I’d like to get feedback from others on the text to speech feature on the Sonos speakers and how we can push to get the same for Amazon Echo. The Echo is starting to gain a lot of functionality with ST, expect one of the main features I’m looking for which is text to speech announcements (someone opening the door, garage door opened, etc.).
I am really hoping this comes to light. I would love to have that kind of two way options with my echo’s
I believe that Amazon does not provide a way for this to happen at this time. It’s been mentioned elsewhere in the forums.
The best thing to do is to go to Amazon and ask them to add the feature. Once it’s available there then we can look at how SmartThings can utilize it.
But right now, you can’t have custom utterances from Echo unless you create a whole skill and a server for it. You can have it play a custom “song,” but it’s functionally not the same thing
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I’ll be sending in the feedback on this tonight.
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New to ST and the forums, what’s the best way to leave feedback for Amazon?
Via the Alexa app, that’s how I do it.
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My feedback had been sent to the Alexa team…
I was to paste what I had sent here… But I hit the wrong icon and now… Well… Yeah…
Feedback sent from me away well. Hope enough of us can get their attention. It’s the one thing that has me keeping my Ubi for now, and I’d love to get rid of it altogether.
I can get around nothing being able to setup custom commands, but custom phrases are a must.
I have an app that tells me what doors or windows I’ve left open before I go to bed.
I use VLC Thing, which plays to a few fake airplay speakers including my wall mounted android tablet running HADashboard, that tablet is connected via bluetooth to my echo so my echo does play my notifications.
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You should write that up as a project, I bet a lot of people would be interested in exactly how you did it. 
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Notifications would be nice, but I really need a custom phrase. Can your VLC project do custom phrases?
Basically my Goodnight app builds a phrase based on what windows or doors are open at the time it’s run, then pushes that phrase via a HTTPget command to Ubi.
Right now I don’t have an wall mounted tablets, but I might be able to rig something up of course.
Still the idea situation is just being able to send a phrase to Echo directly via a http command or text or email or something like that.
I use @geko VLC Thing device type. Yes it can do custom phrases.
More info about it at VLC Thing. A Poor Man's Sonos. Version 2.0 Released 12/22/2016
hi, you can connect an old android with echo and install monkey upnp or bubble and send the text notification to your android.
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This is what I’m doing right now, but it’s not a perfect system, at least not yet…
First (Primarily), it requires a second device. Ideally I’d prefer to not had to depend on another device. Not if you’re running SmartTiles on a tablet, adding this isn’t a bit deal, but so far I’m not doing that.
Second, there’s annoyances… I’m having no end of issues getting this to work consistently. Part of those problems are related to my tablet which seems to have a habit of crashing once a day, but I’m also running into other issues that I need to try and troubleshoot… for example just this morning no matter what TTS phrase I tried to send it Bubble upnp just kept playing “The Kichen Light is now On.” Which was something I was testing with Big Talker a week ago, but not even running anymore. 
Probably some silly config issue that I need to track now.
Anyway, it would just be nicest if Amazon did TTS directly… fewer devices, fewer things to break.
(On a side note, did anyone ever find an iOS app that would work like monkey upnp or Bubble upnp? I just got my hands on an ipod touch and thought about trying to set that up as a TTS device, hopefully more stable than my wonky tablet.)