting for Music assistant. It makes dealing with music so much easier in Home Assistant.
Thanks to all that work on this project. 🙏🏻 UI or not. (and by UI, I mean Lovelace card advancement)

[ragaimeena]

This is exactly what I am looking for
Please share the code
Please let us know if a financial appreciation of your time and effort would help
Thank you

[chezpaul]

Yeah, I'm also willing to also show my appreciation in currency. I feel like I've been waiting months when it's only been a week or so.
😅

[OzGav]

@rxritalin have a look at the new actions available in integration version 2024.11.0 and let us know if any of those are useful for you. Your various requests are noted and will be looked at in due course.

[jonasjeeliasson]

Not sure how to use these actions to display things easily on a Lovelace dashboard. Would think we need some sort of sensors or other components housing these values as attributes rather than calling actions/services. Maybe some sort of template sensor can be created based on the result of one of these action calls, but then that template needs to be kept up-to-date some how 🤷

[OzGav]

If you don’t have a better trigger then a template updated on a time period using homeassistant.update_entity would work

[Thyraz]

People that ended in this discussion might also be interested in this topic about what's already possible for a feature-rich Lovelace integration and what more might be needed:
https://discord.com/channels/753947050995089438/1305541265924034570

[felipetoffolo1]

@Thyraz that link did not work for me. I'm not very familiar with discord. Do I have to join some server first?

[thekiwismarthome]

@felipetoffolo1 look for the Music Assistant server