Yamaha YNCA

• Description
• Features
• Installation
• Volume (dB) entity
• Remote control
• Presets
• Q & A

Description

Custom integration for Home Assistant to support Yamaha AV receivers with the YNCA protocol (serial and network).

According to reports of users the following AV receivers are working. There are probably more receivers that work, just give it a try. If your receiver works and is not in the list, please post a message in the discussions so the list can be updated.

HTR-4065, HTR-4071, HTR-6064, R-N500, RX-A2A, RX-A4A, RX-A6A, RX-A660, RX-A700, RX-A710, RX-A720, RX-A740, RX-A750, RX-A800, RX-A810, RX-A820, RX-A830, RX-A840, RX-A850, RX-A870, RX-A1000, RX-A1010, RX-A1020, RX-A1030, RX-A1040, RX-A2000, RX-A2010, RX-A2020, RX-A2070, RX-A3000, RX-A3010, RX-A3020, RX-A3030, RX-A3070, RX-S600D, RX-V475, RX-V477, RX-V481D, RX-V483, RX-V500D, RX-V573, RX-V575, RX-V671, RX-V673, RX-V675, RX-V677, RX-V679, RX-V681, RX-V685, RX-V771, RX-V773, RX-V775, RX-V777, RX-V867, RX-V871, RX-V1067, RX-V1071, RX-V1085, RX-V2067, RX-V2071, RX-V3067, RX-V3071, TSR-700, TSR-7850

For issues or feature requests please submit an issue on Github

Features

• Full UI support for adding devices
• Connect through serial cable, TCP/IP network or any URL handler supported by PySerial
• Local Push, so updates instantly
• Support for zones
• Power on/off
• Mute/Unmute
• Volume control
  • Standard Home Assistant media player
  • Separate number entity with Volume in dB like on the receiver
• Source selection
• Source names are taken from receiver (if supported by receiver)
• Soundmode selection
• Control playback state (depends on source)
• Provide metadata like artist, album, song (depends on source)
• Activate scenes (like the buttons on the front)
• Presets
• Send remote control commands
• Several controllable settings (if supported by receiver):
  • CINEMA DSP 3D mode
  • Adaptive DRC
  • Compressed Music Enhancer
  • HDMI Out enable/disable
  • Initial volume
  • Max volume
  • Sleep timer
  • Surround Decoder
  • Pure Direct
  • Speaker bass/treble (default disabled)
  • Headphone bass/treble (default disabled)

Installation

Home Assistant Community Store (HACS)

Recommended because you get notified of updates.

HACS is a 3rd party downloader for Home Assistant to easily install and update custom integrations made by the community. More information and installation instructions can be found on their site https://hacs.xyz/

• Open the HACS page
• Search for "Yamaha (YNCA)" in the HACS search bar
• Press the Download button and wait for it to download
• Restart Home Assistant

Then install the integration as usual:

• Go to the "Integration" page in Home Assistant (Settings > Devices & Services)
• Press the "Add Integration" button
• Search for "Yamaha (YNCA)" and select the integration. You might need to clear the browser cache for it to show up (e.g. reload with CTRL+F5).
• Follow the instructions

Manual

• Go to the releases section and download the zip file.
• Extract the zip
• Copy the contents to the custom_components directory in your config directory.
• Restart Home Assistant

Then install the integration as usual:

• Go to the "Integration" page in Home Assistant (Settings > Devices & Services)
• Press the "Add Integration" button
• Search for "Yamaha (YNCA)" and select the integration. You might need to clear the browser cache for it to show up (e.g. reload with CTRL+F5).
• Follow the instructions

Volume (dB) entity

The "Volume (dB)" entity was added to simplify volume control in Home Assistant. It is a number entity that controls the volume of a zone, like the volume in the media_player, but using the familiar dB unit instead of the percent numbers.

Background

The volume of a media_player entity in Home Assistant has to be in the range 0-to-1 (shown as 0-100% in the dashboard). The range of a Yamaha receiver is typically -80.5dB to 16.5dB and is shown in the dB unit on the display/overlay. To provide the full volume range to Home Assistant this integration maps the full dB range onto the 0-to-1 range in Home Assistant. However, this makes controlling volume in Home Assistant difficult because the Home Assistant numbers are not easily convertible to the dB numbers as shown by the receiver.

