home-assistant.io/source/_integrations/pulseaudio_loopback.markdown
2020-03-05 17:28:39 -08:00

69 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown

---
title: PulseAudio Loopback
description: Instructions on how to use Pulseaudio loopback modules to build a flexible whole-home audio system.
logo: pulseaudio.png
ha_category:
- Switch
ha_release: 0.16
ha_iot_class: Local Polling
ha_domain: pulseaudio_loopback
---
The goal behind this switch is to allow a very flexible whole home audio system based upon [PulseAudio](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/).
For example, for a system with a 7.1 surround sound card, and 3 instances of [MPD](https://www.musicpd.org/) running, it is possible to quickly route the output of any MPD instance to any of the 8 possible (4 stereo) channels on the sound card, by loading/unloading a loopback module. This loading/unloading functionality is provided by this component. When the switch is `on`, the loopback module is loaded. When the switch is `off`, the module is not loaded.
The benefit of this approach is that this audio routing can occur without modifying the design-time configuration of MPD or PulseAudio.
This integration uses a TCP connection to control a local or remote PulseAudio server. So there are no local dependencies.
To enable this switch, add the following lines to your `configuration.yaml` file:
```yaml
# Example configuration.yaml entry
switch:
- platform: pulseaudio_loopback
```
{% configuration %}
sink_name:
description: The name of the Pulseaudio sink that will receive the audio.
required: true
type: string
source_name:
description: The name of the Pulseaudio source that will supply the audio.
required: true
type: string
name:
description: Name of the switch.
required: false
default: paloopback
type: string
host:
description: The IP address or host name of the PulseAudio server.
required: false
default: localhost
type: string
port:
description: The port that Pulseaudio is listening on.
required: false
default: 4712
type: integer
buffer_size:
description: How much data to load from Pulseaudio at once.
required: false
default: 1024
type: integer
tcp_timeout:
description: How long to wait for a response from Pulseaudio before giving up.
required: false
default: 3
type: integer
{% endconfiguration %}
<div class='note warning'>
This integration relies on raw TCP commands to PulseAudio. In order for PulseAudio to accept commands with this component, `module-cli-protocol` must be loaded on the PulseAudio server.
</div>