Chromecast Radio control using a Logitech Harmony Elite (and Home Assistant)

Building further on my CC Radio, I wanted to integrate this with my Logitech Harmony Elite (+hub) remote, so that no interaction is needed with Home Assistant itself to work the radio.

The solution consists of several parts:

• Using a sensor to keep track of what the Harmony Remote is set to
• allowing channel changing through the Harmony Remote
• allowing volume changing through the Harmony Remote

Sensor configuration

First, you’ll need a sensor to keep track of which activity the Harmony Remote is set to.

sensor:
  - platform: template
    sensors:
      logitech_harmony_elite:
        value_template: '{{ state_attr("remote.logitech_harmony_elite", "current_activity") }}'

Allowing channel changes

Next up, allowing changing the channel. In the LoveLace interface we have a drop-down for this, but we want to use the Channel-Up and Channel-Down buttons on the Harmony Remote…

Emulated Roku

Emulated Roku to the rescue!

This basically fakes a Roku Media Player, which you can then use together with the Harmony Remote.

Configuring the integration in Home Assistant is detailed in the documentation. I did have to do some additional steps, since my Home Assistant is on a different network than the Harmony Hub. I do have a Linux VM on both networks, which functions as a proxy.

Proxy config

After activating the integration through the web interface, you’ll need to edit /config/.storage/core.config_entries, and add an advertise_ip entry under data with the IP address of your proxy.

{
    "connection_class": "local_push",
    "data": {
        "advertise_ip": "IP.OF.YOUR.PROXY",
        "listen_port": 8060,
        "name": "Home Assistant"
    },
    "domain": "emulated_roku",
    "entry_id": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "options": {},
    "source": "user",
    "system_options": {
        "disable_new_entities": false
    },
    "title": "Home Assistant",
    "unique_id": null,
    "version": 1
}

After this, you’ll also need to do the actual proxying. I didn’t want to run any additional software, so I just put a few iptables rules. NOTE: this is just a subsection of rules in the script, make sure you properly integrate this with your own firewall!

In this script, LAN_IF is my main LAN interface, IOT_IF is the IOT network interface:

#!/bin/bash

LAN_IF=ens3
IOT_IF=ens4

LAN_IP=$(ip -4 addr show ${LAN_IF} | grep -oP "(?<=inet ).*(?=/)")
IOT_IP=$(ip -4 addr show ${IOT_IF} | grep -oP "(?<=inet ).*(?=/)")

HARMONY=IP.OF.HARMONY.HUB
HASSIO=IP.OF.HA.INSTALLATION
ROKU_PORT=8060

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING  --protocol tcp --source ${HARMONY} --dport ${ROKU_PORT} -i ${IOT_IF} -j DNAT --to ${HASSIO}:${ROKU_PORT}
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING  --protocol udp --source ${HARMONY} --dport ${ROKU_PORT} -i ${IOT_IF} -j DNAT --to ${HASSIO}:${ROKU_PORT}

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING --protocol tcp -d ${HASSIO}         -o ${LAN_IF} -j SNAT --to ${LAN_IP}
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING --protocol udp -d ${HASSIO}         -o ${LAN_IF} -j SNAT --to ${LAN_IP}

You’ll also need to advertise your emulated_roku to let the Harmony Remote find it.

python3 advertise_ip.py --api-ip IP.OF.YOUR.PROXY --api-port 8060

After this, you can scan your network with the Harmony Remote to configure it.

Integrating emulated_roku in the activity

I’ll leave this as an exercise for the reader - you’ll need to recreate your activity and include the new Roku entertainment device.

Automating the channel changes

Once again, I’ll be using Node-RED to handle this. The emulated_roku will return a roku_command event through Home Assistant, so we can monitor that, and use the sensor.logitech_harmony_elite defined above to only trigger on the right activity.

Home assistant also has built-in input.select_next and input_select.previous service calls, allowing us to just re-use the drop-down input_select list created in the previous post.

