Kodi

The kodi platform allows you to control a Kodi multimedia system from Home Assistant.

The preferred way to set up the Kodi platform is through discovery, which requires an enabled web interface on your Kodi installation.

There is currently support for the following device types within Home Assistant:

Media Player
Notifications

Configuration

Adding Kodi to your Home Assistant instance can be done via the user interface, by using this My button:

Kodi can be auto-discovered by Home Assistant. If an instance was found, it will be shown as Discovered. You can then set it up right away.

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:

automation:
  - id: kodi_turn_on
    alias: "Kodi: turn on"
    trigger:
      - platform: device
        device_id: !secret kodi_device_id
        domain: kodi
        entity_id: media_player.kodi
        type: turn_on
    action:
      - service: script.kodi_turn_on

  - id: kodi_turn_off
    alias: "Kodi: turn off"
    trigger:
      - platform: device
        device_id: !secret kodi_device_id
        domain: kodi
        entity_id: media_player.kodi
        type: turn_off
    action:
      - service: script.kodi_turn_off

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:

entity_id: "<Kodi media_player entity_id>"
result_ok: <boolean>
input: <input parameters of the service call>
result: <data received from the Kodi API>

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.

script:
  turn_on_kodi_with_wol:
    sequence:
      - service: wake_on_lan.send_magic_packet
        data:
          mac: aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff
          broadcast_address: 192.168.255.255

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

script:
  kodi_quit:
    sequence:
      - service: kodi.call_method
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          method: Application.Quit

Hibernate method

script:
  kodi_hibernate:
    sequence:
      - service: kodi.call_method
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          method: System.Hibernate

Suspend method

script:
  kodi_suspend:
    sequence:
      - service: kodi.call_method
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          method: System.Suspend

Reboot method

script:
  kodi_reboot:
    sequence:
      - service: kodi.call_method
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          method: System.Reboot

Shutdown method

script:
  kodi_shutdown:
    sequence:
      - service: kodi.call_method
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          method: System.Shutdown

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:

script:
  turn_on_kodi_with_cec:
  sequence:
    - service: kodi.call_method
      target:
        entity_id: media_player.kodi
      data:
        method: Addons.ExecuteAddon
        addonid: script.json-cec
        params:
          command: activate

  turn_off_kodi_with_cec:
    sequence:
      - service: media_player.media_stop
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
      - service: kodi.call_method
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          method: Addons.ExecuteAddon
          addonid: script.json-cec
          params:
            command: standby

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

script:
  play_kodi_pvr:
    alias: "Turn on the silly box"
    sequence:
      - alias: "TV on"
        service: media_player.turn_on
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
      - alias: "Play TV channel"
        service: media_player.play_media
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          media_content_type: "CHANNEL"
          media_content_id: >
            {% if (now().hour < 14) or ((now().hour == 14) and (now().minute < 50)) %}
              10
            {% elif (now().hour < 16) %}
              15
            {% elif (now().hour < 20) %}
              2
            {% elif (now().hour == 20) and (now().minute < 50) %}
              10
            {% elif (now().hour == 20) or ((now().hour == 21) and (now().minute < 15)) %}
              15
            {% else %}
              10
            {% endif %}

Simple script to play a smart playlist

script:
  play_kodi_smp:
    alias: "Turn on the silly box with random Firefighter Sam episode"
    sequence:
      - alias: "TV on"
        service: media_player.turn_on
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
      - service: media_player.play_media
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          media_content_type: DIRECTORY
          media_content_id: special://profile/playlists/video/feuerwehrmann_sam.xsp

Trigger a Kodi video library update

script:
  update_library:
    alias: "Update Kodi Library"
    sequence:
      - alias: "Call Kodi update"
        service: kodi.call_method
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kodi
        data:
          method: VideoLibrary.Scan

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:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
notify:
  - platform: kodi
    name: NOTIFIER_NAME
    host: IP_ADDRESS

Configuration Variables

Looking for your configuration file?

name string (Optional)

Name displayed in the frontend. The notifier will bind to the service notify.NOTIFIER_NAME.

host string Required

The host name or address of the device that is running Kodi.

port integer (Optional, default: 8080)

The HTTP port number.

proxy_ssl boolean (Optional, default: false)

Connect to Kodi with HTTPS. Useful if Kodi is behind an SSL proxy.

username string (Optional)

The XBMC/Kodi HTTP username.

password string (Optional)

The XBMC/Kodi HTTP password.

Script example

kodi_notification:
  sequence:
  - service: notify.NOTIFIER_NAME
    data:
      title: "Home Assistant"
      message: "Message to KODI from Home Assistant!"
      data:
        displaytime: 20000
        icon: "warning"