Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io
I know this is a HA sub, but if you want it to just work and be dead simple, you might want to get a cheap Sonos speaker like the Ikea bookshelf speaker and use the Sonos app to queue up whatever playlist you like.
If left on, the kid can use the play/pause button and double tap it to skip.
Sonos portable models would work too, but more expensive for what you get.
Sonos integrates well with HA in case you want to set up fancier automations.
I use sonos with HA and can definitely recommend it
Thanks for the recommendation! If I were to queue up the playlist and leave the speaker on, it'd stay on that playlist and be available at any time? That sounds perfect for what I need.
I don't know what type of disabilities your little one has but I was looking into this for my grandma when she was struggling to use things due to physical and mental decline and ended up with the "Relish Simple Music Player" which is a dead simple desktop radio with limited controls and preconfigurable presets for FM/dab stations or playlists from a memory card, **but it had no smart features or streaming. ** not really kid optimised but it's good to know there are devices out there that are specifically designed for various disabilities.
As for DIY smart HA based solutions, a compatible device like a google home mini or similar (or any active speaker with a compatable receiver plugged in, or a Sonos One SL or something if you are OK with that) and some simple control device like one of those zigbee scene controllers (like these), the standard spotify integration, plus a bit of automation/scripting or a tiny bit of nodered could become a simple and effective little jukebox.
Thanks for the reply. The Relish player looks like a good candidate though for the price I can try out the Ikea Sonos Bookshelf speaker mentioned in the other reply integrated with HA like you suggested. It might even be perfect to set it up with a scene controller like this provided I can get the Spotify/Spotcast integrations working properly.
I personally haven't had any issue with the standard spotify integration when calling it from automations or scripts, so I suspect it can be made to work pretty well when just having a button call up a premade playlist or something. then one button could maybe be left free for a simple play/stop function.
I'll have to dive into again now that I have an idea of devices to look into. It's definitely possible that I just don't have things configured correctly.
I find some integrations much easier to implement in nodered then I've the hacs nodered plugin to connect them properly