Remote control

The remote control entity allows sending remote control codes and commands to the receiver. There is remote entity for each zone.

The current list of commands is below. For the list of supported commands for a specific entity check the "commands" attribute of the remote entity. Note that this command list does not take zone capabilities into account, just that there is a known remote control code for that command.

on, standby, receiver_power_toggle, source_power_toggle, info, scene_1, scene_2, scene_3, scene_4, on_screen, option, up, down, left, right, enter, return, display, top_menu, popup_menu, stop, pause, play, rewind, fast_forward, previous, next, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, +10, ent

More remote control commands exist, but for now the commands included are the ones that are not available on the normal entities or that are potentially useful in other ways. E.g. sending scene_1 can be used as a workaround for unsupported scene command on some receivers and commands like play are forwarded over HDMI-CEC so it allows you to control devices that do not have an API otherwise. More commands can be added later if more use cases are discovered.

Next to sending the predefined commands it is possible to send IR codes directly in case you want to send something that is not in the commands list. The Yamaha IR commands are NEC commands and are 4, 6 or 8 characters long. E.g. the on command for the main zone has code 7E81-7E81. The separator is optional. Since each code includes the zone it is possible to send a code through any of the remote entities.

Sending the commands is done through the remote.send_command action offered by Home Assistant. For manualy experimentation use the Developer Tools in Home Assistant. Select the device or entity and type the command or IR code you want to send and perform the action. The repeat, delay and hold options are not supported.

Example:

service: remote.send_command
data:
  command: receiver_power_toggle
target:
  entity_id: remote.rx_a810_main_remote

In case you want to have buttons on a dashboard to send the commands the code below can be used as a starting point. It uses only standard built-in Home Assistant cards, so it should work on all configurations.

Presets

Presets can be activated and stored with the integration for several inputsources. The most obvious input that support presets is the radio inputs like AM/FM or DAB tuner. Inputs that support presets are: Napster, Netradio, Pandora, PC, Rhapsody, Sirius, SiriusIR, Tuner and USB.

Presets can be selected in the mediabrowser of the mediaplayer or in automations with the media_player.play_media action. When selecting a preset, the receiver will turn on and switch input if needed.

Due to limitations on the protocol the integration can only show the preset number, no name or what is stored.

Store presets

Some presets can be managed in the Yamaha AV Control app (e.g. Tuner presets). Home Assistant does not have a standardized way to manage presets, so the store_preset action was added. It will store a preset with the provided number for the current playing item.

service: yamaha_ynca.store_preset
data:
  preset_id: 12
target:
  entity_id: media_player.rx_a810_main

Media content format

In some cases it is not possible to select presets from the UI and it is needed to manually provide the media_content_id and media_content_type.

The media_content_type is always "music". The media_content_id format is listed in the table below. Replace the "1" at the end with the preset number you need.

Q & A

• Q: Why are entities unavailable when receiver is in standby?
  The receiver does not allow changing of settings when it is in standby, so the entities become Unavailable in Home Assistant to indicate this.

• Q: Why does the integration not show all features mentioned in the README even when my receiver supports them?
  The integration tries to autodetect as many features as possible, but it is not possible for all features on all receivers. You can adjust detected/supported some features for your receiver in the integration configuration. It can also be that your receiver does not expose that feature. You can make an issue if you believe it is supposed to be supported on your receiver.

• Q: How can I stream audio from a URL?
  You can't with this integration because the protocol does not support that. You might be able to use the DLNA Digital Media Renderer integration that comes with Home Assistant.

• Q: Why are Scene buttons are not working for my receiver?
  On some receivers (e.g. RX-V475) the command to activate the scenes does not work even though the receiver seems to indicate support for them. There might be more receivers with this issue, please report them in an issue or start a discussion.

  The non-working buttons can be disabled in the integration configuration by selecting "0" for number of scenes instead of "Auto detect".

  As a workaround the scenes can be activated by sending the scene commands by performing the remote.send_command action on the Remote control entity.

service: remote.send_command
data:
  command: scene_1
target:
  entity_id: remote.rx_V475_main_remote