Emby Live TV to a Home Assistant lovelace dashboard card.

[schmittty 2]

I searched several different ways/terms and didn't really see anything related to what I am asking, so here goes hopefully someone can tell me if it is doable or not.

Use case: I have Emby Premiere and Home Assistant for my home and all it's "gadgets", I have a Fire Tablet wall mounted in the Kitchen that runs Fully Kiosk browser and goes to the HA dashboard(s). I have a media tab where I can see all the Alexa media player (controls), along with Android/Fire TVs (again controls) as well as the Emby media player controls. Which is nice I can control volume, see what is playing and turn on/off. What I would like to do (for the wife who is not that tech savvy), is display a Live TV channel within an html/iframe card on that media dashboard so when in the Kitchen she can hear and watch on the tablet rather than having to close the Kiosk browser and switch over to the Emby app as that just get complicated and I have to fix.

I have looked high and low and I just don't see where it has been done or could be I am searching the wrong terms.

I was hoping to do this one of two ways, either directly from the HDHomerun tuner (MPEG-TS) or through an interface to Emby and the live TV component and carve out space on the media page as pictured below along with all other things media.

I would prefer not to reinvent the wheel if this has already accomplished in some way, it will only be internal on the same local network as the Emby server so I didn't/don't want to complicate it as far as having to cross an SSL connection or get into any complex authentication configurations. 

Any direction, ideas or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

@cayars

 

[Carlo 4561]

I tried a couple of days ago to do a quick HA setup and think I've learned there's no such thing as a quick HA setup.   I watched a few Youtube videos as well as some general info on HA setups and have been been playing around a couple days with this. I wouldn't mind having HA in place anyway. I'm getting closer but realized it's been a couple days I've been playing with this and should at least pop in here and let you know what I'm doing as well as share a couple other thoughts.

Let me ask you this.  Putting aside HA and just using Alexa are you able to have Alexa play X on Y device? Something like "Alexa play Top Gun on Fire Tablet" ? (using the device name of the fire tablet).

Another test would be to see if you can use an app such as Theater to cast to the tablet. Make sure you have the Emby app installed on the tablet for this. These two tests would let you know if your environment will at least playback to that device. That won't playback to a frame but I have a couple ideas how this could be done. I kind of wanted to test this myself and see if it were doable with HA mixed in but I'm not there yet.

The high-level nutshell version I was thinking of is using a DLNA based client on the tablet that could be setup to run in a frame. Then theoretically you could cast to the DLNA device.

I'm actually not sure you really need to use a frame or anything like that.  It might be as simple as handling this the same way Emby uses Youtube on Android.  It loads the Youtube app which covers the Emby app (both running).  The user watches the trailer then exit Youtube, ending up at the same screen they were at previously.  Would something like that not work well in this case if we had a "player app" to cast to on the tablet?

SSL might be forced on you as I'm not sure you can remotely playback to the device without it if going through Alexa.  If "cast to" in Emby works without SSL in your environment casting to the Emby app then SSL can likely be avoided.

Carlo

[richt 94]

Just to give a little background on Home Assistant Media Player capabilities, ou might take a look at this article.  The Improved Home Assistant Media Section Explained!

I haven't done anything like this, so I'm no good as a resource for further info, but the article does indicate that the integration is possible, but seems it would need some development on the HA side.

[schmittty 2]

22 hours ago, cayars said:

I tried a couple of days ago to do a quick HA setup and think I've learned there's no such thing as a quick HA setup.   I watched a few Youtube videos as well as some general info on HA setups and have been been playing around a couple days with this. I wouldn't mind having HA in place anyway. I'm getting closer but realized it's been a couple days I've been playing with this and should at least pop in here and let you know what I'm doing as well as share a couple other thoughts.

Let me ask you this.  Putting aside HA and just using Alexa are you able to have Alexa play X on Y device? Something like "Alexa play Top Gun on Fire Tablet" ? (using the device name of the fire tablet).

Another test would be to see if you can use an app such as Theater to cast to the tablet. Make sure you have the Emby app installed on the tablet for this. These two tests would let you know if your environment will at least playback to that device. That won't playback to a frame but I have a couple ideas how this could be done. I kind of wanted to test this myself and see if it were doable with HA mixed in but I'm not there yet.

The high-level nutshell version I was thinking of is using a DLNA based client on the tablet that could be setup to run in a frame. Then theoretically you could cast to the DLNA device.

I'm actually not sure you really need to use a frame or anything like that.  It might be as simple as handling this the same way Emby uses Youtube on Android.  It loads the Youtube app which covers the Emby app (both running).  The user watches the trailer then exit Youtube, ending up at the same screen they were at previously.  Would something like that not work well in this case if we had a "player app" to cast to on the tablet?

SSL might be forced on you as I'm not sure you can remotely playback to the device without it if going through Alexa.  If "cast to" in Emby works without SSL in your environment casting to the Emby app then SSL can likely be avoided.

Carlo

So this is ultimately the way I ended up achieving my use case/goal: from this example Stream from HD Homerun , I did not see a way to pull a live feed from Emby (which I would still prefer to do) without getting too complicated for the wife and me have to clean it up after she clicks five different things.

On a separate old computer or RPI will do with Ubuntu. Essentially there is a script that runs, creates a playlist of files that overwrite themselves to create the stream, I have a basic html page with a player that gets linked (opens in new window)  from the HA dashboard and a button at the bottom that says "Back to Dashboard" that essentially closes the spawned browser window to display the dashboard again. This method keeps her from ever closing the dashboard or switching apps. However, kind of a waste of an old computer, as I did not want the resources taken from the HA server (its not a real powerhouse). Attached is the language in the two files I used, the video and these files will get the stream.

I am still interested if something similar could be done from Emby as the source instead of HD Homerun for versatility and maybe a custom HA card or integration that is specific to EMBY for placement on the dashboard but I guess that should go to feature requests.

I actually am trying to push Alexa/Google to be peripheral services that are great if the internet is up but they are not core to my home automation or media library interfaces. All my devices, scenes, routines, etc. are Zigbee, Z-wave, locally reprogrammed/managed Sonoff switches are all managed/coordinated through HA (you are right, no simple setup but very cool when you do get it setup). As an old school IT guy, I'm not a fan of Cloud services that are dependent on a service you have no control over.

Thank you again for your response and I hope this helps someone else.

HD Homerun to Webpage-1.txt

Edited February 13, 2022 by schmittty

[Carlo 4561]

I've not tried this to see if it could help or not but you may want to see if there is an app for the tablet from Silicon Dust (HDHomeRun).  If so, give that a test to see if you have any control over the output or if you can use it as a cast to receiver.

[schmittty 2]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

I've not tried this to see if it could help or not but you may want to see if there is an app for the tablet from Silicon Dust (HDHomeRun).  If so, give that a test to see if you have any control over the output or if you can use it as a cast to receiver.

Yea, the app works fine. I just have issues with those using it (in this case the Wife). If she has to exit the dashboard to get to that app I can guarantee it will be messy. I was trying to achieve as little effort on her part other than clicking intuitive buttons as she does not need to or want to understand any complexities (I have tried).

I guess I was hoping that Emby could expose the live stream already in a usable format, rather than what I am doing now. As far as presentation I think I got what I was looking for.