I use a Raspberry Pi to drive two sets of speakers using Snapcast.
To maximize the range of my Bluetooth speaker, I bought a Realtek
RTL8761B-based USB Bluetooth dongle with a large antenna.
To get the Bluetooth dongle to work with the latest kernel drivers and
bluez-alsa, I had to abandon Raspbian Linux and use the latest Debian Linux
instead.
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I was able to cook up a fun audio setup controlled and automated with Home Assistant!
It features
- Multiple room synchronised audio speakers (fixed/analog, portable Bluetooth devices and via app on phone or tablet)
- Playback of internet radio, Spotify streaming and local audio files.
- Sound notifications for Doorbell, garden gate and other sensors and home alarm events.
In my setup, a docker container running on the Home Assistant machine takes
care of retrieving audio from Spotify, internet radio streams and local
storage.
Physical devices like raspberry pi's or an Android phone/tablet use a snapcast
client to use drive speakers.
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