Mpris2awtrix

display DBus/MPRIS track details on Ulanzi/Awtrix 3 display Home Assistant automation

Posted on 2 mins read
Ulanzi/Awtrix 3 display showing Home Assistant notification with artist and track name
Ulanzi/Awtrix 3 display showing Home Assistant notification with artist and track name
Table of Contents

This guide configures your Ulanzi/Awtrix 3 display to show notifications with the currently playing track’s artist and title whenever a new song starts on any MPRIS-compatible media player (Feishin , Spotify, Firefox, VLC, etc.) on your Linux machine. It uses dbus2mqtt to forward media player events over MQTT, which are then picked up by Home Assistant and sent to the Awtrix display.

Prerequisites

Configure dbus2mqtt

Download the example mqtt mediaplayer config and save it as ~/.config/dbus2mqtt/config.yaml. You can customize this file to filter specific media players if needed.

Create a new systemd service unit: ~/.local/share/systemd/user/mpris2awtrix.service

 1[Unit]
 2Description=Send notification to Awtrix display via HA MQTT
 3
 4[Service]
 5Type=simple
 6ExecStart=/home/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.local/bin/dbus2mqtt --config /home/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.config/dbus2mqtt/config.yaml
 7User=<YOUR_USERNAME>
 8StandardOutput=journal
 9StandardError=journal
10
11[Install]
12WantedBy=default.target

Enable mpris2awtrix service 

1systemctl --user daemon-reload
2systemctl --user enable mpris2awtrix.service
3systemctl --user start mpris2awtrix.service
4systemctl --user status mpris2awtrix.service

Create Home Assistant automation

Here’s a raw YAML Home Assistant automation which sends a notification to Awtrix display only when a new track starts playing.
The Position == 0 condition ensures it triggers only at the beginning of a track (not on resume or seek), while PlaybackStatus == 'Playing' confirms the media is actively playing.

 1alias: Show track name on Awtrix
 2description: ""
 3triggers:
 4  - trigger: mqtt
 5    options:
 6      topic: dbus2mqtt/org.mpris.MediaPlayer2/state
 7    enabled: true
 8conditions:
 9  - condition: template
10    value_template: "{{ trigger.payload_json.Position == 0 }}"
11    enabled: true
12  - condition: template
13    value_template: "{{ trigger.payload_json.PlaybackStatus == 'Playing' }}"
14    enabled: true
15actions:
16  - action: awtrix.notification
17    metadata: {}
18    data:
19      device: <REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_AWTRIX_DEVICE_ID>
20      text:
21        - t: >-
22            {{ trigger.payload_json.Metadata.get('xesam:artist', ['Unknown Artist'])[0] }}
23          c: FF0000
24        - t: " - "
25          c: AAFFBB
26        - t: >-
27            {{ trigger.payload_json.Metadata.get('xesam:title', 'Unknown Track') }}
28          c: 00FF00
29      duration: 10
30      rainbow: false
31      wakeup: true
32      effect: Ripple
33mode: single

Test it

Play a track in your media player. The Awtrix display should show a notification with the artist and track name.

Check the logs with journalctl --user -u mpris2awtrix.service -f if it doesn’t work.