Alright, let’s talk about getting Plexamp working with Home Assistant. I’ve got my music server humming along with Plex, and Plexamp is my go-to player most days. But, you know, I like everything tied into Home Assistant if I can manage it.
So, the first thing I did was check if there was an easy way. Usually, that means diving into HACS (Home Assistant Community Store). If someone’s already done the hard work, why reinvent the wheel, right?
Finding the Integration
Opened up Home Assistant, went straight to HACS.
- Clicked on ‘Integrations’.
- Used the search bar and typed in ‘Plexamp’.
Sure enough, something popped up. Looked like a community-built integration specifically for controlling Plexamp remotely. Seemed like exactly what I needed. Clicked on it, read the description briefly – yeah, this was it.
Installation and Setup
Hit the ‘Download’ button. HACS did its thing, pulled down the necessary files. Pretty standard stuff.
After it finished downloading, Home Assistant usually gives you that notification saying a restart is needed for the new integration to load. So, I went ahead and restarted Home Assistant. Gotta let it pick up the new bits.
Once it came back online, the next step was adding the actual integration.
- Went to ‘Settings’, then ‘Devices & Services’.
- Clicked the ‘+ Add Integration’ button down in the corner.
- Searched for ‘Plexamp’ again. This time, the integration I just downloaded showed up in the official list.
Clicked on that. Now, the configuration part. It wasn’t too complicated. It basically needed to know how to find my Plexamp player. I think it just automatically found players on my network if Plexamp was running. I had Plexamp open on my phone at the time, connected to my local Wi-Fi.
Important bit here: Your Home Assistant server and the device running Plexamp need to be on the same network so they can see each other. Usually not an issue for most home setups.
It found my phone’s Plexamp instance. Selected it, hit submit. That was pretty much it for the basic setup.
Using It
A new media player entity showed up in Home Assistant, representing my phone’s Plexamp player. Success!
To actually control it, I went to my Lovelace dashboard (Overview).
- Clicked the ‘Edit Dashboard’ option.
- Added a new card. Chose the ‘Media Control’ card type.
- In the card configuration, I selected the new Plexamp entity from the list.
Saved the changes. And there it was – a nice little media player card on my dashboard.
Tested it immediately. Hit the play button on the HA card, and the music started playing on my phone via Plexamp. Pause worked. Skip track worked. Volume control worked. Everything seemed solid.
Final Thoughts
So yeah, that’s how I got it running. Wasn’t too painful. Just needed to find the right thing in HACS, install it, configure it (which was mostly automatic discovery in my case), and add a card to control it.
Now I can see what’s playing and control Plexamp right from my main Home Assistant dashboard, alongside all my lights and sensors. It’s pretty neat. Opens the door for automations too, like pausing music when I get a phone call or something, though I haven’t set that up yet. But the main thing is, it’s integrated, and it works. Job done.