Home assistant android server

Android TV

The androidtv platform allows you to control an Android TV device or Amazon Fire TV device.

When setting up this integration, it is recommended that you do NOT use an ADB server and instead use the built-in Python ADB implementation. This simplifies the setup and makes it easier to troubleshoot issues. If there are stability issues with this approach, then you may wish to try using an ADB server. See the ADB Setup section for more information.

Device preparation

To set up your device, you will need to find its IP address and enable ADB debugging. For Android TV devices, please consult the documentation for your device.

For Fire TV devices, the instructions are as follows:

• Turn on ADB Debugging on your Amazon Fire TV:
  • From the main (Launcher) screen, select Settings.
  • Select My Fire TV > Developer Options.
  • Select ADB Debugging.
• Find Amazon Fire TV device IP address:
  • From the main (Launcher) screen, select Settings.
  • Select My Fire TV > About > Network.

Configuration

Configuration Variables

The IP address for your Android TV / Fire TV device.

The friendly name of the device.

The port for your Android TV / Fire TV device.

The path to your adbkey file; if not provided, Home Assistant will generate a key for you (if necessary).

The IP address of the ADB server. If this is provided, the integration will utilize an ADB server to communicate with the device.

The port for the ADB server.

Whether or not to retrieve the running apps as the list of sources.

A dictionary where the keys are app IDs and the values are app names that will be displayed in the UI; see example below. If a name is not provided, the app will never be shown in the sources list. (These app names are configured in the backend package and do not need to be included in your configuration.)

If this is true, then only the apps you specify in the apps configuration parameter and those specified in the backend library will be shown in the sources list.

The type of device: auto (detect whether it is an Android TV or Fire TV device), androidtv , or firetv .

A dictionary whose keys are app IDs and whose values are lists of state detection rules; see the section Custom State Detection for more info.

An ADB shell command that will override the default turn_on command.

An ADB shell command that will override the default turn_off command.

Determines if album art should be pulled from what is shown onscreen.

Full Configuration

ADB Setup

This integration works by sending ADB commands to your Android TV / Fire TV device. There are two ways to accomplish this.

1. Python ADB Implementation

The default approach is to connect to your device using the adb-shell Python package. As of Home Assistant 0.101, if a key is needed for authentication and it is not provided by the adbkey configuration option, then Home Assistant will generate a key for you.

Prior to Home Assistant 0.101, this approach did not work well for newer devices. Efforts have been made to resolve these issues, but if you experience problems then you should use the ADB server option.

2. ADB Server

The second option is to use an ADB server to connect to your Android TV and Fire TV devices.

Using this approach, Home Assistant will send the ADB commands to the server, which will then send them to the Android TV / Fire TV device and report back to Home Assistant. To use this option, add the adb_server_ip option to your configuration. If you are running the server on the same machine as Home Assistant, you can use 127.0.0.1 for this value.

ADB Troubleshooting

If the setup for your Android TV or Fire TV device fails, then there is probably an issue with your ADB connection. Here are some possible causes.

You have the wrong IP address for the device.

ADB is not enabled on your device.

You are already connected to the Android TV / Fire TV via ADB from another device. Only one device can be connected, so disconnect the other device, restart the Android TV / Fire TV (for good measure), and then restart Home Assistant.

You need to approve the ADB connection; see the note in the ADB Setup section above.

Some Android TV devices (e.g., Philips TVs running Android TV) only accept the initial ADB connection request over their Wi-Fi interface. If you have the TV wired, you need to connect it to Wi-Fi and try the initial connection again. Once the authentication has been granted via Wi-Fi, you can connect to the TV over the wired interface as well.

If your device drops off WiFi, breaking the ADB connection and causing the entity to become unavailable in Home Assistant, you could install a wake lock utility (such as Wakelock) to prevent this from happening. Some users have reported this problem with Xiaomi Mi Box devices.

If you are using the Python ADB implementation approach, as mentioned above, there may be some issues with newer devices. In this case, you should use the ADB server approach instead.

