Recommendations for Smart Speakers?

[mlchelp (michael watson)]

@JDRoberts

But the only way to have smartthings automation control the smart speaker, such as change the volume, is fairly clunky: you have to turn on a virtual switch in SmartThings and have that virtual switch coming on trigger a native routine on the smart speaker platform. This can be pretty limiting. For example, you don’t get any dial type control for volume, you have to treat it more like a scene where you predefined the single level you want to set the speaker to. And while this method does work with echo devices, I’m not sure whether it works with Google nest devices or not

I initially went through the tedious process of creating a different virtual switch for each voice announcement I wanted. Then Taustin introduced the Alexa Multi-trigger driver, and it was a game-changer for me. It’s one device that offers 19 different virtual contact sensors to trigger Alexa routines. I tried using 2 Ikea Sonoff speakers for my announcements, but they didn’t work reliably and were expensive, so I returned them. Echo devices, on the other hand, are cheap, sometimes priced as low as $25 when they’re on sale. This setup works perfectly, allowing me to announce anything I want from SmartThings, and it’s very affordable. If you want more announcements, you can simply add another multi-trigger device and get 19 additional announcements. It’s a flexible and scalable solution that allows you to expand as needed. No, it’s not as easy as sending the announcement directly from the ST routine, but I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on speakers either.