I understand that, but once they are off they are off and on is no longer something you can control outside that switch.
Why I’d actually want a switch is when someone else walks in the room without a device (or knowledge of the voice assistant) who wants to turn on/off a light. Best of both worlds, although I do appreciate that coloured bulbs add another dimension that complicates the physical controls.
I would be more than happy to be proven wrong, but from what I understand, your standard light switches are just that a simple bridge/switch in the circuit, WiFi light switches are complete devices in their own right that also happens to allow power out to a light globe so need more wiring. Everything I’ve seen that bridges physical and remote control have this sort of setup.
If you can point me at that particular solution I’d appreciate it. I’ve asked that question on Google forums and HomeAssistant forums and been told it can’t be done. I saw some solutions of playing music TO a Google Home, but not the other way around.
To be clear, my use case is as follows:
I play music through google music.
Currently this is either through a Google Home Mini or similar.
Right now I can “Cast” to Chrome enabled devices like my Chromecast Audio or my Chrome enabled AV Receiver. This works perfectly. My understanding is that once they start playing the end devices takes over the receiving, decoding and playback of music so the initiating device isn’t technically needed anymore.
Once upon a time I used Apple Music so have a number of AirPlay capable speakers around the house.
Technically I can play Google Music on my iPhone and AirPlay it to an AirPlay speaker, but I have to manually to do this but I need to keep the phone in range since it’s actually playing the music.
What I want to do is say to my Google Home Mini “Play music in the bedroom” and have it start playing music (from google music) and cast/airplay it to the AirPlay speaker in the bedroom.
I assume I need a software/server bridge that acts like a chromecast receiver which then pipes the audio via AirPlay to an AirPlay enabled Speaker… I don’t care about lag or sync, I just want to use the speakers I have via my assistant.
I could sort of do this with an old Mac running AirServer to receive audio then Audio Hijack to redirect it to an AirPlay speaker… but even if this works I need a separate mac (or OSX VM) and maybe licence for each setup.
I’d be happy if I could get a docker container or linux based VM or something for each device.