[OBSOLETE 1.1.12 3/13/2017] Big Talker - Talk when events occur

I do really like this app, it is great to have to be able to customize audio announcements.
I am wondering if you would also consider allowing alias’s? Most of the one off’s I have (rather than using a group and a standard variables" for announcements are because I don’t want the announcement to verbatim the device name in the audio output. For example many people use a prefix to keep like devices huddled together. IE: MoS for Motion sensor or MPS for multipurpose sensor or water leak sensor followed by … (kitchen, water tank, laundry tub). This was a very helpful feature that @MichaelS added to AA to make the voice reports output sound more natural. OR another option (which Michael did too) was add truncate to output Screen shot

Thank you for all the hard work! great app.

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And one more “consideration” for future development while I am on a roll.
The ability to have an URL to play a file (MP3) - allowing a user to pull in from their S3 buckets and cool Polly announcements.

Thanks again!

Is there something like %date% to announce today’s date? I have tried different things and haven’t been able to get bigtalker to say the date.

Also is there a way to announce the state of multiple things? At night I have an event that locks all of the doors and turns the thermostat to sleep settings. I would like BT to tell me that state of the locks, what mode ST is in, and the state of the garage door (open or closed). I have BT speak when a virtual switch is triggered. I am able to have it state the true state of BT with %mode% I am not sure about the locks or the garage.

I already posted under the LANnouncer thread, but then realized I might want post my question here instead. I might be going down the wrong path trying to use LANnouncer as far as what I want to do.

Is it possible to get Big Talker working with an Amazon Echo Dot that is not on the same network? I have an echo dot at work, and was trying to setup Big Talker and LANnouncer so that if something happens at home while I am at work I would get voice alerts on the dot. I configured port forwarding on my router at work (I’m the IT guy :smile:) so that my phone which is hooked up to the dot via bluetooth gets any requests on port 1035. When I tried all this I couldn’t get any results for the simple fact that this setup kept logging me out of my ST app on my phone. I would try to get into Big Talker smart app and I would constantly be asked to log back into ST. It was very frustrating. I wound up deleting the smart app and the device handler so I can start from scratch at home. I figure let me at least get it working within the same network and then try my remote setup later.

Anyone try this and got it working? Is there a different way to do it?

Not much activity in here… anyone have a similar setup to try to use Big Talker and an Alexa Echo or Echo Dot that is at another location?

There is not currently simply due to oversight (and no previous request). I’ll work on implementing it into the 2.0 beta/release version.

Not currently. I’ll have to think on how best to implement device states. It will likely be no small task as SmartThings requires subscription to device/events for SmartApps to receive updates regarding them. Currently BigTalker only subscribes to devices that you configure for speech. A settings page would likely have to be introduced for users to configure devices to monitor states of so that BigTalker could then subscribe and record state changes for future use in talk tokens/variables (%devicestate__devicename_%)

I’ve not tried LANNouncer on a network that my SmartThings hub did not also reside on. There are many factors that could come into play here. SmartThings hub needs to be able to communicate outbound on the LANNouncer port from the network it resides on through the ISP/Network and inbound through the ISP/Network on the network that your Android device running LANnouncer is installed on. There also exists the question if the SmartThings hub only allows it’s LAN based commands to be sent to non-private IP addresses (ie: not 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x., 172.16.x.x).
Most of this is handled in the Device Handler for LANNouncer (and other device handlers), except for a SmartThings hub IP range restriction which may be imposed by SmartThings API (I do not know):

I’ve also not tried connecting an Amazon Echo* to LANnouncer via Bluetooth and used any SmartThings SmartApp in that configuration. I’ll have to defer to other community members that have with BigTalker or other SmartApp’s.

Have a strange issue. i think its down to Big Talker but hard to say.

Every now and again maybe 10 times a day i get a message through VLCthing saying “incase you missed it. location mode has changed”

i have no idea where this is coming from or how to stop it. any ideas?

This wouldn’t come from BigTalker unless you’ve configured some event to speak this exact phrase.
The only advise that I can think of to narrow it down is note the time it says it next and then go into the SmartThings app > My Home > Things, scroll down to your speech device and press it, then select Recently. You should then be able to see what SmartApp sent the command to your speaker.

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Hey guys!

I got invested in this in the early early days when the Big talker app was still new. I’m wanting to jump back in, and utilize the door opening/closing announcements. I just have a few questions maybe someone can answer.

What speaker is the best, most reliable to use? I’m thinking of going Sonos, but want to make sure it is the best option.

Lastly, is there still a delay of the announcements? When I tried this awhile back, one of the things that turned me off was the delay of the door opening and the announcement. Is this still the case?

Thanks in advance.

thanks Brian.

it wasnt Big Talker but your help pointed me in the right direction. There was some legacy profile hanging around even though it was deleted a week ago. now removed and all good

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Hi, I was reading through this thread and wanted to see if Big Talker can be enhanced to play custom MP3s based on actions.
I looked at Lannouncer but the problem is that it has a restriction of only being able to play a few MP3s (5 for the full version).

I was thinking of putting VLC Player on my Raspberry Pi 3 connected to my Amazon echo via bluetooth. I would like to be able to do things like play custom MP3s when events occur (e.g., Star Trek Door Swoosh Sounds) when opening the door. While I like Big Talker, I am not a fan of the computer generated voices and would like to be able to use custom sounds/voices for some events in addition to the computer generated voices.

I use Big Talker with VLC Player on my Raspberry Pi 3. It has been 100% reliable for me. Custom MP3s would be nice, but I could not see way to do it.

Using BT version 1.1.12 with Lanouncer . The alarm and tone sound through my android paired with an echo but all tts has stopped working although in logging it says whatever i asked has happened … no sound at all though
Help please

Troubleshooting LANnouncer:

First make sure the up address shown in LANnouncer is the same as what is shown in your app

Check and make sure your WiFi on your Android device is not going to sleep
http://www.keybounce.com/lannouncer/trouble-shooting/several-hours-lannouncer-stops/

Restart your Android device

Restart your hub and leave powered off for 15 min (remove batteries if you have them)

More troubleshooting here

http://www.keybounce.com/lannouncer/trouble-shooting/after-weeks-lannouncer-stops/

I hope that gets you going again…

This is a common requested feature. I may implement it for musicPlayer device types in version 2.0 which is in (slow) development. It is not possible to implement this for speechSynthesis devices unless the speechSynthesis device allows you to send specific text to it and then it go out and grab/play the mp3.

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Brian,
Looking forward to your release. I would love to help you beta test if needed.

The 2.0 discussion is here: [OBSOLETE] BigTalker 2.0 -- Development

The install instructions are here:

There are some known issues with the current 2.0 development release. Mode change phrase token doesn’t work being one of those. Some are listed in the thread I linked above and some are listed on GitHub at Issues · rayzurbock/SmartThings-BigTalker · GitHub .

The 2.0 development version has custom mp3 support now.

See this thread regarding 2.0 development:
https://community.smartthings.com/t/bigtalker-2-0-development/?source_topic_id=81166

Specifically this post regarding mp3 support: BigTalker 2.0 -- Development

Note: 2.0 is a completely new install from 1.x. They can run side by side. It is also an in-development version. Expect it to break and provide feedback.

Tags of users with this specific request that I could find on this thread.
@emersonvier
@femwitjava
@bickyb
@siwilson

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Hi all,

I just have a strange issue of unable to access the status section of the big talker smartapp while others settings are fine, any idea before I remove the app and reinstall, just want to save the hassle of reconfiguration