Budget around 65 minutes. Mostly dashboard card configuration, not new automation YAML.

Section 1: Status

type: entities
title: "Multimedia status"
entities:
  - entity: input_boolean.house_silence
    name: "House silence"
  - entity: binary_sensor.should_be_quiet
    name: "Should be quiet (automatic)"
  - entity: input_boolean.manual_silence_baby_sleeping
    name: "Manual silence: baby sleeping"
  - entity: input_select.announcement_zone
    name: "Announcement zone"
  - entity: media_player.living_room_speaker
    name: "Living room: now playing"
  - entity: media_player.living_room_tv
    name: "Living room TV"

Section 2: Control and Scenes

type: grid
columns: 3
title: "Scenes"
cards:
  - type: button
    name: "Movie"
    icon: mdi:movie-open
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: script.scene_movie
  - type: button
    name: "Cooking"
    icon: mdi:pot-steam
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: script.scene_cooking
  - type: button
    name: "Guests"
    icon: mdi:account-group
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: script.scene_guests
  - type: button
    name: "Wake-Up"
    icon: mdi:weather-sunset-up
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: script.scene_wakeup
  - type: button
    name: "Silence: baby sleeping"
    icon: mdi:baby-face-outline
    tap_action:
      action: toggle
      entity: input_boolean.manual_silence_baby_sleeping
  - type: button
    name: "Stop everything"
    icon: mdi:stop-circle
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: script.stop_all_media
      confirmation:
        text: "Stop all media in the house?"

Notice that only the "Stop everything" button has confirmation: it's the only action in this section that affects the whole house at once, and it could catch someone off guard while they're listening to something in another room. The other scenes are local and reversible without risk, so they don't need an extra confirmation prompt.

Section 3: Diagnostics

type: entities
title: "Multimedia diagnostics"
entities:
  - entity: input_boolean.multimedia_automation_enabled
    name: "Multimedia automation"
  - entity: input_number.announcement_volume_home
    name: "Volume: home announcement"
  - entity: input_number.announcement_volume_critical
    name: "Volume: critical announcement"
  - type: section
    label: "Music Assistant"
  - entity: sensor.music_assistant_server_status
    name: "MA server status"
  - type: section
    label: "TTS"
  - entity: sensor.piper_status
    name: "Piper engine status"

The diagnostic section helps you quickly check whether the module's foundation (Music Assistant, Piper) is actually running before you start hunting for a bug in a specific automation: if the MA server is offline, no multimedia scene will work, regardless of how correctly its code is written.

A media-control Card for a Live Overview

type: grid
columns: 2
title: "Players"
cards:
  - type: media-control
    entity: media_player.living_room_speaker
  - type: media-control
    entity: media_player.kitchen_speaker
  - type: media-control
    entity: media_player.bedroom_speaker
  - type: media-control
    entity: media_player.living_room_tv

This ties back to Lesson 2: the media-control card automatically shows only the buttons that a given entity actually supports: a practical, visual reminder of exactly which features each speaker has, without checking Developer Tools every time.

The media-control Card: A Built-In Tool Before You Reach for HACS

Before installing external cards from HACS to handle multimedia, check the standard media-control card built into Home Assistant: it shows the album art, title, artist, a progress bar, and basic controls (play, pause, next track, volume) with no extra installation at all. For most home dashboards, that's entirely sufficient; HACS cards (Mini Media Player, for example) mostly add polish and minor conveniences, not new functional capabilities.

Personalizing the Multimedia Dashboard by Time of Day

Just like the outdoor dashboard from Module 21, the multimedia dashboard built in this lesson gains clarity when it adapts to context: in the morning, the priority is quick access to the Wake-Up scene and morning information, in the evening to the Movie scene and silence mode. Conditional cards, showing different sections depending on the time of day (based on a helper or the built-in time sensor), keep the dashboard concise and relevant at every hour, instead of showing every feature at once around the clock.

Integrating HACS Cards From Module 15 for Richer Visualization

The standard media-control card, described in this lesson's main content, is a solid starting point, but community cards from HACS, such as Mini Media Player or Mushroom Media Player, offer a more compact, configurable look, better matching the style of a dashboard built following Module 15's patterns. The decision between a built-in card and a HACS solution is the same tradeoff between simplicity and maintenance certainty (built-in card) versus aesthetics and flexibility (HACS card), covered in more detail in the module on maintaining Home Assistant.

A Quick-Access Widget for the Most-Used Scenes

Beyond the full multimedia dashboard, it's worth considering a condensed widget (modeled on the phone widgets from Module 16) with direct access to the most-used scenes: Movie, Silence, Stop everything. A widget like that, visible the moment you open the Home Assistant app, with no need to navigate to the full dashboard, shortens the path from need to action for everyday, routine tasks.

Dashboard-Only Mode for Guests Without Settings Access

Tying back to the access-control principles from the Home Assistant maintenance module, a multimedia dashboard shared with guests (through a living-room tablet, say) should be configured in restricted mode: only the multimedia and scene control cards visible, with no access to system settings or other, unrelated household dashboards. Fully Kiosk, covered earlier in this module, additionally lets you lock navigation to a single, designated dashboard.

A Multimedia Dashboard for Short-Term Guests (Airbnb)

For short-term rental homes, a dedicated, maximally simplified multimedia dashboard for guests, limited to basic TV and speaker control with no access to the full house configuration, is a practical extension of the access-control principles from the maintenance module. A dashboard like that, accessible through a temporary guest account active only for the stay, improves the renter's experience without compromising the security of the rest of the system.

Multimedia Dashboard in Dark and Light Mode: Visual Accessibility

The multimedia dashboard, like the rest of the Home Assistant interface, is worth designing with readability in mind under different lighting conditions: dark mode for evening use in a dimmed living room, light mode for use in full daylight. Automatically switching the theme based on time of day, similar to the lighting automation from Module 20, improves dashboard comfort without a manual settings change.

How to Test This Lesson

Common Mistakes

Practical Task

Key Takeaways

What's Next

The module's final lesson: Mini Project: A Home Multimedia, Announcement, and Notification System. We wrap up the whole module with a concrete rollout plan.