The kodi platform allows you to control a Kodi multimedia system from Home Assistant.
The preferred way to set up the Kodi platform is by through discovery, which requires an enabled web interface on your Kodi installation.
There is currently support for the following device types within Home Assistant:
When you first open the Kodi web interface, you’ll see a list of icons on the left side of the screen. These are similar to the Kodi main menu options. They allow you to browse through the shows, movies, and music stored on your device or access the device’s Kodi addons. The web interface is a little-known but incredibly useful feature of Kodi. With it, you can fully control Kodi from another device, browse for files in your Kodi system, and even play back media from your Kodi onto your browsing device. The “Web interface” option should, by default, say “Kodi web interface – Chrous2,” but might be different if you’ve changed your web interface in the past. Make sure you set this to the default, assuming you want to try the new default interface. The web interface is a built-in feature of the Kodi media center. It lets you control your Kodi system, either from the same device or a different one, through your web browser. This is useful in several ways. Maybe you're watching Kodi on your computer and want to be able to control it from your phone. Chorus has the biggest potential to become the new default webinterface for Kodi as well (possibly not until next version though, v15 or maybe at 14.1 ) The question was about interfaces outside of the official repository though, so chorus does not qualify:).
Configuration
The Kodi media player is configured through the integrations screen. If your Kodi is discovered, you’ll see it there and can click to set it up.If you do not see your device, you can click on the + button and choose Kodi.The flow will guide you through the setup. Most of the settings are advanced, and the defaults should work.
If you previously had Kodi configured through configuration.yaml, it’s advisable to remove it, and configure from the UI.If you do not remove it, your configuration will be imported with the following limitations:
- Your turn on/off actions will not be imported. This functionality is now available through device triggers.
- You may have duplicate entities.
- Kodi must be on when Home Assistant is loading for the first time for the configuration to be imported.
Turning On/Off
You can customize your turn on and off actions through automations. Simply use the relevant Kodi device triggers and your automation will be called to perform the turn_on or turn_off sequence; see the Kodi turn on/off samples section for scripts that can be used.
These automations can be configured through the UI (see Device Triggers for automations). If you prefer YAML, you’ll need to get the device ID from the UI automation editor. Automations would be of the form:
Services
Service kodi.add_to_playlist
Add music to the default playlist (i.e., playlistid=0).
| Service data attribute | Optional | Description |
|---|---|---|
entity_id | no | Name(s) of the Kodi entities where to add the media. |
media_type | yes | Media type identifier. It must be one of SONG or ALBUM. |
media_id | no | Unique Id of the media entry to add (songid or albumid). If not defined, media_name and artist_name are needed to search the Kodi music library. |
media_name | no | Optional media name for filtering media. Can be ‘ALL’ when media_type is ‘ALBUM’ and artist_name is specified, to add all songs from one artist. |
artist_name | no | Optional artist name for filtering media. |
Service kodi.call_method
Call a Kodi JSON-RPC API method with optional parameters. Results of the Kodi API call will be redirected in a Home Assistant event: kodi_call_method_result.
| Service data attribute | Optional | Description |
|---|---|---|
entity_id | no | Name(s) of the Kodi entities where to run the API method. |
method | yes | Name of the Kodi JSON-RPC API method to be called. |
| any other parameter | no | Optional parameters for the Kodi API call. |
Event triggering
When calling the kodi.call_method service, if the Kodi JSON-RPC API returns data, when received by Home Assistant it will fire a kodi_call_method_result event on the event bus with the following event_data:
Kodi turn on/off samples
The following scripts can be used in automations for turning on/off your Kodi instance; see Turning on/off. You could also simply use these sequences directly in the automations without creating scripts.
Turn on Kodi with Wake on LAN
With this configuration, when calling media_player/turn_on on the Kodi device, a magic packet will be sent to the specified MAC address. To use this service, first you need to configuration the wake_on_lan integration in Home Assistant, which is achieved simply by adding wake_on_lan: to your configuration.yaml.
Turn off Kodi with API calls
Here are the equivalent ways to configure each of the old options to turn off Kodi (quit, hibernate, suspend, reboot, or shutdown):
- Quit method
- Hibernate method
- Suspend method
- Reboot method
- Shutdown method
Turn on and off the TV with the Kodi JSON-CEC Add-on
For Kodi devices running 24/7 attached to a CEC capable TV (OSMC / OpenElec and systems alike running in Rasperry Pi’s, for example), this configuration enables the optimal way to turn on/off the attached TV from Home Assistant while Kodi is always active and ready:
This example and the following requires to have the script.json-cec plugin installed on your Kodi player. It’ll also expose the endpoints standby, toggle and activate without authentication on your Kodi player. Use this with caution.
Kodi services samples
Simple script to turn on the PVR in some channel as a time function
Simple script to play a smart playlist
Trigger a Kodi video library update
Notifications
The kodi notifications platform allows you to send messages to your Kodi multimedia system from Home Assistant.
To add Kodi to your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:
Configuration Variables
Name displayed in the frontend. The notifier will bind to the service notify.NOTIFIER_NAME.
The host name or address of the device that is running Kodi.
The HTTP port number.
Connect to Kodi with HTTPS. Useful if Kodi is behind an SSL proxy.
The XBMC/Kodi HTTP username.
The XBMC/Kodi HTTP password.
Script example
Message variables
Configuration Variables
Title that is displayed on the message.
Message to be displayed.
Configure message properties
Kodi Web Interface Lost Websocket Connection
Kodi comes with 3 default icons: info, warning and error, a URL to an image is also valid.
Kodi Web Interface Chorus 2
10000 ms)Length in milliseconds the message stays on screen.
To use notifications, please see the getting started with automation page.
Kodi Repositories, Kodi Repos in abbreviation, are containers that store multiple addons, which are essential apps on Kodi media player for accessing unlimited media streams. Additionally, Kodi repositories can also contain multiple other repositories, for some, one another. On this page, I’ll introduce the best working repositories on Kodi in 2020, they’ve gathered many excellent working addons in one place for you to download and install. Furthermore, I’ll step by step show you how to install them on Kodi.
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