[OBSOLETE 1.1.6 5/25/16] Big Talker - Talk when events occur

@ule @tslagle13 , any insight to @sballoz issue in the UK? Any specific issues that you know of regarding calling textToSpeech() there? I am also using MediaRenderer in the Central U.S. with gmrenderer-resurrect on a RaspberryPi (I don’t remember the article I followed, but here is one http://blog.scphillips.com/posts/2014/05/playing-music-on-a-raspberry-pi-using-upnp-and-dlna-v3/) **I do have to forcefully reboot it every once in a while. **Edit, add @jody.albritton

I am not completely up to speed on the UK differences but Tim is actually @slagle now

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There shouldn’t be any reason it doesn’t work on the surface.

EDIT:

I read more and understand better now. I have to ask around. On their surface their shouldn’t be a difference.

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@slagle, I wonder if the UK data center has the same phrases cached as the US datacenter(s)? Perhaps being new to the scene they do not have near as large (if any) cached phrases prior to the textToSpeech() platform issue.

Or perhaps, the UK datacenter / foreign IP range is being blocked from using the TTS service that the SmartThings platform relies on?

Brian,

unfortunately (as of a week ago) it looks like Sonos has gotten worse. All I now get from big talker (reinstalled 6 weeks ago) is “BigTalker couldn’t announce…” as a mater of fact all of my Sonos items no longer work, even the ones that have always worked… ie “mail has arrived” :frowning: @slagle

I can confirm that the TTS function in the UK does not work - Only cached messages from other people seem to work.

ITs really annoying as I have loads of things I want to be broadcast out through my speakers.

EDIT: I did start this, but got no reply’s. Was only to help me really find out what ones should be working.

Dean,

I agree it is frustrating. It is one of my favorite parts of ST. However I do have hope. I know @slagle is working hard on it, and I have every faith his ability to get this working for us… and when he does, he will be my hero forever!!! :grinning:

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Just got this in response to sending in a support ticket.

Hey Dean,
Thanks for getting in touch.
The TTS has been temporarily pulled from SmartThings, this is due to our engineers working on making it more reliable and more customizable than it previously was. Best thing to do would be to keep an eye on the Blog and Community pages for further updates.
Unfortunately at the moment we do not have a concrete timescale on when it will be making a comeback but we are chasing this up on a daily report with the engineers.
If you have any further questions please get back in touch.
Kind regards,

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try media renderer events , it has a TTS alternative and works great for me, you can try too the wheater app with external TTS

or you can change the function in yours smartapps

@ule I’ve just tried the solution, signed up and got an API key - But it don’t seem to work. I cant get any of the weather conditions to sound?

Hi @deano12,
1- Are you using the last version?
2.- What speaker do you have?
3.- The speaker can stop when press the stop button from device interface in smarting app (to verify is connected to hub)
4.- What zipcode are you using (to test information)

Thanks

This doesn’t help those with Sonos but another alternative TTS is one that does all the TTS processing on an Android device running 5.0. It does a great job paired with Big Talker.

Hi @ule

Here’s the answer to your questions:

1 - Yes
2 - Samsung M5 (x2)
3 - Checked this and command is sent to the speaker and volume update in shown in IDE logs
4 - No zip code as I’m in the UK.

Hi @deano12 , I have update the Sonos Weather Forecast External TTS , verify it and feedback.

Hi @ule… Just to update - I’ve applied all the updates now and no weather reports are being stated.

The only thing I’ve managed to get announce over the entire systems using a range of SmartApps is the caches custom messages. Thats it.

Hello everyone!
I installed Big Talker v 1.1.13 last night along with the smartapp LANdroid. My experiment consisted of an Android based Samsung Note 4 with the latest version OS.
I had the phone connected to a regular Bluetooth speaker via the headphone jack on the phone and the input connection on the speaker. I have not tried the Bluetooth connection between the phone and speaker with this yet.

I am pleased to say that it was an overwhelming success!

Pros:

  • Ability to use custom speech phrases

  • I can have different speakers in different rooms with different Android devices to send custom speech. Ex: speaker in my son’s rooms that connects via Bluetooth to their phones and when they are in their room they will receive the notifications, but not when they are gone. (This is more to do with LANdroid, but it is seamless with BT

  • it’s just awesome! !

Cons

  • only able to have 3 of each device type
  • unable to rename each instance of BT in the app

Note
I initially installed Big Talker v1.1.3 last night and it worked great. I then saw the v1.1.4 beta and upgraded to it so I could get the weather. Once the update was complete the app no longer worked. I started getting a push notice saying “ST platform issue? textToSpeech() failed”. Along with “Big Talker couldn’t announce: phrase…”

I have been reading a lot about the text to speech issues with ST since the last update. The Sonos app along with a couple of others are now gone.

I have no idea why v1.1.13 works and v1.1.14 does not. I’m not a programmer, just a user.
@rayzurbock, I’m sure you already know what’s going on, if not I hope I was able to help.

I’ve gone back to v1.1.13 and I’m enjoying it. Thank you for a great app!

@CAL7 thanks for reminding me. I’m also using the lannouncer along with Big Talker and LANdroid.

quote=“CAL7, post:169, topic:8076, full:true”]
@rayzurbock First, thanks for a great app. I’m using it with @NWTony LANnouncer and the combo is fantastic.

Weather is appealing. Do you, assuming no obvious issues such as @bamarayne is seeing, recommend the 1.1.4 Beta7 release?
[/quote]

@rayzurbock First, thanks for a great app. I’m using it with @NWTony LANnouncer and the combo is fantastic.

Weather is appealing. Do you, assuming no obvious issues such as @bamarayne is seeing, recommend the 1.1.4 Beta7 release?

@rayzurbock The Big Talker configuration screen mentions Ubi, Sonos and VLCThing. Any chance of putting LANnouncer on there, so people know it falls into Speech Synthesis?

[quote=“bamarayne, post:168, topic:8076”]
I initially installed Big Talker v1.1.3 last night and it worked great. I then saw the v1.1.4 beta and upgraded to it so I could get the weather. Once the update was complete the app no longer worked. I started getting a push notice saying “ST platform issue? textToSpeech() failed”. Along with “Big Talker couldn’t announce: phrase…”
[/quote] and @CAL7

I’ve been seeing this reported since LanDroid came out. I’m not certain yet what the difference is between 1.1.3 and 1.1.4-Beta versions that broke the ability for BigTalker to speak to LanDroid. I’ll be looking into this and if it’s on my end which is sounds like it is, I’ll be fixing it soon.

Thanks for your feedback, I’ll take it into consideration with future releases.

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I’ll see how I can work that in. I also plan to look into the issues with using 1.1.4-Beta and LanDroid soon. That and the TextToSpeech() function issues have me halted on actually releasing it from Beta.