Skip to content

Themes

Jump to bottom
Edward Brown edited this page Jun 17, 2022 · 2 revisions

Amniotic uses multiple Themes you can mix together. Theme here just means a certain theme of ambient sounds (e.g. Birdsong or Rainfall) made up of individual tracks within that Theme.

Themes

Theme can be created and played via the Home Assistant controls.

When that theme is enabled, via the controls above, the individual files will be looped in "Shuffle" mode. Switching between Themes with the Theme pull-down, you'll be able to enable/disable each one, set their relative volumes and their output devices etc., and the sensors will update to provide information about the current track.

There are two ways to add Themes:

  • The easier way: Create new Themes, and populate them with YouTube links, via the Home Assistant interface.
  • The more manual way: Copy audio files (e.g. MP3) to the host device directly.

Creating Themes via Home Assistant Controls

When running for the first time, you'll have a single theme called Default Theme. You can add new Themes by clicking the New Theme control, and entering a name.

ℹ️ Home Assistant does not seem to provide a simple text box control. So things that require text input (i.e. providing the name for a Theme, etc.) need to use an alarm panel code entry box, which works but looks a bit weird. I hope Home Assistant provides a proper text box entity in the near future.

The Theme can then be populated by clicking Download YouTube Link, and entering the link to an ambient sound video. Amniotic with then split the audio channel from the video and download it into your Theme.

ℹ️ Why YouTube?

Originally I'd planned Spotify integration. But on the very day I started to work on it, the libspotify API was closed down. Anyway, since I wanted some kind of cloud integration (so as not to strictly require local files), and because YouTube contains a lot ambient audio content, I though that it would make for a decent solution, at least for the meantime.

Adding Audio Files Manually

Addon

If you're running as a Home Assistant addon, you can simply use the Home Assistant Media manager to add/modify Themes. By default, Amniotic Themes are saved in the Amniotic sub-directory.

Open your Home Assistant instance and browse available media.

Here's an example of what the structure should look like:

  • Amniotic
    • Birdsong
      • Wren at Dawn.mp3
      • Starling in Trees.mp3
      • ...
    • Rainfall
      • Rain in forest.m4a
      • Downpour on tent.mp3
      • ...
    • Fireplace
      • Roaring wood stove (loopable).mp3

Non-Addon

If you're not running as an addon, you'll need to manually copy audio files to the machine running Amniotic, using the same directory structure as above. The default path is ~/.local/share/amniotic.

Audio Formats

Since Amniotic uses the Python VLC bindings, it should support any format VLC does. But probably safest to stick to simple audio formats, MP3, M4A etc. I don't know what will happen if you use videos files, etc.!

Clone this wiki locally