Repurposing a Squeezebox

Squeezebox Boom

Squeezebox – A bit ahead of it’s time

First off, I’d like to spend a minute appreciating the craftsmanship and the premium nature of the squeezebox line of products. Almost a decade before the current ‘smart’ speakers that are common today (Echo, HomePod, GoogleHome, etc), the Squeezebox sported much of the same functionality:

  • Premium Quality Sound
  • Remote Control (via a handheld remote & web interface)
  • Streaming radio, podcasts, music, etc
  • Apps for extensible functionality
  • Web Interface for local and remote access (most modern speakers don’t offer local control)
  • Local API for extensibility (I don’t know of any modern speakers that offer this!)
  • A community of users for great support (still exists today!)

An Orphaned Squeezebox

Recently at my workplace we upgraded the office speaker and had an orphaned Squeezebox Boom. We were ready to recycle the 12 year old speaker, but it still seemed to have so much potential. The speaker hardware worked flawlessly (although the online services have been neglected by Logitech). Naturally, since I knew the Squeezebox had a local API, my instinct was to check if Home Assistant had any support for such a device, and sure enough it has a Logitech Squeezebox integration! After browsing the integration documentation I figured it would be worth an effort to give the Squeezebox a new life.

Prerequisite for Integration: Logitech Media Server

The Home Assistant documentation indicated that I would need to have a Logitech Media Server in order to control the Squeezebox – A slight inconvenience, but a quick search on DockerHub revealed some pre-built docker containers that can provide me with a self-hosted alternative to the Internet reliant interface that Logitech could shut down at any time. Setting up the docker container was as simple as adding the following to my docker-compose file and running: docker-compose up -d. Stay tuned for future posts about Docker & docker-compose. They are great tools for quickly setting up various services!

#Logitech Media Server
logitechmediaserver:
  container_name: "logitechmediaserver"
  image: lmscommunity/logitechmediaserver:stable
  restart: always
  ports:
    - 9000:9000/tcp
    - 9090:9090/tcp
    - 3483:3483/tcp
    - 3483:3483/udp
  volumes
    - logitechmediaserver_config:/config:rw
    - logitechmediaserver_music:/music:ro
    - logitechmediaserver_playlist:/playlist:rw
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro

...

volumes: 
  ...
  #logitechmediaserver
  logitechmediaserver_config:
  logitechmediaserver_music:
  logitechmediaserver_playlist:

Exploring Logitech Media Server

After starting the docker container I was able to natigate to the Lotitech Media Server web interface which was a bit outdated:

Logitech Media Server Default Interface

Let’s fix the outdated interface by trying a community developed ‘Material Skin’. Ah.. much better!

A Community Developed Material Theme for Logitech Media Server

There are numerous other extensions that sounded promising (i.e. Airplay/Chromecast support), but those will wait for another day. Let’s get back to integrating this into Home Assistant…

Home Assistant Integration

The Home Assistant integration was a breeze to setup:

  1. Open Home Assistant web interface
  2. Click Configuration Menu Icon (Gear)
  3. Click Integrations
  4. Click Add Integrations
  5. Click on Logitech Squeezebox
    • At this point Home Assistant may auto-discover your Squeezebox, if not continue…
  6. Enter the IP address of the Squeezebox
  7. Enter the Username/Password for the Squeezebox Web interface (if configured)
  8. Enjoy!
    • Home Assistant control of the Squeezebox
    • Additional features like playing Home Assistant media & sending Text to Speech to the speaker.
    • History of played media
    • Trigger media based on other smart devices/sensors.

Squeezebox reborn!

< Home Assistant Media Card

Home Assistant Card Detail >

Introduction to Home Assistant

Everyone likes home automation – if it works! We’ve all been excited about that smart switch or wireless light that we can control from anywhere in the world, but how great is it really? For a few ‘smart’ devices it may seem work well, but once you begin to accumulate more than a handful of devices you will quickly begin to realize that you have as many apps as you do smart devices and you will begin to start asking questions like:

  • Which app controls which device?
  • Do I have to download all these apps for each member of my family?
  • Wouldn’t it be nice if I could control all my smart devices with a single app?
  • Why can’t I connect my smart devices together?

All of these questions can be answered with a tool called Home Assistant. In the most basic of terms, Home Assistant is a tool that pulls all of your smart devices into a single app. I will save the details of Home Assistant future posts, but it aims to do the following and much more:

  • Be Free and Open Source (FOSS)
  • Improve your privacy by reducing the need for internet based cloud services
  • Control all the smart devices in your home from a central location
  • Connect smart devices in your home in order to trigger perform actions like: When there is motion in the hallway, turn on the light
  • Provide a single app (web or mobile) to control and manage all your smart devices

Home Assistant may not be the ‘silver bullet’ for every situation, but I am willing to say that it is unequivocally the best home automation solution available today (as of 2020). Anyone interested in taking the next step in home automation should consider Home Assistant. Stay tuned and in the near future we will be discussing how to get started using this great tool, and why it is (in my opinion) superior, but friendly with other alternatives like Hubitat, SmartThings, and HomeKit.

white and gray Google smart speaker and two black speakers
Photo by Sebastian Scholz (Nuki) on Unsplash

(Full disclosure: I was not paid or in any way incentivized to speak so highly of Home Assistant)