A multi-output ambient sound mixer for Home Assistant.

Amniotic lets you use a single device to create on-the-fly, custom ambient audio mixes - e.g. mixing Waterfall sounds with Birdsong on one media player entity, while playing Fireplace sounds from a second audio device - to suit your tastes and environment.

The library integrates with Home Assistant via MQTT as a new device, allowing you to create and control ambient mixes from the Home Assistant interface.

I won't explain the general reasons for introducing non-musical sounds into one's environment, but if you find sound masking helps you concentrate in noisy environments, if you're (as I am) slightly misophonic, if you use white noise machines to induce sleep or relaxation, or if you just think sound is an important factor in setting a pleasant ambience, then you might find Amniotic useful.

Since those systems are intended for music, they aren't designed for playing or mixing multiple streams simultaneously with a single device, even if set up in multi-room configurations. Also, the streaming services often won't allow a single account to play multiple streams, even if multiple devices are used.

Anyway, those limitations motivated this library.

There are two ways to install and run Amniotic:

• On the Home Assistant machine itself, as an add-on.
• Install manually, on a separate machine.

To add as an Addon, click here:

Lovelace Dashboard

Better documentation is coming soon. Currently, the easiest workflow is the following:

• Install as an Addon, using the button above.
• If you're using a non-default address for Home Assistant on your network (i.e. not homeassistant.local), set that in the Addon configuration.
• Add some audio files to the Home Assistant /media/Amniotic directory.

• Find the Lovelace Dashboard View here.
• Click on the Copy icon to "Copy raw file"
• In your Home Assistant UI, navigate to a dashboard you'd like to add the View to.
• Click on the Edit Dashboard icon.
• Click the + to add a new View.
• Click on the three dots in the top right corner of the new View editor, and select Edit in YAML.
• Overwrite the entire edit box with the contents of your clipboard.
• Click Save.
• Click Done in the dashboard editor.

• Select a Recording from the dropdown.
• Toggle to Enable the Recording.
• Select a Media Player to stream the Theme to. Note: Your media player needs to support streaming from a basic HTTP stream, which most should.
• Click Stream to Media Player.
• Your Theme should start playing on your Media Player.
• You can now Enable additional Recordings in the Theme, modify their volume, etc., to create a custom mix.
• Note: there's also a Current Theme URL, for if you want to manually paste stream to a non-HA player, like a phone or something.

If you upgraded from the old version and need to fix entity IDs:

• Go into Devices and find both old and new Amniotic devices.
• Delete both (MQTT Info -> Delete)
• Restart the Add-On/Container, and just the new one should recreate itself.
• If you end up with funky Entity IDs (like select.amniotic_theme_2) click in the ♻️ button in the Entity ID box.

• You can use basically any device with audio hardware. You just need to allow Home Assistant to see it as a Media Player entity.
• In Home Assistant, install the VLC Telnet integration.
• On your Device, install VLC, and start it in telnet mode, e.g. vlc -I telnet --telnet-password password --telnet-host 0.0.0.0:4212
• Add your device to the VLC Telnet integration.