🔉 pykefcontrol

Python library for controlling KEF speakers : LS50WII, LSX II and LS60

⚠️ Read the changelog to see breaking changes. For the async version, please read this section

🏠️ For the Home Assistant integration, please see hass-kef-connector

• 🔉 pykefcontrol
  • 📄 General Informations
  • ⬇️ Installation
  • ⚙️ Usage
    • 👨‍💻 Get the IP address
    • 🎚️ Control the speaker with pykefcontrol
      • First Step
      • Available features
      • Advanced features
  • 🕵️ Specificity of KefAsyncConnector
    • Renaming of property setters
  • 📜 Changelog

📄 General Informations

This library works with the KEF LS50 Wireless II, LSX II and LS60 only. If you are searching for a library for the first generation LS50W or LSX, you can use aiokef. Pykefcontrol has 2 main components: KefConnector and KefAsyncConnector. The first one can be used in all classic scripts and python programs, whereas the second one (KefAsyncConnector) can be used in asynchronous programs.

⬇️ Installation

To install pykefcontrol, you can use pip :

pip install pykefcontrol

You can make sure you have the latest version by typing: >>> print(pykefcontrol.__version__)

Currently, the latest version is version 0.7.1

⚙️ Usage

👨‍💻 Get the IP address

To use the pykefcontrol library, you need to know the IP address of your speakers. To do so, you can have a look at your router web page, or check in the KEF Connect app by doing the following :

1. Launch the KEF Connect app
2. Tap the gear icon on the bottom right
3. Then your speaker name (It should be right below your profile information)
4. Finally, the little circled "i" next to your speaker name in the My Speakers section
5. You should find your IP address in the "IP address" section under the form www.xxx.yyy.zzz, where www, xxx, yyy and zzz are integers between 0 and 255.

🎚️ Control the speaker with pykefcontrol

Once pykefcontrol is installed and you have your KEF Speaker IP address, you can use pykefcontrol in the following way :

First Step

☝️ For the async version, please read the section 🕵️ Specificity of KefAsyncConnector.

First, import the class and create a KefConnector object :

from pykefcontrol.kef_connector import KefConnector
my_speaker = KefConnector("www.xxx.yyy.zzz")

⚠️ Do not forget to replace www.xxx.yyy.zzz with your speaker IP address. You should give your IP address as a string. It's to say that you should leave the quotation marks " around the IP address

Available features

Once the my_speaker object is created, you can use it in the following ways :

Power, Shutdown and Status

# Power on
my_speaker.power_on() 

# Shutdown
my_speaker.shutdown() 

# Get speaker status : it returns a string ('powerOn' or 'standby')
my_speaker.status # it is not a method so it does not requires parenthesis
# (output example) >>> 'powerOn'

Speaker Info

# Get the speaker MAC hardress
my_speaker.mac_address
# (output example) >>> 'AB:CD:EF:12:13:45'

# Get the speaker friendly name if configured
my_speaker.speaker_name
# (output example) >>> 'My Kef LS50W2'

# Get the speaker model
my_speaker.speaker_model
# (output example) >>> 'LS50WII'

# Get the firmware version
my_speaker.firmware_version
# (output example) >>> 'V27100'

Source Control

# Get currently selected source : it returns a string ('wifi', 'bluetooth', 'tv', 'optical', 'coaxial', 'analog')
# If the speaker is not powered on, it will return 'standby'
my_speaker.source # it is not a method so it does not requires parenthesis
# (output example) >>> 'wifi'

# Set the input source 
# If the speaker is shutdown, setting a source will power it on
my_speaker.source = 'wifi' # 'wifi is an example, you can use any other supported string 'tv', 'analog', etc..

