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Music Player Daemon smart home integration, free and open source

Music Player Daemon integration for Gladys Assistant

Control your MPD players (moOde, Volumio, piCorePlayer…): music, volume, playlists, notifications.

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Control your MPD players from Gladys: a Raspberry Pi plugged into an amplifier with moOde, Volumio, piCorePlayer, or MPD itself. Play, pause, change the song and the volume, start a playlist, play a doorbell sound or a web radio and then go back to the music, see what is playing on the dashboard. Everything stays on your local network: no cloud, no account.

Developed without the hardware: feedback welcome. The integration was built and tested against a simulated MPD server that answers like MPD 0.23, not against a real player. Please report what works and what does not in the issues.

This integration is not affiliated with the MPD project, nor with moOde, Volumio or piCorePlayer.

What you need​

  • Gladys Assistant 5.2.0 or later.
  • A player running MPD, reachable from Gladys on the network, on its MPD port (6600 by default). moOde and piCorePlayer (with its MPD extension) expose it out of the box; MPD itself listens on the network when bind_to_address is any or the IP of the machine in mpd.conf.
  • The password of MPD if mpd.conf has a password line. It needs the read, add and control rights (password "secret@read,add,control"). Most players have no password.

Set up​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations, then Install from GitHub, and enter https://github.com/guim31/gladys-mpd (or install Music Player Daemon from the catalog once it is listed).
  2. In Configuration, enter the address of your player (192.168.1.20, moode.home, or 192.168.1.20:6601 for another port), its password if it has one, and a name (Living room). Up to three more players below.
  3. Choose the Language of the devices (names of the features, messages) and, if you want, the Notification volume. Save.
  4. Click Test the connection: one line per player, with the MPD version, what it is doing, its volume and its playlists.
  5. Open the Discover tab and add the devices.

Use fixed IP addresses (a DHCP reservation in your router) or names your DNS resolves: names ending in .local do not resolve inside the integration container.

The device of each player​

Each player is one device. Gladys shows it as a music player: the Music dashboard box (play, pause, previous, next, volume) and the Talk on a speaker scene action work with it.

Feature (English names)What it does
PlayPlays the queue (a paused song resumes where it was).
PausePauses.
Previous trackGoes to the previous song.
Next trackGoes to the next song.
Volume0 to 100 %, as MPD sees it. Absent value when MPD has no mixer (fixed volume).
Playback state1 while playing, 0 when paused or stopped. Kept in the history, usable as a scene trigger or condition.
PlaylistA list of the playlists saved in MPD: picking one replaces the queue with it and plays it.
NotificationReceives an address to play, then puts back what was playing (see below).

The list of playlists follows MPD: a playlist saved or deleted on the player appears or disappears in the list.

Dashboard widget​

Add the MPD player widget to a dashboard. In its settings, pick a player (empty: the first one of the configuration). It shows:

  • the title of the song and, below, the artist and the album (or the name of the web radio);
  • the volume as a gauge;
  • the state (playing, paused, stopped), the position in the queue, random and repeat;
  • four buttons: Previous, Play or Pause, Next and Options…. Options… opens a form filled with the current values: the volume, a playlist to play, random play and repeat. Only what you change is sent.

The widget follows the player as it changes: it is refreshed within ten seconds when a song starts, the volume moves or a playlist is saved. No cover art (see Limits).

Scenes​

Actions​

The player is chosen among the devices of the integration.

  • Play an MPD playlist: replaces the queue with a playlist saved in MPD, by its name (capitals and accents do not matter), and plays it. The number of songs queued can be used in the next actions of the scene. An unknown name fails the action with the list of the playlists. You can also choose a playlist from a list with the core action Control a device, on the Playlist feature.
  • Play an address on MPD: plays an address — a web radio (http://…, https://…), a sound on a web server, or a file of the music library of MPD (sounds/doorbell.mp3) — at the volume you give (empty: unchanged). Then: Resume the previous music (the address plays once, then what was playing comes back, see below) or Keep playing it (replaces the queue). The action fails when MPD cannot play the address.
  • Clear the MPD queue: removes every song from the queue; the player stops.
  • MPD random play: on, off, or toggle. The result (on or off) can be used in the next actions.
  • MPD repeat: off, the whole queue, or the current song.

Notifications and "Talk on a speaker"​

The Notification feature of a player, the Play an address on MPD action with Resume the previous music, and the Talk on a speaker action of Gladys (the voice comes from Gladys Plus) all work the same way:

  1. the address is added at the end of the queue (your queue is never replaced) and played at once, with the Notification volume of the configuration (or the volume of the action);
  2. MPD stops after it; it is then removed from the queue, and the volume and the options (random, repeat, single, consume) come back;
  3. the song that was playing resumes at the second it was interrupted; a paused song stays paused, a stopped player stays stopped.

A second notification while the first one plays replaces it. If someone takes over the player meanwhile (another song, the next one), the notification ends without touching the music. A notification that still plays after five minutes is ended and the music comes back. A web radio sent as a notification is not a notification: it keeps playing (its address stays in the queue).

The Talk on a speaker action has a volume slider, but Gladys does not pass it on to external integrations: use the Notification volume of the configuration.

Scene ideas​

  • Doorbell: when the doorbell button is pressed, Play an address on MPD sounds/doorbell.mp3 on the living room player, volume 70, then resume the previous music.
  • Wake-up radio: at 7:00 on weekdays, Play an address on MPD with the address of your favorite radio, Keep playing it, volume 25; at 7:45, the Pause feature.
  • Nobody home: when the house becomes empty, the Pause feature of every player.
  • Music follows the light: when the Playback state of the living room player becomes 1 after sunset, turn on the living room lamps.
  • Evening: at sunset, Play an MPD playlist "Apéro", then MPD random play on.

How it refreshes​

The integration keeps one connection open to each player and waits for its changes (the MPD idle command): what happens on the player, from Gladys or from another app, is in Gladys within a second. On top of that, every player is read every 30 seconds (it also checks that the player still answers), and an unchanged value is sent again every six hours so that Gladys never shows it as old. Only the changes are sent to Gladys.

A player that stops answering is shown unreachable (transport badge of the device, connection status of the integration), and the integration tries again: after 2, 5, 15, 30 seconds, then every minute. Nothing else is needed when it comes back.

MPD has no quota: the integration sends a few commands per change and two every 30 seconds, on one connection per player.

Troubleshooting​

  • "does not answer": check the address and the port (6600, or the one of port in mpd.conf), that MPD listens on the network (bind_to_address) and that no firewall blocks the port between Gladys and the player.
  • "password refused" or "a password is needed": enter the password of the password line of mpd.conf; it needs the read, add and control rights.
  • "no MPD server at this address and port": something else answers on this port (a web interface, for example): MPD listens on 6600 by default.
  • The volume stays empty: MPD has no mixer (mixer_type "none" in moOde for a fixed-volume DAC, for example): change the volume on the amplifier.
  • A notification does not play: the address must be reachable from the player itself (not from Gladys), in a format MPD can decode; a file of the library is given by its path in the library. Test the connection and the logs of the integration say why MPD refused it.
  • The Playlist list is empty: MPD has no playlist_directory, or no playlist saved yet.
  • More details: the logs of the integration (Integrations → Music Player Daemon → Logs) show the connections, the losses and the returns, and one line per command. Restart the container with LOG_LEVEL=debug to see every change received and every reading. Passwords are never written.

Limits​

  • Up to four players. A player is known by its slot in the configuration: changing its address keeps the device and its history.
  • No cover art in the widget: MPD sends it unresized, often above what Gladys accepts.
  • No browsing of the music library: playlists, addresses and library paths only.
  • No grouping of players (Snapcast) nor choice of outputs.
  • MPD cannot be found automatically on the network: enter the addresses.
  • The volume of the Talk on a speaker action is not passed on by Gladys (the Notification volume applies).
  • Gladys 5.2.0 or later (the Options… form of the widget).

Configuration settings​

These are the settings Music Player Daemon asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Your MPD playerssectionNoAny Music Player Daemon: a Raspberry Pi with moOde, Volumio, piCorePlayer, or MPD itself. Enter its IP address (port 6600 by default, add :port otherwise) and the password of mpd.conf if there is one. Up to four players.
Player addressstringNoIP address or name of the player, with :port if MPD does not listen on 6600.
PasswordsecretNoThe password line of mpd.conf. Empty if MPD has none (the usual case).
NamestringNoName of the device in Gladys. Empty: "MPD" followed by the address.
Second playersectionNoSame fields, for another MPD player of your network.
Player addressstringNo
PasswordsecretNo
NamestringNo
Third playersectionNoSame fields, for another MPD player of your network.
Player addressstringNo
PasswordsecretNo
NamestringNo
Fourth playersectionNoSame fields, for another MPD player of your network.
Player addressstringNo
PasswordsecretNo
NamestringNo
OptionssectionNoThe notification of a player plays an address (a doorbell sound, an announcement), then puts back what was playing.
Notification volumeselectNoVolume during a notification, back to the previous one after. Gladys does not pass on the volume of its "Talk on a speaker" action.
Language of the devicesselectNoNames given to the features when a device is added (Volume, Playlist…), and language of the messages.

How to install Music Player Daemon in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Music Player Daemon appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-mpd:1.0.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-mpd.

Music Player Daemon requires Gladys >=5.2.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations​

Music Player Daemon is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.

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