# LED Strip Media Progress Bar ( Home Assistant / Apple TV / WLED) Recently I installed an WLED strip on my media cabinet which sits below my TV. Initially, I set up a basic automation to power the LED strip on/off following the power state of my Apple TV. One day as I was pondering my next unnecessary and over-engineered automation project, I thought: **What if I could use the LED strip as a media progress indicator bar for content playing on my Apple TV?** After some quick research, it seems like other users have used WLED as a progress bar for other use cases, but nothing perfectly fit my goal. ## Goals & Limitations * The LED strip should update at a reasonable rate matching up with the content being played on my Apple TV. * A known limitation of the Home Assistant Apple TV integration is that the polling/update frequency is not that good. * Our automation will need to calculate a precise progress value, assuming we may not always get timely/reliable updates from our Apple TV attributes. * It seems that the Apple TV attributes in Home Assistant do not reflect application state, they only update when media is started/stopped ([see this post](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/feature-request-apple-tv-app-id-attribute-update-on-select/508712)). * If I exit a movie for example, the entity reflects a “paused” state and the attributes still reflect the movie that was exited. This does not change until new media is played. * Since I don’t want to stare at the progress bar when nothing is playing or after I exit content, I will treat the “paused” state (with a slight delay) as a trigger to go back to my default color.
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Full disclaimer, I make no claims of being an expert at writing code or automations. As such, my talented French colleague by the name of Claude will be lending a heavy hand on this project. With that said, please feel free to tell Claude how you feel about their code.
## Components 1. **Apple TV Integration**: Built-in Home Assistant integration that monitors Apple TV state. 1. The Apple TV integration provides several states that the automations monitor: * `playing`: Media is currently playing * `paused`: Media is paused * `idle`: Apple TV is on but not playing media * `standby`: Apple TV is in sleep mode 2. Additionally, the integration provides media attributes that we will use to calculate the current percentage of the progress bar: * `media_position`: Current position in the media (in seconds) * `media_duration`: Total duration of the media (in seconds) * `media_position_updated_at`: Timestamp when the position was last updated 2. **WLED REST API**: Custom REST API endpoint for direct JSON control of WLED. ## WLED API After a little bit of research, I decided that using the [WLED JSON API](https://kno.wled.ge/interfaces/json-api/) would be the best approach for this project. This allows us to send a POST call along with a JSON body containing the instructions for the LED strip. For example, my LED strip contains a total of 108 addressable LEDs. If I send this very basic POST request with the following JSON body, my entire LED strip turns orange. To test this you can use an API client like Postman, Scalar, etc. ```json { "seg": { "i": [0, 108, "FFA500"] } } ``` Here are some additional examples of the JSON syntax: 1. **Single Segment Control** (used in the idle state): ```json { "on": true, "bri": 255, "seg": { "i": [0, 108, "FF8C00"] } } ``` 2. **Multi Segment Control** (used in the progress bar state): ```json { "on": true, "bri": 255, "seg": { "i": [0, 42, "00FFFF", 42, 108, "FF0080"] } } ``` The `"i"` array in the WLED JSON format represents segments with their start position, end position, and color. The syntax is: `[start_position1, end_position1, "color1", start_position2, end_position2, "color2", ...]` ## Home Assistant ### Configuration.yaml To apply this API control approach in Home Assistant, we added the following to our `configuration.yaml` file to define a REST command that will directly send JSON data to the WLED controller: ```yaml rest_command: wled_progress: url: http://123.456.789.0/json method: POST content_type: "application/json" payload: "{{ progress }}" ``` This command is used by both automations to control the WLED strip in different ways. As you can see, the payload has a placeholder variable "{{ progress }}". This will allow us to leverage the same rest\_command in multiple different automations, as we can dynamically construct the JSON payload within our automation code. ### Automations.yaml #### 1\. Apple TV Power and Paused State This consolidated automation handles both power on/off scenario and the paused scenario based on Apple TV state. I have chose the color orange (`"FF8C00"`) as my idle color but you can change this. ```yaml - id: 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' alias: Apple TV LED Power and Color Control description: Controls LED strip power and color based on Apple TV state triggers: - entity_id: media_player.apple_tv