Control playback

# Toggle play/pause
my_speaker.toggle_play_pause() 

# Next track
my_speaker.next_track()

# Previous track
my_speaker.previous_track()

Control volume

# Muste speaker
my_speaker.mute() 

# Unmute speaker
my_speaker.unmute()

# Get volume : it reruns an integer between 0 and 100
my_speaker.volume # it is not a method so it does not require parenthesis
# (output example) >>> 23

# Set volume
my_speaker.volume = 42 # 42 for example but it can by any integer between 0 and 100.

# Set volume (alternative way)
my_speaker.set_volume(42) # 42 for example but it can by any integer between 0 and 100.

Playback info

# Check if the speaker is playing : it returns a boolean (either True or False)
my_speaker.is_playing # it is not a method so it does not require parenthesis
# (output example) >>> True

# Get current media information : it retuns a dictionnary 
# (works on songs/podcast/radio. It may works on other media but I have not tested it yet)
my_speaker.get_song_information()
# (output example) >>> {'title':'Money','artist':'Pink Floyd','album':'The Dark Side of the Moon','cover_url':'http://cover.url'}

# Get media length in miliseconds : it returns an integer representing the song length in ms
my_speaker.song_length # it is not a method so it does not require parenthesis
# (output example) >>> 300251

# Get song progress : it returns the current playhead position in the current track in ms
my_speaker.song_status # it is not a method so it does not require parenthesis
# (output example) >>> 136900

Information polling

Pykefcontrol offers a polling functionality. Instead of manually fetching all parameters to see what has changed, you can use the method poll_speaker. This method returns the updated properties since the last time the changes were polled. If multiple changes are made to the same property, only the last change will be kept. It is technically possible to track all the changes to a property since the last poll, although it is not implemented. Please submit an issue if you need such a feature. poll_speaker will return a dictionary whose keys are the names of the properties which have been updated.

poll_speaker arguments:

argument	required	default value	comment
timeout	Optional	10	timeout is in seconds. If no change has been made since the last poll when you call poll_speaker, the method will wait for changes during timeout seconds for new changes. If there is a change before the end of the timeout, poll_speaker will return them immediately and stop monitoring changes. If no changes are made, the method will return an empty dictionary. ⚠️ the real timeout is timeout+ 0.5 seconds. The speaker will wait for timeout seconds before returning an empty dictionary if no changes are made. Therefore it is necessary to add a small margin in the python function to account for processing/networking time. Please submit an issue if you feel that this parameter needs tweaking.
song_status	Optional	False	Deprecated, please use poll_song_status instead
poll_song_status	Optional	False	if poll_song_status if set to True, it will poll the song status (how many miliseconds of the current song have been played so far). If a song is playing and poll_song_status is set to True, poll_speaker will return almost imediately since song_status is updated at each second. This is forcing you to poll agressively to get other events. By default it is set to False in order to track other events more efficiently.

my_speaker.poll_speaker(timeout=3) # example of a 3 seconds timeout
# (output example) >>> {}  # it will return an empty dict if no changes were made

# no suppose you start playing a song
my_speaker.poll_speaker(poll_song_satus=True) # timeout is 10 seconds by default
# (output example) >>> {'song_info': {'title': 'Am I Wrong',
#  'artist': 'Etienne de Crécy',
#  'album': 'Am I Wrong',
#  'cover_url': 'https://some-url/some-image.jpg'},
# 'song_length': 238000,
# 'status': 'playing',
# 'song_status': 26085}
#
# -> in this case it returns a dictionary with the keys "song_info" , 
# "song_length", "status" and "song_status" containing information about the new song

# now suppose you change the volume to 32
my_speaker.poll_speaker(poll_song_satus=True)
# (output example) >>> {'song_status': 175085, 'volume': 32}
#
# -> in this case it returns both "song_status" (because the song kept playing), 
# and "volume" because you updated the volume

# if you do not want to poll the song status
my_speaker.poll_speaker()
# (output example) >>> {'volume': 32}

All the possible keys of the dictionary are: source, song_status, volume, song_info, song_length, status, speaker_status, device_name, mute and other. other contains some of the speaker-specific information that might have changed, but are not properties of either KefConnector or KefAsyncConnector.

Advanced features

This function is used internally by pykefcontrol and returns a JSON output with a lot of information. You might want to use them to get extra information such as the artwork/album cover URL, which does not have a dedicated function yet in pykefcontrol.