Services

media_player.select_source

You can launch an app on your device using the media_player.select_source command. Simply provide the app ID as the source . You can also stop an app by prefixing the app ID with a ! . For example, you could define scripts to start and stop Netflix as follows:

androidtv.adb_command

The service androidtv.adb_command allows you to send either keys or ADB shell commands to your Android TV / Fire TV device. If there is any output, it will be stored in the ‘adb_response’ attribute (i.e., state_attr(‘media_player.android_tv_living_room’, ‘adb_response’) in a template) and logged at the INFO level.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	no	Name(s) of Android TV / Fire TV entities.
command	no	Either a key command or an ADB shell command.

In an action of your automation setup it could look like this:

Available key commands include:

The full list of key commands can be found here.

You can also use the command GET_PROPERTIES to retrieve the properties used by Home Assistant to update the device’s state. These will be stored in the media player’s ‘adb_response’ attribute and logged at the INFO level. This information can be used to help improve state detection in the backend androidtv package, and also to define your own custom state detection rules.

A list of various intents can be found here.

androidtv.learn_sendevent (for faster ADB commands)

When sending commands like UP, DOWN, HOME, etc. via ADB, the device can be slow to respond. The problem isn’t ADB, but rather the Android command input that is used to perform those actions. A faster way to send these commands is using the Android sendevent command. The challenge is that these commands are device-specific. To assist users in learning commands for their device, the Android TV integration provides the androidtv.learn_sendevent service. Its usage is as follows:

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	no	Name(s) of Android TV / Fire TV entities.

1. Call the androidtv.learn_sendevent service.
2. Within 8 seconds, hit a single button on your Android TV / Fire TV remote.
3. After 8 seconds, a persistent notification will appear that contains the equivalent command that can be sent via the androidtv.adb_command service. This command can also be found in the adb_response attribute of the media player in Home Assistant, and it will be logged at the INFO level.

As an example, a service call in a script could be changed from this:

androidtv.download and androidtv.upload

You can use the androidtv.download service to download a file from your Android TV / Fire TV device to your Home Assistant instance.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	no	Name of Android TV / Fire TV entity.
device_path	no	The filepath on the Android TV / Fire TV device.
local_path	no	The filepath on your Home Assistant instance.

Similarly, you can use the androidtv.upload service to upload a file from Home Assistant instance to Android TV / Fire TV devices.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	no	Name(s) of Android TV / Fire TV entities.
device_path	no	The filepath on the Android TV / Fire TV device.
local_path	no	The filepath on your Home Assistant instance.

Custom State Detection

The Android TV integration works by polling the Android TV / Fire TV device at a regular interval and collecting a handful of properties. Unfortunately, there is no standard API for determining the state of the device to which all apps adhere. Instead, the backend androidtv package uses three of the properties that it collects to determine the state: audio_state , media_session_state , and wake_lock_size . The correct logic for determining the state differs depending on the current app, and the backend androidtv package implements app-specific state detection logic for a handful of apps. Of course, it is not feasible to implement custom logic for each and every app in the androidtv package. Moreover, the correct state detection logic may differ across devices and device configurations.

The solution to this problem is the state_detection_rules configuration parameter, which allows you to provide your own rules for state detection. The keys are app IDs, and the values are lists of rules that are evaluated in order. Valid rules are:

• ‘standby’ , ‘playing’ , ‘paused’ , ‘idle’ , or ‘off’
  • If this is not a map, then this state will always be reported when this app is the current app
  • If this is a map, then its entries are conditions that will be checked. If all of the conditions are true, then this state will be reported. Valid conditions pertain to 3 properties (see the example configuration above):
    1. ‘media_session_state’
    2. ‘audio_state’
    3. ‘wake_lock_size’
• ‘media_session_state’ = try to use the media_session_state property to determine the state
• ‘audio_state’ = try to use the audio_state property to determine the state

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Install Home Assistant (HASS) on Android (NO ROOT)

Sep 1, 2020 · 4 min read

This configuration is very useful to install Home Assistant (HASS) on your Android Phone without Rooting. Can be very useful for controlling your domotic house with a centralized server that you can relocate and modify easily. I’m using a backup old phone (a Xiaomi Mi 4C, at least Android 7.0) for it and it works smoothly :).

