automation

To help our ten-year-old get to sleep, we play some sleepy music in their bedroom each night. I’ve now automated this, using Home Assistant and a Zigbee scene button, so a single button press starts the automation and plays the correct Spotify playlist. Here’s how I went about it.

The button

I bought the button from AliExpress for a mere £2.60. I can’t find the exact same button on Amazon, but this is a close match at £8.99 (sponsored link). It has a single CR2032 button battery, and is easily paired with Zigbee2MQTT and then Home Assistant. There’s also a double-sided sticky tab to attach it to a wall.

The button I bought offers two modes: single press, and double press. You can therefore trigger different automations in response to whether the button is pressed once or twice. The more expensive button from Amazon also supports a third mode, which is a five second long press.

Installing Music Assistant

Whilst Home Assistant has a Spotify integration, in my testing I couldn’t get it to play the correct playlist on the Google Nest Mini smart speaker that is in our ten-year-old’s room. So, a workaround is to install Music Assistant, which is a related project that is also run by the Open Home Foundation. This can be installed as an App in Home Assistant; once installed, you’ll need to add Spotify as a source. Music Assistant quickly found all of my Google Cast devices.

Next, you’ll need to install the Music Assistant integration in Home Assistant – it may be automatically discovered for you. If you already have your Google Cast devices added in Home Assistant, then you will end up with separate Music Assistant entries for them too.

Creating a timer helper

So that the music doesn’t keep playing all night, we can create a timer that can stop the music after a given time period has elapsed. I did this by creating a Helper, using the type timer and the default time of 1 hour 30 minutes.

You can also simply put a time delay in your automation, but using a helper allows you to cancel the timer before it completes – handy if our ten-year-old falls asleep quickly.

Creating the automation

I set this up using the Home Assistant UI, but here’s the YAML code:

alias: Bedtime
description: ""
triggers:
  - domain: mqtt
    device_id: [device]
    type: action
    subtype: single
    trigger: device
conditions: []
actions:
  - action: music_assistant.play_media
    metadata: {}
    target:
      entity_id: [media_player.device]
    data:
      media_id: >-
        [playlist URL]
    continue_on_error: true
  - action: timer.start
    metadata: {}
    target:
      entity_id: [timer.bedtime_timer]
    data: {}
mode: single

The automation listens for the button press, and when it’s pressed once, it starts the music playing and starts the timer. The playlist URL is from Spotify – if you find the playlist you want, go to Share and then Copy URL, this is what you need.

I then have a second automation to trigger when the timer stops:

alias: Stop bedtime music when timer finishes
description: ""
triggers:
  - trigger: timer.finished
    target:
      entity_id: [timer.bedtime_timer]
    options:
      for: "00:00:00"
conditions: []
actions:
  - action: media_player.media_stop
    metadata: {}
    target:
      area_id: [bedroom]
    data: {}
mode: single

This actually works slightly differently, and tells Home Assistant to stop playback on all media players in a room, rather than the specific media player specified in the first automation.

Finally, I made use of the double-press mode of the button to cancel the timer early:

alias: Cancel bedtime
description: ""
triggers:
  - domain: mqtt
    device_id: [device]
    type: action
    subtype: double
    trigger: device
conditions: []
actions:
  - action: timer.cancel
    metadata: {}
    target:
      entity_id: [timer.bedtime_timer]
    data: {}
  - action: media_player.media_stop
    metadata: {}
    target:
      device_id: [media_player.device]
    data: {}
mode: single

Flourishes

As a little flourish, in my first automation I have an initial first step which uses Chime TTS to announce, via the speaker, that it’s time for bed. It then starts playing the music afterwards.

My version of the automation also turns on a nightlight, as well as starting the music.

Rationale

We’ve been playing bedtime music for our ten-year-old for many years, but what prompted me was the Gemini upgrade for our Google Home smart speakers. On the whole, post-upgrade, our speakers have been more capable and offer better answers, but where they’ve fallen down is asking it to play a specific Spotify playlist. We have one playlist that we have used for years, but when we ask Google Gemini to play it, it ends up playing something else (often a different one each time) which is similar but not the same. I’m sure any parent of a neurodivergent child has experienced what can happen when you try to pass off something that isn’t quite what the child is used to as being the same.

By building an automation, I can specify the exact URL of the desired playlist, so the correct playlist is played every time. And, having a button in their room means our ten-year-old can simply press it themselves when they’re ready for bed.