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)
Not sure if I should get this or the doorbell by aeon labs. Want it for voice feedback. Speaker with alexa is nice but not sure if I will use it. Any opinions?
I didn’t know the bell could be used as a speaker other then the tracks you load onto it.
I use inexpensive cell phones ($20) and tablets with LANnouncer. Announcements are sent to Echo Dots and BT speakers. You can load motion detector apps that will wake up the tab and have another app like SmartTiles, SmartThings, Camera views, etc. loaded and ready to use.
Well bummer, that sale sure didn’t last long. I bought one yesterday and it was $50 again already on Amazon. That said, I am loving the speaker so far, perfect for EchoSistant.
Your setup looks awesome! Ya I almost have it all set up. Just have to figure out mounting and what cheap tablets I should get to put around the house and cameras. Have an old fire so no bluetooth unfortunately for announcements and the cameras seem to be hit or miss for working for me. I have a dlink that doesn’t want to connect correctly. Not sure if I should get a foscam or maybe an amcrest instead. Seem best for price option and features.
Not bad at all. That’s about how much I would want to spend in all. Need to just figure out which ones to get. Forgot I have some old phones I would use too.
Got my two new Fabriq speakers yesterday. Pretty nice little package, decent sound for the size and price. I was able to get them connected to wifi, got Alexa working (have to push a button) and got them grouped for multi-room audio playback, which seems to work pretty well with radio through TuneIn and music from Amazon Prime after asking Alexa to play it.
Haven’t done any ST integration yet. Still have a bunch of reading to do in the above threads to figure out where/how to start that.
I have a Fabriq set up with Smartthings. Set up was easy but the speaker seams to disconnect from DLNA after a couple of hours. It also disappears from the fabriq app. Wifi connection and AirPlay still works. After turning the speaker off/on, everything works again.
I have contacted fabriq support.
If it works it’s a great speaker for SmartThings. Small, loud and good looking… now it just needs to work reliably!
I’m having similar issues. Are you having any trouble with the Alexa button too?
I haven’t quite done enough troubleshooting to figure out exactly what is happening but I have two of the speakers, and they’re set in a group together with the Fabriq app. I have had episodes where one speaker’s Alexa button works and the other doesn’t. And sometimes only one of them is recognized in the Fabriq app. The MediaRenderer (Connect) app finds one speaker and the Media Renderer Events app works to send TTS messages (currently using Alexa) based on an event though there’s about a 15-30 second delay. Also, after sending an event message while not playing music, it seems to forget what the previously playing “station” was and I can’t hit play on the speaker to resume, as it resumes the most recently played TTS message (this may be by configuration/design and my fault from not knowing enough about how DLNA servers/remotes work).
Hopefully the becoming unresponsive feature can have a firmware fix? Haven’t tried contacting Fabriq yet- they don’t have much for troubleshooting information on their website, nor a support forum.
I don’t know if my Fabriq speaker is reading my emails but since I sent the message to support the speaker has been working flawlessly. There were no more disconnects from DLNA or the app. The only thing I remember is that the last time I reset and re-configured the speaker it was on battery only, without connecting it to power.
Fabriq support responded after ~48 hrs and sent me the link to their new beta iOS/Android app… but since the speaker is working now I will not pursue this any further.
The Fabriq does stay connected well in battery mode…until it runs out of battery.
It stayed connected for about 2 weeks now, without issues. Last time I re-started and set it up was in battery mode with power cable disconnected. After it was up and running I connected it to power. (it’s kind of strange!? but seams to work…)
I am not sure this speaker will work with my setup. I have FIOS and they give you a real crappy router. I turned off WiFi on that router and have a Apple Airport Extreme in bridge mode for WiFi. Will I be able to use this or do I have to go with Samsung or Sonos? I read somewhere I have to be able to turn on UdNP which Apple doesn’t support, they support NAT but not in Bridge Mode. Anyone know?
I have uPnp turned off on my router and haven’t really had a problem yet. You can only connect these speakers to 2.4 ghz WiFi, not 5 ghz so on my router I have both 2.4 and 5 ghz networks configured.
I can still control the speakers with the Fabriq app from my phone on the 5ghz network though.