BigTalker 2.x send to a BT speaker or Alexa Dot

[angelr91 (MR)]

Hi,

I just heard of BigTalker and was interested in adding a front door “ding dong” using BigTalker to say “Front door now open” and vice versa for closed. However, i noticed that if I am playing music either using the Spotify app via spotify connect to Sonos OR playing music through Sonos the resuming music feature in BigTalker doesn’t work to continue playing. This is of course referring to when the output of BigTalker is also going to come out of the speakers that I am playing music from.

Now i believe that there is a prexisiting limitation to resuming music if i am using spotify connect with Sonos as i can see the complicatedness that will arise when BigTalker tries to resume after it has broken the connection with Spotify. However, i was suprised that it didn’t work when i was playing Spotify using the Sonos app.

Nevertheless, I think i would prefer having a dedicated BT speaker that is a cheap small one that can be used for these types of annoucements, in fact it would be great if it would come out of Alexa dots as those speakers are Loud-ish but never used so perfect for general annoucements.

Anyone have this working? Is BigTalker still the SmartApp to use for this? Or can i use another app? I have webCoRE so i am free to write any piston to do the text to speech and then send it over to a speaker.

[angelr91 (MR)]

Well i think i answered my own question by doing some more googling. It appears that Lannouncer, as i suspected would work. Now to only buy a cheap Fire TV tablet. It would be nice if i could do this using webCore as Software is Freedom!

Amazon Echo DOES Voice Notifications!

I have no idea if that has been done yet, I have done a little bit of a search with no results on this particular subject… But tonight I got my Amazon Echo to say, “The Front Door is Open” when my front door opened! It is customizable as to what I want it to say. It’s freakin Awesome!!! Here is what you need to do Follow this link and install all of the stuff it says. DO NOT USE ver 1.1.14 of Big Talker, DO USE ver 1.1.13. TTS works in the older version and not the newer one. After you do all of that stuff, do this Connect your Android device to your Amazon Echo via Bluetooth. Now your Echo will give you voice notifications. What can you do with this?? You don’t have to use Echo, you can just use a bluetooth speaker or you can use the Android Device. But how totally cool is i…

[Jimxenus]

I summarized the install process for LANnouncer which might help.

Android as a Speech/Alarm Device released! And Updated!

Let me try to help. This is summarized from http://www.keybounce.com/lannouncer/ Get and install LANnouncer from the Play store or directly from this link: http://www.keybounce.com/bin/LANnouncer.apk Once you have it running on your Android, look for the IP address (something like 192.168.1.xx) and the port # which is usually 1035 Select All and Copy this Device Handler You will use this code to create a new speech device for SmartThings Log into your IDE https://account.smartthings.com Once logged in, click on a link My Device Handlers and then click at the right a green button “Create New Device Handler” Click on a link that says “From Code” and paste what you copied earlier into the field below. At the bottom, click on “Create”, then at the top right button, clic…

You may also want to take a look at the Fabriq speaker that has built-in Alexa and works as a DNLA speaker:

Fabriq DLNA Airplay bluetooth speaker with Alexa $40

The Fabriq speaker is on sale for $40 (usually $50) on Amazon today. From my research, it has DLNA and Airplay support, can link up to 10 speakers for multiroom playback, can use Alexa (must push a button to “listen”). I don’t own any yet, but for the price I think I’ll try two. It looks like another forum member is using them to make status announcements with Smartthings : Hopefully when mine have arrived maybe some forum members will have chimed in with tips and ideas how to use them to do cool things with Smartthings in the house. (I’d like to announce home monitor status changes…) (links in the posts above may earn points or money for me or other people when you make a purchase)

[angelr91 (MR)]

Thanks! Would BigTalker send to this Fabriq DLNA BT speaker since it is Wifi?

[Jimxenus]

I don’t personally have one of these but I do believe that BigTalker will see it as music player. When you first install BigTaker, it will ask you to configure it with a music player or TTS device.