Recommendation for sound device

Looking for recommendations on a device that will give pleasant alerts/sounds/dings/bongs in the house when an activity happens, like a door opens. I have the Aeon Labs ZW080-A17 Z-Wave Gen 5 siren but it doesn’t have varying sounds and functions primarily as an alarm.

get the Aeon labs z-wave doorbell, it will let you put 100 custom MP3’s I have one and it works great for all that stuff

you need this device handler:

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Thank you for the recommendation @dshokouhi

how do you like the siren? I was thinking about picking one of those up as well.

It works as expected for it’s core use as a siren, is loud and has a strobe. I am happy with it.

You might want to take a look at this if you have an Android 5.1 device (if not, you can buy one cheap $20 at Walmart). I use this along with Big Talker app and Rule Machine (now withdrawn). It provides pleasant chime, doorbell, siren sounds along with custom TTS.

Thank you for the recommendation @Jimxenus

Depends on your willingness to fiddle.

You could get an Android tablet to use as a “control center”, and load a few utilities into it such as Tasker and Sharptools. Also pick up a cheap Bluetooth speaker, and pair/connect it with the tablet. Then when an event for which you want audio occurs, have Tasker intercept the alert (using one more plugin, called AutoNotification) and, depending on the context of the alert, play varied sounds.

For example I have it configured for the following. If a window sensor is moved when the system is armed, ST sends out an “intrusion detection” alert. Tasker intercepts that alert, and starts beeping somewhat loudly through the Bluetooth speaker - as well as speaking the alert message. And if the correct disarm code is not entered within 30 seconds it sets the volume to max and plays alarm.mp3 through the Bluetooth speaker.

BTW, bluetooth speakers all seem to have a ‘timeout’ designed to preserve battery power. But if it’s always on AC power, you can defeat that timeout by sending a small beep or something from Tasker every X minutes (where X is something smaller than the timeout).

Note that for any given context, you can have Tasker adjust the volume for that specific context. One of the things I’m doing is using GoogleNow as an"always on" system similar to Echo/Alexa. But I don’t want Google’s audio responses to be too loud in a quiet room or too soft if the room gets loud. And I certainly don’t want to have to constantly do a manual volume adjustment! So using another auto-app called AutoVoice, I have Tasker checking the ambient room volume every three minutes and automatically adjusting the Bluetooth media output level appropriately.

If you end up getting the siren, this device handler provides some additional functionality:

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Yup I plan on using it :slight_smile:

Great use-case for Tasker! You can directly receive the events using SharpTools and react to them in Tasker as well. This way you don’t have to have notifications sent to all your devices and you don’t need an extra Tasker plugin.

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But isn’t SharpTools kind of like an extra “plugin” :wink:

hehe … I use SharpTools to notify me by audio when the wifey is near home, “Quit playing around, she’s almost home!” SharpTools is one of my favorite Tasker/ST integrations — good job, Josh!

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Yep. I’m using thing state to back up some of my ST routines, such as having my front door remain unlocked any time its contact sensor is open.

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this is freakin awesome!!

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