Custom voice notifications with Media Renderer (DLNA) or a different smartapp?

SmartApps & Automations
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My apologies if I should have cobbled together a solution, but I’m something of a newbie, and I’ve been poring through a number of threads, a lot of which are out of date; I’m obviously missing something, and would greatly appreciate some help.

I’m looking for a replacement for the “Sonos Notify with Sound” smartapp. I do have this app working with VLC Things at the moment, but am not able to create any new notifications since “notify with sound” is no longer available. There was a video posted showing how to fix the smartapp, but it was posted back in 2015, and now is no longer available.

I have Media Renderer installed and working, so I can access a connected speaker, but I’m missing the piece to generate custom notifications from Smartthings (I use an iPad Mini running iOS 9.3.5, so no access to Tasker/SharpTools etc. for this purpose). What may I use instead?

Thank you!

Edited to add: I found BigTalker, and that seems to do what I want it to. But is there any way to reduce the lag time between the event and the notification? Thanks again!

1 Like
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how much lag time are you experiencing? It may be related to the vlc things, also which speakers did you get connected?

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About 4 seconds worth, give or take. I have a portable speaker connected to an AudioCast, so it shouldn’t be VLC Things. Sorry, I should have added that.

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interesting, I’ve found my big talker events are heard on the speaker within a second or two. The Big Talker thread may have some helpful info, you can also search within the thread using the magnifying glass for “delay” or whatever to save time since it’s a big thread. Wish I had a better answer for you!

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btw, I have a bunch on audiocast and chromecast devices that I use for notifications as well using CastWebApi the setup isn’t ready for the mass public but I love it, I’ll try out VLC Things and see how that is today delay wise

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If you really want that app you can just manually reinstall it. The source code is still available online and you can just copy and paste it. If you’re interested let me know and I’ll link to the source.

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I’d love the link, Tobias, thank you! I do want to ask, though… what is the reason it’s no longer available? Was it shown to affect Smartthings adversely in some way, do you know?
Thank you!

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Here’s the source code:

There should be enough tutorials on how to install a smartapp manually in case you don’t know how to do it.

Well I don’t know exactly but I can assume that Samsung wanted to unify all the Bose and Sonos apps. Ok they forgot quite a lot of features, but at least it works great with Samsung speakers now :wink:

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Ha, wonderful. Thanks so very much!

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You might try BigTalker 2.0 (development version) and see if the delay is still present. I should be releasing this version soon with minor adjustments from it’s current development state.

The discussion thread for Big Talker 2.0 is here.

The parent app code is here.
The child app code is here.

Publish the parent, save the child (in the IDE).

1 Like
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Oh, thanks so much! I’ll definitely try this. I hope you don’t mind, though, if I ask a totally newbie question: I tried to look installation instructions up pertaining to parent/child, but couldn’t access the original thread. Do you mean that the parent is the device handler and the child is the smartapp?
Thanks again!