wanheb uminah hesperah

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Florencia Abila

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Aug 2, 2024, 8:47:25 PM8/2/24

to scalreiscaliz

Muslims, followers of the religion Islam, pray 5 times a day at specific times throughout the day. These times change effectively on a daily basis, and thus the timings need to be recalculated accordingly.

I tried searching the community and interwebs for an app that would properly calculate these timings and play the "call to prayer" (a.k.a. the Adhan/Azan) over the smart speakers added to the hub. However, after my searches were unsuccessful, I decided to go ahead and write my own (FYI: as of v3.2, the app is available via [BETA] Hubitat Package Manager).

This app uses the hub's location (from its settings) and calls a backend API, starting v4.0, uses local logic to calculate the prayer timings for that particular location. The app then plays the Adhan on the selected speaker(s) (specifically with capability.speechSynthesis). Note: Alexa devices will simply play a TTS message instead of an actual Adhan. See the Alexa support issue for more information.

I really don't think that will work. You may be able to get something to work with a service like IFTTT or a mobile app, but "out of the box" from Google doesn't exist to my knowledge. That was the limitation that inspired me to author this app.

I had Adhan Player and Prayer Times Today - Prayer Times and Adhan Player open in a Google Chrome tab on a Microsoft Surface that I had lying around for no other purpose. I set the tab to cast its audio to the Google Mini speakers I had setup. This worked...for a time. The problem is that the audio casting is unreliable. The Microsoft Surface would need to reboot for updates, Google Chrome would just stop casting for some reason or the webpage would need to be refreshed for some reason. In the end, it wasn't good enough for me.

You are right, there is nothing "out of the box" for this feature and it's very frustrating. I mean the possibilities are endless, maybe one day our smart speakers can be connected to the local mosques where we can hear the Adhan live.

This is very cool.
While I personally do not practice a religion where I could use this app, it's awesome to see this gap being filled, and on top of that - I'm sure this can help other developers build unique experiences that are time based and leverage connected speakers.

I wrote a nodejs application that runs on a raspberry pi and broadcasts the daily azans on google home speakers.
Right now its just a server that you can setup using a config file. I have been planning to put a UI on top of it and make it portable so that instead of having it running on a raspberry pi or another linux machine you can run the program as a system app on your Mac or PC.

For those of us who don't have smart speakers, I've modified the app a bit to make it work with Alexa rather than a smart speaker, I've also created another version for Ireland users that doesn't rely on the internet, follows the ICCI prayer times and can play/send notifications at a user defined time before the Azan.

Salaam, This is a great app. I just migrated to Hubitat from ST and was discovering a bunch of things and found your app. It's late night here so I can't fully test it, but it looks promising. I modified it a bit, since i'm familiar with aladhan.com API.