Flow

Json export

[{"id":"1a7455dc.12d2c2","type":"server-state-changed","z":"7510e42e.b291fc","name":"CC Volume Changed","server":"5f01146c.501bec","version":1,"exposeToHomeAssistant":false,"haConfig":[{"property":"name","value":""},{"property":"icon","value":""}],"entityidfilter":"input_number.chromecast_audio_volume","entityidfiltertype":"exact","outputinitially":false,"state_type":"str","haltifstate":"","halt_if_type":"str","halt_if_compare":"is","outputs":1,"output_only_on_state_change":true,"x":160,"y":420,"wires":[["ad63acb2.3e5568"]]},{"id":"8c7dd2a6.b05d7","type":"server-events","z":"7510e42e.b291fc","name":"Filter call_service calls","server":"5f01146c.501bec","event_type":"call_service","exposeToHomeAssistant":false,"haConfig":[{"property":"name","value":""},{"property":"icon","value":""}],"x":160,"y":160,"wires":[["c7b333d3.9fcaa8"]]},{"id":"c7b333d3.9fcaa8","type":"switch","z":"7510e42e.b291fc","name":"CC Audio 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== \"Everywhere\") {\n    msg.audio_cc_target = \"media_player.all_chromecast_audio\";\n}\n\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":810,"y":160,"wires":[["c6105331.1a64d8"]]},{"id":"a7ae522b.31bb88","type":"function","z":"7510e42e.b291fc","name":"Select Radio Stream","func":"const globalHomeAssistant = global.get('homeassistant');\nconst selected_stream = globalHomeAssistant.homeAssistant.states[\"input_select.radio_station\"].state;\n\nvar temp;\n\nif (selected_stream == \"Willy\") {\n    temp = \"http://20043.live.streamtheworld.com/WILLY.mp3\";\n} else if (selected_stream == \"QMusic\") {\n    temp =  \"http://21633.live.streamtheworld.com/QMUSIC.mp3\";\n} else if (selected_stream == \"StuBru\") {\n    temp =  \"http://icecast.vrtcdn.be/stubru-high.mp3\";\n} else if (selected_stream == \"MNM Hits\") {\n    temp =  \"http://icecast.vrtcdn.be/mnm_hits-high.mp3\";\n} else if (selected_stream == \"MNM\") {\n    temp =  \"http://icecast.vrtcdn.be/mnm-high.mp3\";\n} else if (selected_stream == \"Radio 1\") {\n    temp =  \"http://icecast.vrtcdn.be/radio1-high.mp3\";\n} else if (selected_stream == \"Radio 2 OVL\") {\n    temp =  \"http://icecast.vrtcdn.be/ra2ovl-high.mp3\";\n} else if (selected_stream == \"Joe\") {\n    temp =  \"http://playerservices.streamtheworld.com/api/livestream-redirect/JOE.mp3\";\n}\n\nmsg.audio_cc_stream = temp\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":820,"y":240,"wires":[["af46ccdf.f04708"]]},{"id":"af46ccdf.f04708","type":"api-call-service","z":"7510e42e.b291fc","name":"Start 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\"media_player.living_room_speaker\";\n} else if (selected_cc == \"Downstairs (Living + JBL)\") {\n    msg.audio_cc_target =  \"media_player.downstairs_speakers\";\n} else if (selected_cc == \"JBL Link 10\") {\n    msg.audio_cc_target =  \"media_player.jbl_link10\";\n} else if (selected_cc == \"Study\") {\n    msg.audio_cc_target =  \"media_player.study_speaker\";\n} else if (selected_cc == \"Everywhere\") {\n    msg.audio_cc_target = \"media_player.all_chromecast_audio\";\n}\n\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":470,"y":420,"wires":[["4cda301a.14dae"]]},{"id":"ff1bdb69.856ff8","type":"api-call-service","z":"7510e42e.b291fc","name":"Set 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Assistant"}]