HA-Component-mythtv-frontend

Home Assistant component for MythTV 0.27+ Frontend

About This Component

This component is being developed to allow Home Assistant to interact with a MythTV frontend using the MythTV API Service (available in MythTV version 0.27 and later). It will work with a frontend-only or combination frontend and backend machine. This component currently only adds frontend services. Future updates may provide interfaces with the backend.

This component contains a media_player entity, and therefore will try to implement as many of the media_player funcitons including play/pause, volume control, and chapter controls.
It also provides a notify service so you can send messages to your MythTV frontend.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Home Assistant installed and operational.
  Installation using a VirtualEnv or Hassbian on Raspberry Pi is recommended and installation instructions are based on this method.

• MythTVServicesAPI Utilities

Installing MythTVServicesAPI

Add MythTVServicesAPI to your Python3.x/site-packages folder. If using VirtualEnv or Hassbian, switch to your homeassistant user and enter the VirtualEnv by performing the following commands (depending on how you have installed Home Assistant):

sudo su -s /bin/bash homeassistant
source /srv/homeassistant/bin/activate

Next, install the API (check https://github.com/billmeek/MythTVServicesAPI/tree/master/dist for the latest version and adjust this command to match):

pip install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/billmeek/MythTVServicesAPI/master/dist/mythtv_services_api-0.1.9-py3-none-any.whl

Installing MythTV as a custom component

In the Home Assistant configuration directory (usually located at /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant for VirtualEnv/Hassbian installs), install this component using something like the following (adjust to suit your system):

cd /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant
mkdir -p custom_components/mythtv
cd custom_components/mythtv
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/calmor15014/HA-Component-mythtv-frontend/master/mythtv/media_player.py
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/calmor15014/HA-Component-mythtv-frontend/master/mythtv/notify.py
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/calmor15014/HA-Component-mythtv-frontend/master/mythtv/manifest.json

This makes the required folder/s and copies the files from this repository to the new folder.

Adding and Configuring a MythTV Frontend in Home Assistant

Basic Configuration

In your configuration, add the following (adjust to suit your system):

Media Player

media_player:
  - platform: mythtv
    host: Frontend hostname or IP address
    port: Frontend API services port (optional, default: 6547)
    host_backend: Backend hostname or IP address (optional, defaults to same as host)
    port_backend: Backend API services port (optional, default: 6544)
    name: Friendly frontend name (optional, default: MythTV Frontend)
    mac: MAC address for WOL (optional)
    show_artwork: Choose whether or not to show artwork (optional, default: True)
    turn_off_sysevent: mythfrontend sysevent to shutdown (optional, default: "none")
    timeout: number of seconds to use as timeout in API send (optional, default: 1.0) 

Notify

notify:
  - name: Name for notification entity in Home Assistant
    platform: mythtv
    host: Frontend hostname or IP address
    origin: Text to show between Title and Message in on-screen messages (optional, default: " ")

Notes

• If you are using IPv6, use the format "[::]" replacing :: with your full IPv6 address. host also takes hostnames if they can be resolved by DNS.
• MythTV Services API in version 0.29-pre appears to have a broken implementation of SendAction, so this version may not respond correctly to frontend actions. 0.28-fixes has been tested to work normally. If the frontend status is indicated, but controls do not work, please post on the Home Assistant development thread with your MythTV version.

Troubleshooting

• Interval errors - for multiple frontends, HA tries to scan all of the entities within the status update scan interval for media players, which is set at the default value of 10 seconds. Frontends that are powered off will time out on each status update. For each frontend that is powered off, the code waits 1 second to time out of status update, and 1 second for the ping timeout. If you have more than 4 frontends all off, this will cause multiple errors for exceeding the interval.
  • Solution: Add scan_interval: x to each entity configuration line in YAML, where x = total number of frontends * 2, + 1 or 2 seconds for processing time
• If your Home Assistant is on a different subnet, you may need to allow all connections to the Services API.
  • Test: To determine if Frontend Services are accessible to this plugin, go to http://hostname:6547 from a web browser. If the connection is reset, you may need to enable all connections.
  • Solution: unfortunately, this does not appear to be in the menus of a frontend-only machine. In the settings table of the MySQL database, value AllowConnFromAll needs to be present and data set to 1 for each frontend hostname.

Sysevents

• Options are SYSEVENT01 to SYSEVENT10 or none
• To setup a sysevent in MythFrontend:
  • Navigate to Setup -> System Event Handlers
  • Scroll to desired Keystroke event #
  • Assign shutdown command
• The Keystroke event # is then your SYSEVENT# - for example, Keystroke event #3 = SYSEVENT03
• On Ubuntu 18.04.02 and MythTV 30, the following command may work: /sbin/shutdown now
• If this doesn't work, some installations of MythTV also include a MythShutdown script. Help can be found here: Mythtv wiki for sudo permissions

Acknowledgements

• MythTVServicesAPI - Implementing an easy way to interface with MythTV
• MythTV Wiki - Services API - Examples and descriptions of MythTV Services API
• Based off of existing samsungtv and anthemav components