Preview & Feedback Request: Astrion Remote + Music Assistant Deep Integration (Pre-release, Not Available Yet)

[Tim_Chan]

i’m Tim from Sanytron. We’re exploring deep Music Assistant integration for the Astrion remote.

This is not a launch. Not a pre-order. It’s not usable yet. No ETA.

We’re posting this early because we want to validate demand before investing more. Our internal MA API validation is complete — no technical blockers. Now we want to know what MA users actually need.

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Concept video: [link]

Astrion + Music Assistant

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Features

Music Browsing & Playback

• Aggregated home feed: Recommendations, Recently Played, Recommended Tracks, New Albums, Most Played, Playlists, Favorite Artists, Recently Saved tracks
• Album / Playlist details: Cover grid browsing, long-press for action menu (Play / Play next / Add to queue / Favorite)
• Full playback control: Play/Pause, Previous/Next, Shuffle/Repeat modes, seek bar, volume & mute
• Queue management: View current queue, jump to any track, paginated loading, current track highlighted

Multi-room & Grouping

• Player switching: Quick-switch pill at the top; dialog shows real-time status of every player
• Transfer: Move the current queue to another player with one tap — seamless handoff
• Grouping: One-tap grouping of same-protocol players with synchronized playback; ungroup supported

AI Voice Assistant

• Alibaba Qwen LLM: Natural-language commands — play songs, skip tracks, adjust volume, ask what’s playing
• ASR + TTS: Speech recognition for commands, spoken voice replies
• Sci-fi dark & gold dialog: Breathing gold-speck background, conversational interaction

Deep Remote Integration

• Full DPAD navigation: Arrow keys + OK do everything — no touchscreen needed
• Physical key mapping: Play/pause, track skip, volume, menu, back — each key mapped
• Auto-hiding mini player bar: Slides down when navigating or scrolling, bounces back 1.2s after you stop

Experience Details

• Lyrics screensaver: Kicks in after 30s idle — scrolling lyrics over a breathing gold-dot background
• Fullscreen lyrics: Tap the cover to enter; line-by-line highlighting with scroll positioning
• Sleep timer: 15/30/45/60 minutes, auto-pause when time’s up
• Volume OSD: On-screen overlay when adjusting volume with physical keys

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Screenshots & Usage

1. Home

The home screen shows all your music in horizontal grouped rows. The wave icon + “Music Assistant” title at the top left is the settings entry; the magnifier on the right opens search. Each section header (Recently Played, New Tracks, Most Played…) is fully focusable — press OK to open a full grid of that section.

The floating mini player bar at the bottom shows the current player and track. Tap the cover/title to open the player page, or use the play/pause/next buttons directly. The bar slides away while you scroll or navigate, and returns 1.2s after you stop.

Keys: ▲/▼ switch sections, / move between cards, OK opens details, long-press OK opens the action menu.

2. Now Playing

A large album cover takes center stage, with track title, artist, favorite button and the group icon below. The seek bar supports scrubbing. The bottom control bar (left to right): Shuffle, Previous, Play/Pause, Next, Repeat.

The small handle at the bottom center is the queue grip — swipe up to expand the play queue, swipe down to collapse. On the main player screen, OK = play/pause and / = previous/next track.

Keys: OK = play/pause, / = previous/next, swipe up = open queue.

3. Player Menu

Tap the ⋮ icon at the top right of the player page to open the menu:

• Play on… — Transfer current playback to another player
• Sleep timer — 15/30/45/60 minutes
• Auto-hide mini player — Toggle the mini bar auto-hide behavior

Settings are persisted locally and restored on restart.

4. Player Picker

Tap the player pill at the top (e.g. “Living Room”) to open the player list. Each card shows the device name, currently playing track and cover art, updating in real time. The active player is marked with a gold check.

Selecting a player switches the control target — playback, queue and volume all apply to that device.

5. Group Players

Tap the speaker-group icon next to the title row to open the grouping dialog. Only players on the same protocol are listed. Check devices and confirm to group them for synchronized playback; ungrouping works here too.

6. Search

The search page uses a custom A–Z keyboard with a gold-highlighted focus key. Search by pinyin initials or English keywords; results appear live.

Keys: //▲/▼ move focus between letters, OK inputs a letter, F1 = delete, F2 = clear.

7. Play Queue

Swipe up on the player page to expand the queue. The current track is highlighted with a gold background. Browse all upcoming tracks and press OK to jump to any of them. The queue loads in pages as you approach the bottom — great for queues with hundreds of tracks.

Keys: ▲/▼ browse tracks, OK jumps to that track.

8. Lyrics Screensaver

After 30 seconds idle during playback (configurable: 15s / 1min / 3min / 5min in settings), the lyrics screensaver kicks in — lyrics scroll line by line over a black background with breathing gold specks, the current line highlighted in gold. Press any key to wake.

9. AI Voice Assistant

Press VoiceAssistant to summon the AI assistant dialog (powered by Alibaba Qwen). Hold button to talk, release to recognize and execute — natural-language commands for playing songs, skipping tracks, adjusting volume, asking what’s playing, and more. Replies are spoken via TTS, and search results appear as focusable cards you can play directly.

10. Settings

The settings page includes:

• Lyrics Screensaver — Enable/disable and idle countdown options
• AI Assistant (Alibaba Qwen) — AI toggle and API Key configuration
• Server — Music Assistant server connection status and address
• PC Web Interface — A LAN URL plus QR code, so you can configure the server address, token and AI API key remotely from a PC browser

11. View All

Focus any section header on the home screen and press OK to open a fullscreen 3-column grid of everything in that section. Tap the back arrow at the top left, or press F5, to return home.