Note: Sijuissacp responded me that the minimum version required is Android 7.0. I’m not entirely sure of that, but it’s worth mentioning.

Let’s start saying t hat I suggest you to dedicate an Android Phone which means you need to keep it under charge all the time and with the screen on if you need it to show some stuff (I personally use it for showing some temperatura data and so on). If you don’t need this, you just need to keep it under charge.

You can achieve that with a power charge always connected (surprised uh?) and under Android’s Developer Options, enable the option “Keep screen awake while charging”.

Now take your phone and let’s work it.

Note: there’s some copy-paste here and there but with my personal modifications. Credits to every website that helped me to achieve this. If some authors feel weird about that drop me a message and I’ll fix ;).

# Guide for HASS on Android

This will install:

• Homeassistant
• Mosquitto MQTT Broker (if you need it)

1. Install F-droid (an alternative store, full of free and useful stuff)
2. Install Termux from F-droid
3. Termux:API from F-droid
4. [OPTIONAL] Install Hacker’s Keyboard from F-droid

note: there apps are available also on Play Store, it’s up to you where to download.

As a general rule check always the log in the boot of HASS to understand if some versions of dependencies change (for example PyNaCl). Sometimes you need the specific version, not even the higher is fine (like in the case of PyNaCl).

### 1. Start Termux App;

### 2. Insert the following commands in order:

• pkg update
• apt-get update
• pkg upgrade
• pkg install python
• pkg install nano
• pkg install mosquitto (if it says ‘package not found’ issue ‘pkg update’ again and then try again)
• pkg install nodejs
• pkg install openssh
• pkg install termux-api
• apt install make
• pip install PyNaCl==1.3.0 (go make a coffee, it takes a loooong time) (also, 1.3.0 may change, but I needed the exact version HASS wanted to make it work)
• pip install aiohttp_cors
• pip install homeassistant

### 4. Starting the environment:

If you need to stop Mosquitto you can ‘ctrl +c’ or ‘volume down + c’.

Now open a new session of termux (use the sidebar) and let’s boot Home Assistant with the command:

• hass -v (-v is for verbose and it’s useful to understand what’s going on during boot)

Wait for the installation to complete then stop HA with ctrl +c or volume down + c and launch it again.

Access your web hass surfing the website:

If you want to access it from another computer you may port forward the port 8123 and also may want to set a static IP Address for that device.

#### TO AUTO-BOOT THE ENVIRONMENT:

[IN PROGRESS] If you need to boot everything up when android starts you just need to open termux and issue the commands ‘mosquitto’ and ‘hass’ but you could do it automatically using termux::boot (available on playstore).

There should be also the pm2 option that is a way to achieve that, but I don’t know much about it.

I’ll write a guide about it asap. Boyscout promise.

#### TO OPEN-SSH YOUR PHONE:

That’s essential to the HASS community:

then to copy files between local and remote you can use:

• scp -r -P 8022 /path/local/dir user@remotehost:/path/remote/dir

#### SET UP DNS SERVER TO ACCESS HASS REMOTELY (OUTSIDE LAN)

Instead of accessing using the ip like https://192.168.XXX.XXX you may want to access the website in the more common normal way using a simple address like https://mysweethass.com

In order to do that you need a name address from https://www.noip.com/ that is the website to get a free dynamic dns address.

Then you could use your provider’s router that probably has a Dynamic DNS section where you can set the link between the address created using no-ip and the ip address of your phone.

Configuration may vary from router to router so I can’t give you a general guide.

An alternative to configuring your provider’s router is to install a (free) DNS Dynamic app to do that on your phone like this one. In this way you bypass the router configuration. https://play.google.com/store/search?q=dns+update

Drop me a line if you need help.

EDIT: check the comments on this Medium for meaningful troubleshooting. I.E. Looks like Pillow is giving problems to be installed, there’s a potential fix published by Jamie in there.

Update: A reader, Mohammed, made me notice that the command ‘pip install netdisco’ may be required in order to fix Pillow dependency.

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