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

That is going to be found as a Contact event.

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What an awesome app!! Works like a charm against a LANnouncer. I installed on an old unused phone, which is now always plugged in in the kitchen.

A question: is it possible to add an integration with a Weather Station type of a device, for the purpose of announcing current weather conditions and maybe forecasts?

P.S. FYI, this link appears to be broken. PayPal said itā€™s in ā€œoutdated formatā€ when I tried using it.

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It doesnā€™t integrate with a weather station per-say, but it does pull data from Weather Underground.
Scroll to the first post in this thread and look for the %xxxxx% variables for all of the things that you can integrate into your talk phrases.

I have a simulated (virtual) switch, that I ensure is off every night when my home goes into Night mode. When my home runs the Good Morning routine, I have the routine turn that switch on. Big Talker monitorā€™s that switch and uses the following talk phrase when the switch is turned on: Good Morning. %weathercurrent% %weathertoday%.
This goes out to weather underground, grabs the current conditions and the forecast for the day and announces it. So every morning, I am greeted with ā€œGood Morning, The current weather is xx degrees. The forecast for today is ā€¦ā€

If for some reason it is pulling the wrong weather report or if you just want a different locations weather, you can override your hub location by doing %weathercurrent(00000)% %weathertoday(00000)% where 00000 is your US zip code, US airport code, State/City (CA/San_Francisco), Country/City (Australia/Sydney), or Lat/Long (37.8,-122.4).

Thanks for the info about the PayPal donation link no longer working. Iā€™ll look into that.
I too use LANnouncer. Well, actually I use a windows version that I wrote and have running on a small windows tablet. I havenā€™t released it because itā€™s just too dang difficult to get a proper code signing certificate to sign the code so that systems will trust it without workarounds. Someday, maybeā€¦

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I received a nice gesture to BigTalker today. Somebody donated some $ and sent encouragement to keep up the work. Itā€™s always a surprise when that happens. Thank you!

I do have plans for BigTalker. Iā€™ve already begun development and testing. I have some hurdles to overcome, but thatā€™s what I do for a living. I find solutions to problems daily. This is pretty much a spare time project and I have 5 kids, so I havenā€™t had much spare time lately and thus havenā€™t been very active in the community or with BigTalker (publically). I also work in education, so school is cranking up and Iā€™ve been working long hours with that as wellā€¦

Iā€™ll leave you with thisā€¦ I promise a new version is coming that will remove the 3 event group limit per event type and will incorporate some of the things that have been asked for (such as the option to not resume audio after talking for those using musicPlayer device handlers). Iā€™ll likely have another look at the available capabilities for device handlers and incorporate some of the new ones.

Thank you all for the encouragement to continue this projectā€¦ Itā€™s a fun one.

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@slagle @JDRoberts @jody.albritton
Any of you guys know why I cannot edit the 1st post on this thread anymore? I used to be able to edit the main post but I cannot seem to find the button to do so anymore.

I have info to update.
I would like to update the title (since this release has been out for a while) as well as the main post content.

Can any of you guys help?

Thereā€™s a time limit on how old the post can be when you can edit it. @slagle May be able to change it, Iā€™m not sure.

Iā€™ve never run into that beforeā€¦ Odd. Thanks for letting me know Iā€™m too old. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

And thatā€™s why I tagged @JDRoberts. This guy is in the know on every-freakin-thing. Thanks JDRoberts.

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Not groovy. I know nothing about groovy. :wink:

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Brian,

I resolved this issue. I was confusing modes from SHM with the modes controlled by routines (which Big Talker looks at).

ā€“Dave

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This item is not mentioned in the in-app help. Also, I had to replace all instances of ā€œit.displayNameā€ with ā€œitā€ on my v2 hub.

Hereā€™s a video of my new BigTalker running on my devicetype

Itā€™s already so large Iā€™d prefer not to make it longer.

@rayzurbock, would it make sense to make a new post?

Yes, Iā€™ll do that.
Iā€™ve split one off for discussion of 2.0 development here: https://community.smartthings.com/t/bigtalker-2-0-what-do-you-want/55305.

Once 2.0 is released, Iā€™ll either adjust that one or make a release 2.0 thread.

Thanks

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Thanks. Iā€™ll make a note to fix this.

Odd. The status page within BigTalker should show what is being returned by it.displayName under the speech devices/custom speech devices and also under each activated device within each event group. It should be the name and/or custom name that you have given your device(s). I am running a v2 hub as well and it does enumerate this properly for me.

Cool. Thanks for the video!

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With this post, we should move to the new thread for further BigTalker 1.x.x discussion.

Announcing BigTalker 1.1.7 and new discussion thread:


Discussion thread for BigTalker 2.0 development: https://community.smartthings.com/t/bigtalker-2-0-what-do-you-want/55305

@rayzurbock BigTalker is my favourite appā€¦so pleased you are developing it further! I have so many triggers configured you can rest assured that my wishlist below is derived from some extensive usage. Note sure how easy some of these are to achieve but neverthelessā€¦ Keep up the good workā€¦

Iā€™d be interested to learn which one you think are possible, difficult or already on your functionality hit list :wink:

  1. Unlimited Event configuration per device
  2. ability to store a range of TTS messages per event allowing BT to randomly select different TTS messages per device in order to make the notification experience different each time and make it feel that the house has a personality :slight_smile:
  3. Back up and restore ā€¦ Iā€™ve been using BT since only version 1.1.6 so have never upgraded but with the extensive range of triggers i have configured I am petrified of a crash or corruption resulting in me having to reconfigure all the events/triggersā€¦ ability to save the config elsewhere as backup ?
  4. Some sort of system check/error log in the app - occasionally BT doesnā€™t trigger as i am sure this is the ST platform but never entirely sure
  5. Tannoy function - expand the ā€˜Talk nowā€™ function to set a preconfigured range of repeatable announcements e.g. ā€˜Kids dinner is readyā€™ to save retyping/changing the previous message (noted that V1.1.6 states it needs to be different from the last spoken phrase so this might be difficult)
  6. I want to get rid of Sonos Notify with Sound ā€¦ so including big talk to play a music flle would be great ā€¦ even playing the music file after a TTS announcement would be ideal (minimal delay)
  7. Queuing, if multiple TTS messages are targeted at the same speaker and they fire at the same time e.g. two doors open then the message to be queued behind one another
  8. Minimum time between actions - ability to set a minimum time between events
  9. Ability to delete slots - say slot 2 and the other configs in slot 3, move to fill slot 2 automatically without having to individually delete each config
  10. Ability to Test play each message after config
  11. Ability to change/set the volume per event rather than setting globally as a default
  12. Ability to resume playing music accurately after a message is fired - when i say accurately ā€¦resume from point of when TTS message kicked in (or restart the last playing song/album)

once again, keep up the good work , its apps like this that keep my interest in Smartthings

Thanks

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How to donate?

Support the project

This SmartApp is free. Donations to support development efforts are accepted via (non-refundable, no guarantee of service/support):

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Iā€™d like to speak events from my Google Calendar. Any chance you can do the oauth and poll google calendar?