HA Android (and IOS?) Companion app as a media player target, specifically for audio files

[gh69]

Describe the feature

I'd like to be able to target a connected Android companion app as a media player entity to play audio files, similar to how one can target Sonos, VLC, and VoicePE's. (I'm not an iPhone/iPad user myself but it'd make sense for this to apply to the iOS companion app as well...furthermore it'd be nice if such functionality was companion-app-OS agnostic so that those in a multi-OS household don't have to separately setup and test for both Android and iOS connected devices.)

This solves the problem of being required to look at an android device to know what an HA notification is about. TTS notifications from HA are one workaround for this since they can be very specific but in loud environments, speech often isn't loud enough to be understood, whereas distinct tones with distinct meanings would be. Android notification channel sound-file assignment is another workaround for this but it requires one to not only setup channels on HA but also on every device (and upload individual sound files to each device)...and to repeat that tedious android notification setup whenever a device is replaced.

Use cases

I could use this for dynamic notification sounds...which I currently do via scripting for Sonos, VLC, and VoicePE's.

Examples

Example #1, when the backyard camera detects a person late at night when nobody is home, a notification containing a camera snapshot is sent to my mobile device. This notification is accompanied by a sound clip of a Star Trek style red alert klaxon. This sound clip, coming from my pocket, will get my attention as a critical notification that I need to deal with immediately.

Example #2, when a connected doorbell is rung, a notification containing a camera snapshot i sent to my mobile device. This notification is accompanied by the sound of a doorbell. This will get my attention but I'll know that I don't necessarily have to drop what I'm doing to review it.

Example #3, when a frontyard camera detects a cat in the middle of the day, a notification containing a camera snapshot is sent to my mobile device. This notification is not accompanied by any sound whatsoever. With the HA notifications otherwise set to silent, this means I won't receive any audible notification of this event, but if I happen to look at my phone, I'll see the cat lounging in the sun out front.

Anything else?

No response

[DracoGSJ]

I have another use case for this:

I have a brilliant alarm clock set up through home assistant using helpers, scripts, and an automation.

The alarm clock uses the assist satellite-announce with a media file to play an alarm sound through my bedside Home Assistant Voice preview edition

I would love to be able to modify the setup to allow the alarm clock to be used home or away. I could have a toggle helper set up home\away, so that when away the alarm sound would be sent to my mobile phone instead of the Home Assistant Voice preview edition in the bedroom.

[OlwinFroon]

You can have notifications accompanied with sounds (which you need to have on your phone already):

https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/notifications/critical-notifications

Not exactly as simple as using a media player, but it works.

[gh69]

Yup....but the point of the media player ability is not to have to preload, individually setup, and make special calls to each and every new device that connects to HA...especially in a mixed android/iOS home where calls to devices to play local media are different.

[abhi08638]

+1 on this, my use case is I have multiple sonoff ns panel pros running the home assistant companion app. Currently I use TTS notifications to get the switches to speak but having a media player would make it much more seamless.

[dbmaxpayne]

+1 on this.
I took a look at the Browser Mod approach, but I find that unneccesarily complicates things when an app is already installed anyway.

[pottkopp]

I found out the ViewAssist Companion App has this functionality but on the other hand lacks some functionality the HA Companion App has. So maybe the media player (and wake word) functionality could be merged into the official HACA?
Link to the VACA repo: https://github.com/msp1974/ViewAssist_Companion_App