trigger: state - event: start trigger: homeassistant actions: - variables: apple_tv_state: '{{ states(''media_player.apple_tv'') }}' - choose: # When Apple TV is playing, we don't need to do anything as the progress bar automation handles it - conditions: - condition: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv state: playing sequence: - delay: milliseconds: 100 # When Apple TV is paused or idle, turn on LED and set to orange - conditions: - condition: or conditions: - condition: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv state: paused - condition: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv state: idle sequence: - target: entity_id: light.media_cabinet_led_strip data: {} action: light.turn_on # Wait before applying orange color - delay: seconds: 3 - data: progress: "{% set json_data = {\n \"on\": true,\n \"bri\": 255,\n \"seg\": {\n \"i\": [0, 108, \"FF8C00\"]\n }\n} %} {{ json_data|tojson }}\n" action: rest_command.wled_progress # When Apple TV is off or standby, turn off the LED strip - conditions: - condition: or conditions: - condition: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv state: standby - condition: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv state: 'off' sequence: - target: entity_id: light.media_cabinet_led_strip data: {} action: light.turn_off # Also send command to ensure WLED is completely off - data: progress: "{% set json_data = {\n \"on\": false,\n \"seg\": {\n \"i\": [0, 0, \"000000\", 0, 108, \"000000\"]\n }\n} %} {{ json_data|tojson }}\n" action: rest_command.wled_progress mode: restart max_exceeded: silent ``` **Key aspects:** * Consolidates both power control and orange color setting into a single automation * Anywhere the orange color is mentioned (`"FF8C00"`) can be customized to a HEX color of your choosing * Uses a state-based approach with three conditions: * When playing: Does nothing (lets the progress bar automation handle it) * When paused/idle: Turns on LED and sets to orange after a 3-second delay * When off/standby: Turns off the LED strip completely * Uses the restart mode to ensure only one instance runs at a time * Includes the HomeAssistant start trigger to set the correct state on system restart #### 2\. Apple TV Progress Bar When Playing This automation creates a progress bar effect on the WLED strip while media is playing on the Apple TV: ```yaml - id: 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' alias: Apple TV Progress Bar When Playing description: Shows progress bar on WLED when Apple TV is playing trigger: # Trigger to state - platform: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv to: 'playing' # Trigger for media_position attribute state - platform: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv attribute: media_position # Trigger every 1 second to ensure timely updates to LED strip - platform: time_pattern seconds: '/1' condition: # Ensure Apple TV is in a playing state - condition: state entity_id: media_player.apple_tv state: 'playing' - condition: template value_template: '{{ state_attr("media_player.apple_tv", "media_duration") is not none and state_attr("media_player.apple_tv", "media_duration") > 0 }}' action: # Format our JSON payload to send to our rest command - service: rest_command.wled_progress data: progress: > {% set last_position = state_attr('media_player.apple_tv', 'media_position')|float(0) %} {% set last_updated = state_attr('media_player.apple_tv', 'media_position_updated_at') %} {% set duration = state_attr('media_player.apple_tv', 'media_duration')|float(1) %} {% set position = last_position %} {% if last_updated is not none %} {% set time_diff = (now().timestamp() - as_timestamp(last_updated))|float(0) %} {% set position = last_position + time_diff %} {% if position > duration %} {% set position = duration %} {% endif %} {% endif %} {% set progress_percent = position / duration if duration > 0 else 0 %} {% set led_count = 108 %} {% set progress_leds = (progress_percent * led_count)|int %} {% set json_data = { "on": true, "bri": 255, "seg": { "i": [0, progress_leds, "00FFFF", progress_leds, 108, "FF0080"] } } %} {{ json_data|tojson }} mode: restart max_exceeded: silent ``` **Key aspects:** * Updates every second and on media position changes * Calculates the current playback position, accounting for time elapsed since last update * Calculates the percentage of playback completed and converts to LED positions * Creates a two-color effect: cyan (`"00FFFF"`) for completed portion and pink (`"FF0080"`) for remaining portion * Uses the WLED segment array notation to create a split-color effect # Future Enhancement Ideas Potential improvements to this setup: 1. Add color customization through Home Assistant input\_select entities 2. Implement brightness control based on time of day or ambient light sensors 3. Add additional visual effects for specific media types (movies, music, etc.) # Closing I hope you find this information useful! Please share your adaptations below and as always, feel free to ask any questions.