Media Players

Media players

Kinboard can show and control speakers, televisions, and other media players that are already connected to Home Assistant. The Media page gives each player its own card, while the optional dashboard widget follows whatever is currently playing.

Before you start

Connect Kinboard to Home Assistant under Settings → Home Assistant. The player must appear in Home Assistant as a media_player entity. Kinboard does not connect directly to Sonos, Apple TV, Spotify, or a speaker vendor; Home Assistant is the driver.

Enable the Media plugin under Settings → Plugins, then open Settings → Media players:

1. Choose a Home Assistant media-player entity.
2. Select Add a player.
3. Repeat for each speaker or screen you want on the board.

The Media navigation item appears after the first player is added. Removing a player from Kinboard does not remove or change the entity in Home Assistant.

Controls

Open Media from the navigation bar to see every configured player. A card can show artwork, title, artist, playback progress, volume, and the current source. Controls appear only when the device tells Home Assistant it supports them, so different players can have different buttons:

• power on or off;
• previous, play or pause, and next;
• mute and volume;
• source selection;
• Browse, for devices that expose a browsable media library.

Browse opens one folder or category at a time. Select an album, playlist, station, or playable item to start it on that player. Library artwork is proxied through Kinboard so the Home Assistant access token never reaches the browser.

An unreachable player is dimmed and marked Not reachable. Kinboard does not turn a temporarily slow device into a connection failure; a command that does fail shows a small error on that player's card.

Dashboard widget

Enable Media under Settings → Widgets to put the player card on the dashboard. The widget stays out of the way when nothing is playing. If several players are active, use the player names above the card to switch between them.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Check
No devices in Add a player	Confirm Home Assistant is connected and the device exists there as a media_player entity.
Media is absent from navigation	Enable the Media plugin and add at least one player.
A control is missing	Check the entity's supported features in Home Assistant. Kinboard hides controls the entity does not advertise.
Browse is missing or empty	The Home Assistant entity or its integration must support media browsing and return a library.
Artwork is blank	Confirm Home Assistant can load the entity picture and that Kinboard can reach the Home Assistant URL from the server.
Commands fail	Try the same command in Home Assistant, then check docker logs kinboard-webapp.

See Home Assistant for connection setup and Dashboard for arranging widgets.