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Ambient Sounds is an OpenHome community ability for playing relaxing, focus-friendly, and sleep-friendly audio by voice. It searches Freesound for fresh ambient audio each time, then streams the selected preview through OpenHome. Use it for rain, ocean waves, campfire, cafe ambience, forest sounds, white noise, pink noise, brown noise, focus sounds, sleep sounds, meditation sounds, and other ambient soundscapes.

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What It Does

  • Streams ambient and relaxation audio on demand
  • Searches Freesound for a fresh sound each time
  • Supports nature, weather, water, cozy, urban, noise, focus, and sleep categories
  • Maps natural voice requests like something cozy or help me focus to the best sound category
  • Redirects requests for songs, artists, or non-ambient music
  • Streams audio chunk by chunk without bundling audio files
  • Lets the user stop or pause playback through OpenHome music mode controls
  • Keeps the session conversational so the user can request another sound or exit

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Supported Requests

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Sound Categories

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Example Prompts

  • “Play rain.”
  • “Ocean waves.”
  • “Something cozy.”
  • “Help me focus.”
  • “White noise.”
  • “Play something relaxing.”
  • “Stop.”
  • “Exit.”

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Example Conversation

User: Play rain. AI: Alright, getting some rain sounds ready. Just a moment to set things up. Say stop whenever you’d like. [streams rain audio] User: Stop. AI: Alright. Want me to play some rain, ocean, or campfire next, or wrap up?

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Trigger Phrases

  • “ambient sounds”
  • “play ambient sounds”
  • “relaxing sounds”
  • “sleep sounds”
  • “focus sounds”
  • “white noise”
  • “play rain”
  • “play ocean”
  • “play campfire”
  • “play cafe sounds”
  • “help me relax”
  • “help me focus”
  • “help me sleep”

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Data Source

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Setup

Ambient Sounds uses the Freesound API. You need a Freesound account and API token.

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Getting a Freesound API Token

  1. Create or sign in to a Freesound account.
  2. Apply for a Freesound API token.
  3. Copy the generated token from your Freesound developer settings.

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Adding the key to OpenHome

In OpenHome Settings -> API Keys, add a new key named freesound_api_key. Paste your Freesound token as the value and save. Do not hardcode the key in main.py or store it in any prefs/config file.

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Voice Flow

  1. The user triggers the ability.
  2. The ability routes the request to a sound category, exit, non-ambient redirect, or needs-input state.
  3. For a sound category, it speaks a short setup line to cover search latency.
  4. It searches Freesound with curated search terms for that category.
  5. It chooses one of the top matching audio previews.
  6. It streams the audio through OpenHome.
  7. If the user says stop, playback stops.
  8. After playback, the ability asks whether the user wants another sound or wants to wrap up.
  9. On exit, it clears music mode and returns control to the normal OpenHome conversation.

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Notes

  • Freesound is required for search and streaming.
  • Audio is streamed from Freesound previews; no audio files are bundled with the ability.
  • Each playback is a single selected sound, not an internal infinite loop.
  • Requests outside ambient audio, such as specific songs or artists, are redirected.

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Developer Credit

Developed by @yonaseth12.

View on GitHub

Source code for the noise-machine community ability.