Easily make your speakers smart and cast to multiple devices using Music Assistant and Sendspin!
One firmware covers both WiFi and Ethernet — there is no need to pick a variant or reflash to switch:
- Ethernet plugged in: traffic moves to Ethernet. If the device is also joined to your WiFi, that connection stays up alongside, so Home Assistant never loses the device when you plug or unplug the cable. If WiFi has no network to join, it turns off entirely — the setup hotspot is never active while Ethernet is connected.
- No Ethernet: WiFi works as usual. The device rejoins its saved network, or opens the "Apollo CAST 1 Hotspot" for setup if none is configured (Improv via Bluetooth or USB works too).
Use the on-device Network Connection sensor (Diagnostics) to see which connection is active at a glance.
The CAST-1 gives you full Home Assistant control over a paired Wiz WizMote. Each of the nine buttons (On, Off, Night, Brightness Up/Down, and 1–4) is a configurable select on the device — assign it Play, Pause, Play / Pause, Next/Previous Track, Volume Up/Down, Toggle Light, or Send HA Event. The defaults give you media controls out of the box.
Set any button to Send HA Event to trigger a custom Home Assistant action — play a Music Assistant playlist, toggle a room's lights, run a scene or script.
Configure every button without leaving Home Assistant using the CAST-1 WizMote blueprint:
While an announcement plays, music ducks and the onboard LED lights up. Two sliders in Home Assistant set how much:
- Announcement Ducking (−80 to 0 dB, default −40) is how far the music drops. 0 turns ducking off.
- Announcement LED Brightness (0–100%, default 50%) is how bright the onboard LED is. 0 keeps the LED off.
The 5V / GND / IO1 header drives an addressable LED strip (WS2812, SK6812, WS2811, APA106 or SM16703). The firmware supports it out of the box, but its entities are disabled by default, since most CAST-1s don't have a strip connected. To use one, open the CAST-1's device page in Home Assistant and enable the LED Strip entities.
The strip's settings live in Home Assistant and under External LED Strip on the device's web page:
- Count is how many LEDs the strip has (up to 300, default 30).
- Chipset, Color Order and Max Brightness describe your strip.
- Effect A and Effect B are two effect slots. Each has a Pattern and a Speed (1 = one step per second, 100 = one step every 32 ms, on a log curve). Changes apply live while the effect runs. The patterns:
- Flicker dips to random levels between full and 30% brightness.
- Strobe is on for one step and off for the next.
- Rainbow moves a rainbow along the strip. It ignores the light's color.
- Color Wipe fills the strip one LED at a time, then clears it the same way.
- Scan moves one lit LED back and forth.
- Twinkle fades random LEDs in and out.
- Pulse fades the whole strip from off to full and back.
- Fireworks lights random sparks that spread and fade.
In automations, set the pattern and speed with select.select_option and number.set_value, then call light.turn_on with effect: "Effect A".
Warning
Photosensitivity: Strobe flashes faster than 3 times per second from about Speed 50 up, and reaches about 16 flashes per second at Speed 100. Pulse passes 3 per second from about Speed 75. Flashing in this range can trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.
Power long strips from their own 5V supply with a shared ground; the header can't supply a full-brightness strip, and LED Strip Max Brightness (default 50%) caps the draw. It doesn't reach partition lights, so give each partition its own color_correct.
Links:
Discord (Support/feedback/discussion/future products): http://dsc.gg/ApolloAutomation
Shop: https://apolloautomation.com
Wiki: https://wiki.apolloautomation.com