Keys: //▲/▼ move through the grid, OK opens details.

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Quick Start

Requirements

• Music Assistant Server (running on your LAN)
• HA100 remote
• Alibaba Qwen API Key (optional, for the AI voice assistant)

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[Joshua]

Very keen to see this progress and more than happy to be involved in beta testing.

AI voice assistant and screen saver is probably at the bottom of list for features for me.

[Tim_Chan]

Thanks for the kind words and for putting your hand up for beta — noted! And haha, I love that we already have different priorities. That’s exactly why we posted this early.

Funny enough, AI voice assistant and the screensaver are the two features I’m personally most excited about. The AI part because I want to just say “find me something warm and jazzy for dinner” and let MA do the digging. The screensaver because I can already picture this thing sitting on the living room table showing synced lyrics — total emotional value. But I completely understand why they’d be at the bottom for you. If your core need is fast, reliable playback, queue control, and room switching, then AI and eye-candy are not the foundation.

So I’d love to understand your priorities better:
what are your top 1–3 features? Multi-room control, queue management, library search, physical buttons, something else? And what does your current MA control setup look like — phone, tablet, HA dashboard, something custom?

Different opinions are genuinely useful. We’re not trying to build one remote for one type of user. No ETA yet, but I’ve noted your beta interest. Thanks again for the honest feedback.

[Joshua]

Thanks @Tim_Chan for the quick response and being honest!

I’d love to see those features but my rationale was getting the core capabilities squared away first.

If I think in terms of priorities:

1. Search capability and single player/speaker
2. Multi speaker control
3. Multi room and transfer capability

Currently using MA for full house audio control with 6 zones and different speaker groups.

Current using the TestFlight app predominately.

Very excited about ecosystem where use multiple astrions, amplifiers (mixed ecosystem currently including esparagus audio brick, Yamaha and Onkyo) and MA… it makes the cost achievable without compromising on quality

[Tim_Chan]

Your logic makes total sense: get the core control rock-solid first, then layer on the experience features.

and honestly it’s the next big thing I’m trying to figure out. Your 6-zone setup makes it even more relevant.

We can’t ship one remote for MA and another for HA. So how should a single Astrion blend both? I’d love your take.

A few interaction models we’re debating:

• Mode switch: Home tab + Music tab, one tap to switch.

• Room-first: Pick a room, then control both HA devices and MA playback for that room.

• Context-aware: When music is playing, media controls take over; otherwise HA dashboard.

• Customizable dashboard: MA as a card/widget inside the HA UI.

[Joshua]

Sharing my thought process and trying to put myself in shoes of others when I look at the questions/comments around config……

I gravitate towards Customizable dashboard MA as a card/widget inside the HA UI.

I’d suggest that the card is context aware (ie if music is playing and that the card be configurable for preferred player/speaker group). I’m picturing a similar function like MA where you can swipe between speakers/targets if enabled. Conversely I’d encourage this be a capability that can be disabled where people have dedicated remote for each room/zone.

My instinct says the majority of users will have remote as HA ecosystem primarily and MA capability on as needs basis… and me have the music button ready to go to flip to MA widget

[Tim_Chan]

I’ve been thinking about how MA should sit inside HA dashboards, and I think I’ve landed on a model worth sharing.

An MA card on a room dashboard must be bound to that room’s speaker/group by default. Otherwise it’s just a floating global player, and it loses its “room context.” So the card starts as a local music anchor — it controls this room’s playback by default.

But MA is global. So the card also needs a global reach: a button on the card that opens a global player/group picker. From there, you can:

• Sync this room’s music to another room (both play together)

• Transfer playback to another room (this room stops)

• Let another room play something different (both play independently)

• Group rooms together

Crucially, the HA dashboard does not jump. The card just updates its status to show “Living Room + Kitchen playing” or “Living Room playing; Kitchen playing something else.” If you want to control the kitchen’s lights, you navigate to the kitchen dashboard manually. Music routing stays global; device control stays room-based.

For physical buttons: they always default to the room the remote is in, unless the user explicitly sets a different “music focus.”

Does this match how you’d want it to work in a 6-zone setup? Or would you rather have a dedicated global MA screen that’s completely independent of HA dashboards?

[Joshua]

Haha @Tim_Chan I think our thinking is very close… and we were about a minute apart

[Tim_Chan]

Haha, that’s amazing

[Joshua]

Hopefully my summary makes sense.

[Tim_Chan]

Thanks again for such valuable input,really appreciate you taking the time. It’s great to hear we’re on the same page, I’ll keep sharing progress as things develop.

[gregka]

Why not get a working remote first rather than adding more features that undoubtingly not work properly like the rest of the remote.

[Rogerki]

AI playlists for sure, but shouldn’t these be server-side and integrated there. Also, we all may use different AI and music services. Personally I use Claude and Tidal with an integration and MCP.

Top marks for doing this! Happy to load for testing.

[Tim_Chan]

Thanks，I completely agree: playlist management shouldn’t live primarily on the remote itself. The remote should be a thin control and interaction layer; the real playlist logic, AI orchestration, and music-service integrations belong server-side.MCP is a great example of that approach.

[Tim_Chan]

Fair challenge — and I understand the frustration. You’re right: if the core remote doesn’t work reliably, extra features don’t matter. We’re not trying to cover up basic issues with new features.
The priority has to be: make the remote solid first, then layer on integrations.