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Setting up voice announcements


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Hello:

I have been researching a lot on this web site about voice announcements and still need some help. I have been to the AT&T website and downloaded certain voice announcements ("Take out the trash today", etc.). Now, I need to determine how to load them onto my HC-800. I believe the HC-800 has limited storage (maybe 3-5 mb) for things like this.

Any suggestions on how to make this happen?

Thanks!

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Agents -> Announcements

Here you can add announcements that can show a picture/text or play audio.

Once you setup your announcement you will need to go to schedule and create the schedule.

Then in programming you can have you announcement play when that schedule occurs etc...

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Thank you. Does this allow me to load the audio announcement sound file directly onto my controller? The goal is that by doing so, I will not need to leave a computer running full time because my controller will be running full time.

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If you have a mac

Not sure if everyone is aware of this, but I wanted to post and share. Apple OS X has a build in TTS engine. THis means you can recommend your own custom announcements from a mac and use them! The voices available are pretty good and more can be downloaded free from Apple!

say [-v voice] [-r rate] [-o outfile [audio format options] | -n name:port | -a device] [-f file | string ...]

So here is how you do it!

1) Open Terminal

2) CD to a folder you want to save your files in

3) type say -v Alex -o "announcement.wav" --file-format=wave 'this is what I want to say'

There are other voices and file formats available!

Enjoy

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That wouldn't work on my system. I dropped the file format since that is inferred from the file extension on the output file and added: --data-format=LEF32@8000 which worked perfectly. Just passing this along in case anyone has trouble.

msgreenf - This raises some interesting possibilities. I'm pretty sure you could get say to stream it's output over the network to say an airport connected to a multi zone amp - or dynamically create announcement files.

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What I did -

Downloaded AUDACITY (free) and spoke all my announcements. You can have your wife/SO or someone that you like do it as well.

Then use those announcements (wav files) for specific actions that occur.

Works a treat.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Related to this... is there are a size or time limit on the WAV files? I am noticing some of my announcements being cut off as they play. If there is a size limit, can I upload them to am memory stick and have them play from there?

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Max length per announcement is 15 seconds, TOTAL space reserved for announcements is 10Mb - think that's for both images and wav files combined.

And no this is on internal flash storage and you can't use an external storage to increase this.

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  • 2 years later...

Sorry for bringing up such an old topic, but can't find any other topics about it.  I used to have a few announcements that would go off.  I had them in the media folder of my main controller.  I'm pretty sure I used to see all 3 of my controllers on my network via my laptop and was able to navigate to the media folder of the main controller and drop in .wav's when I set this up initially.  My programming is still setup to play siren.wav should a certain door open, or doorbell.wav for the doorbell, across my Sonos, but those haven't gone off in a while, and I just haven't got around to figuring out why.  I think it stopped about 3 months back.  I finally decided to try to fix it, but the problem seems to be that I can't find these controllers anywhere on my network when looking through my laptop or PC.  Is it possible that these disappeared, despite everything else working in my system?  How do I bring them back?  Is there a way to add these media folders within Composer, where I can then just add files with the same names as what's already setup in my programming?  Thanks!

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No, you're overthinkimg it

Go to the announcement agent and it has the add wav file building.

The files can get 'lost' in any number of ways such as controller swap, restore or loafing a backup. Only the most recent versions of composer actually backup announcement files.

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Thanks Cyknight.  The way they were setup before was by my integrator, and that was around 2.5.   Did this agent come out around 2.7, or was 2.7 when they hid the media folder at least?   I found what you're talking about with the announcements agent and it does seem a lot easier to setup than before, but I'm having an issues with the .wav playing and then two issues with my programming I was hoping you could help with.  I added an audio announcement called Siren and put in siren.wav then hit Add.  I know it added the .wav as I now see it in the drop down.

 

For the announcement itself, I have the box checked off to Play Audio File and then under Enabled Rooms I added my Kitchen with Set Volume to 60.  My first issue I'm finding, if I test by hitting execute, the .wav doesn't play.  If I'm watching the room on the app, I do see the volume in the kitchen change to 60, but it's not executing my .wav file for some reason as only the volume changes, no sound comes out.   I have a Sonos Play3 in that room, and haven't had issues before with announcements when it was setup the old way.   Maybe the .wav is bad?  But if I play it off my PC, it plays fine, so not sure.  

 

The next issues are programming.  I have this announcement setup to go off if the back door that leads to the pool is open.  I'll eventually add times and stuff so it's not always going off, but just trying to get the basic part to execute correctly first.   So far, my programming is below, for When the Living Room->Back Door Sensor Opens: 

 

Set Variables->Kitchen Volume to the value of the Kitchen->Current_Volume

Execute Announcement 'Siren'

Delay 10 Seconds

Set Kitchen->Current_Volume to the value of Variables->Kitchen Volume

 

I have it set this way so if we're listening to music on my Sonos kitchen, it'll raise volume, play the announcement, then go back to Sonos at the volume it was originally at.   It should also just execute the siren.wav when Sonos isn't in use, and put the volume back to where it was.   So far, what it's doing if it's currently playing a son, the volume will raise to 60 (from say 30 for example), but it raises the music to that volume (little loud), the siren.wav doesn't go off (still part of that first issue where it won't play that .wav I believe), then after 10 seconds the music drops back down to original volume, 30 or whatever it was.  In addition, for some reason, 10-12 seconds later after the volume drops back to normal, the Sonos just stops playing all together, so that's another issue I'm trying to figure out.   

 

My two issues with the programming, from at least how I'd like it to work, seem to be that I need a pause so the music itself doesn't raise to 60, then after it executes the siren.wav at that 60 volume and drops back to the original volume, the music needs to resume, then finally I need it not to shut the music off completely after the process completes (which seems random as it's 10-12 seconds after it already sets back to original volume).   Any thoughts on what can fix the programming so it executes better, and additional thoughts on what might be causing my .wav not to play at all?  Thanks!

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No that agent has been around for a loooong time that way.

 

That said, I missed you are using Sonos, and that adds some oddities. As we rarely use Sonos SPEAKERS and also have announcements I'll have to look at the details before I can comment further on some of the how and whats.

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