Thanks for the update… I’ll look into fixing that. Hopefully your report will help others.
The first page you should be shown is a page with an on/off slider to determine if the rest of the app is using Ubi style support (speechSynthesis) or Sonos style support (musicPlayer)
The app has received mostly feedback regarding Sonos. Originally the Ubi device type didn’t support the functions needed but the author of the device type quickly fixed that. I hope you have great success with it.
I can access my UBI through an older beta version of this app, but I cannot on the current version. Fresh install did not resolved, nor did removing the beta version I was using.
I set the speech option to “off” for the UBI and go to the next page. When I go to select my speech device there is nothing there to add.
UPDATE: Toggling back and forth between the start screen of the app and the selection of the sound device, it finally allow list of ubi devices to appear.
The SmartThings app seems to do weird things with SmartApps and usually logging out, killing the app, logging back in and trying again resolves the issue.
Try removing your version of BigTalker, Log out of the SmartThings app, kill it (force quit) on your smartphone then relaunch, log back into SmartThings, and add BigTalker back, log out of the SmartThings app, kill it, relaunch it and log back into it again and configure.
I am unable to get Big Talker to output any audio. I worked great for the first 2 days and hasn’t worked since. I have tried removing the app. Both Sonos devices and starting over. I’ve enabled debug logging and nothing is returned indicating an error.
Thanks I will try it tonight. Once the family is home and events are supposed to trigger. I have been receiving random door opening events for certain doors and sometimes the time events fire.
awesome app thank you. i’m finding the sonos weather app to not work at all. i had it working at one time. have also reinstalled the sonos (setup from scratch) but nothing happens.
would love if big talker could add weather functionality as well.
I am still on ver 5.3.2 and my Sonos weather forecast is also not working correctly. It starts fine but cuts out right towards the end. It has been this way for a few weeks now.
I just updated my Smart App with Rayzur’s Dev code to see if it addresses my problems. It’s just nice to see I’m not alone in experiencing a problem. I’m thinking it’s more of a Sonos issue than an issue with the Smart App. Fingers crossed.
@rayzurbock thanks so much for the work you have done! If you have a paypal donation email or similar please post it so I and others using your code can hopefully fund your purchase of test hardware (Sonos, Ubi, etc) as it is the least we can (should) do to thank you.
I read above in this thread about one action interrupting another, which is sort of what I believe I am seeing as well. I am mainly using BigTalker to announce open and closed doors however I am experiencing a high number of incomplete vocal messages. At first I thought that two messages back to back such as “Patio door is open” and then “Patio door is closed” would cause the first sentence to be cut off by the second one arriving too soon however I have lots of cases where the second sentence, followed by nothing, is cut off. In other words, if I open the patio door and close it right away I might hear:
Patio door is open
Patio door is cl…
There is also a significant delay between the event and the message but I am assuming this is due to the cloud setup of ST. I am hoping the Hub v2 will reduce or eliminate this issue…
Another possible cause for this delay may be that I have a Raspberry PI v2 talking to my DSC alarm via the Envisalink Ethernet interface and passing on zone status (in this case the patio door) to ST. In several cases I checked how fast the DSC alarm status was being updated in ST and it was quite quick but I suspect the speed can change dramatically based on ST server load.
I am inclined to exclude my Internet connection as, although its speed by 50%(!!) I am always between 500Mbps and just under 1000Mbps.
Do you have any suggestions on what this issue may be?
When you were referring to the Sonos logs were you talking about logs from the sonos itself or the Events listed under the individual Sonos device under SmartThing My Devices?
I also have posted a couple of links/info about 6 lines down from the top of the code that you paste into the editor to install the SmartApp. To find it:
I probably need to add some traffic control to BigTalker. I haven’t done it yet because it gets a bit messy adding queues and then flushing them out. I am afraid the flushing out part could get annoying when there is a lot of activity.
For this reason, on my contact sensors, I select either Open or Closed, but not both for speaking. This prevents one from interrupting another at least for the same door.
I currently do not have any delays in the program, it speaks as soon as SmartThings sends BigTalker the event and it processes it. You can login at https://graph.api.smartthings.com and go to Live Logging to watch your sensors and SmartApps in action. Go there, click Live Logging, then go open a door, wait for BigTalker to speak, and close the door. Go back and look at your Live Logging page and you should see logs for the door, other apps, and Big Talker. You can see timestamps, etc there which might help identify the delays.
The process is pretty much like this:
You open a door
The door sensor sends notice to your hub
Your hub forwards the notice to SmartThings service over the Internet
SmartThings processes the event and forwards it to apps within it’s ecosystem that have subscribed to it
BigTalker being one of those apps receives notification of the event
BigTalker processes the notification determines the desired phrase from your configuration and sends a text string to SmartThings service for conversion to MP3 with a request to play on your configured device for the event.
SmartThings receives the text, converts it to MP3 and provides a link to the MP3.
SmartThings sends the MP3 link on to your hub to forward to your music player / speech synthesis device (Sonos, Ubi, VLCThing) with a request to play.
Your device speaks.
This all usually happens in a matter of seconds.
When multiple events fire in succession, they are like new playlist items being added to your speech device each requesting priority with the latest usually winning; therefore Door Open starts to speak and a Door Close too quickly interrupts the Door Open audio.
FYI - I started some work on the development version of BigTalker and found that TalkNow is no longer working. This feature relies on a SmartApp function refreshAfterSelection. This function is broken in the latest SmartThings app for at least the iPhone. I am not sure if it affects Android or Windows Phone users.
Until SmartThings releases an updated iPhone app that restores the refreshAfterSelection function, BigTalker may not be able to perform the following functions (at least when using the iPhone app):
TalkNow
Workaround:
Go into the TalkNow configuration page
Change the TalkNow text
Press Done (normally it would talk now)
Press to enter the TalkNow configuration page again and it should speak when the TalkNow configuration page opens again. Keep the text the same or blank it out to prevent it from speaking the next time you launch the TalkNow configuration page. TalkNow only speak when it detects that text is present in the “Speak Phrase” field and that the text entered does not match the text previously saved.
During Install, choosing speech device type of Sonos/VLCThing or UBI/VLCThing