# Get currently playing media information
my_speaker._get_player_data()
# (output example) >>> {'trackRoles': {'icon': 'http://www.xxx.yyy.zzz:80/file/stream//tmp/temp_data_airPlayAlbum_xxxxxxxxx', 'title': 'I Want To Break Free', 'mediaData': {'resources': [{'duration': 263131}], 'metaData': {'album': 'Greatest Hits', 'artist': 'Queen'}}}, 'playId': {'systemMemberId': 'kef_one-xxxxxxxx', 'timestamp': 676181357}, 'mediaRoles': {'audioType': 'audioBroadcast', 'title': 'AirPlay', 'doNotTrack': True, 'type': 'audio', 'mediaData': {'resources': [{'mimeType': 'audio/unknown', 'uri': 'airplay://'}], 'metaData': {'serviceID': 'airplay', 'live': True, 'playLogicPath': 'airplay:playlogic'}}}, 'state': 'playing', 'status': {'duration': 263131, 'playSpeed': 1}, 'controls': {'pause': True, 'next_': True, 'previous': True}}

🕵️ Specificity of KefAsyncConnector

Pykefcontrol offers an asynchronous connector with the same feature set as the synchronous connector. However, there are a few changes in the property setters. You can no longer use my_speaker.volume = 28 to set a property. You have to use the setter like so: await my_speaker.set_volume(28).

The actions you make with KefAsyncConnector should be embedded in an async function. Here is a quick example :

import asyncio
from pykefcontrol.kef_connector import KefAsyncConnector

# Define an async function
async def main():
  my_speaker = KefAsyncConnector("192.168.yyy.zz")
  # Get speaker name
  print(await my_speaker.speaker_name)
  # Get volume
  print(await my_speaker.volume)

  # Turn on speaker
  await my_speaker.power_on()
  # Toggle play/pause
  await my_speaker.toggle_play_pause()

  # Set volume
  # Please read through to see precision about setters
  await my_speaker.set_volume(28)
  # Set source
  await my_speaker.set_source("bluetooth")
  # Set status
  await my_speaker.set_status("powerOn")

  # To avoid warning about an unclosed session
  # once your program is over, run:
  await my_speaker._session.close()
  # This is not mandatory. But if you do not close 
  # the session, you will have a warning.

# Get loop
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
# Run main function in async context
loop.run_until_complete(main())

Renaming of property setters

KefAsyncConnector has the same property and methods as its synchronous counterpart KefConnector. You can access the same properties and methods in an asynchronous context by using await my_speaker.property or await my_speaker.method(). For the list of available properties and methods, read Available features.

However, to have an asynchronous property setter, the way to set properties has changed. You should use the specific setter. For a property, the setter is called set_property. As you can see in the example script above, to set the volume, use set_volume. Here is the list of properties with such setters :

• volume : use set_volume
• state : use set_state
• source : use set_source

📜 Changelog

• version 0.7.1

  • Fix issue with async version of get_speaker_model and get_firmware_version.

• version 0.7

  • Now compatible with LSX II and LS60 !
  • Add speaker_model and firmware_version properties.
  • ⚠️ song_status argument of poll_speaker is now deprecated. Please use poll_song_status

• Version 0.6.2

  • modify poll_speaker to prevent falling if song_status is not properly defined by the speaker
  • regenerate the queue_id if song_status was changed before the queue timeout.

• Version 0.6.1

  • Add parameter song_status to the method poll_speaker.

• Version 0.6

  • Add method poll_speaker that returns the last changes made to properties since the last poll.

• Version 0.5

  • Add option to pass existing session=aiohttp.ClientSession() to KefAsyncConnector.
  • Add method close_session and resurect_session

• Version 0.4

  • Add KefAsyncConnector. A class with the same functionality as KefConnector but with async properties and methods.

• Version 0.3

  • ⚠️ Breaking change : get_song_information() now returns a dictionary, no longer a tuple
  • add property mac_address that returns the MAC address of the speaker as a string
  • add property speaker_name that returns the friendly speaker name as defined in the KEF Connect app onboarding process

• Version 0.2

  • correct a bug in power_on and shutdown

• Version 0.1

  • first version