Chromecast Audio Potential

[Jason_Troska]

RL,
Thanks for your input. Yeah, the last thing we need right now is throwing more intermittent reliability into the HA world.

BUT there’s an alternative project under way for people who still want to chew on cheap audio notifications; the project is called VLC Thing. Enjoy!

VLC Thing. A Poor Man's Sonos. Version 2.0 Released 12/22/2016

Do you want to receive Sonos-like sound and voice notifications from SmartThings but do not feel like spending several hundred dollars on Sonos? Do you have an old laptop/netbook (or any PC for that matter) gathering dust in a closet? If so, you can put it to a good use as shown in this demo: [VLC Thing Demo: VLC Media Player Controlled by SmartThings] “VLC Thing” is a custom SmartThings device driver that controls VLC media player and emulates Sonos audio player, making it possible to use Sonos smart apps to play sounds and voice (text-to-speech) notifications. VLC is a free and open source cross-platform (Linux/MacOS/Windows) multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. [Update 10/04/20…

I just found this!

Alexa Notify with Sound?

Due to some Echo updates, this can now be done. While it’s neither simple or easy, and does require an additional android device, there is now a way to have echo do voice notifications. See the following: