[OBSOLETE] Sonos Talking Alarm Clock

Hey Mike! I’ve already got a Sonos on my wishlist for my birthday so I will hopefully be able to use this app then… (have to wait till July 22nd though)…

Still… I’ve got one little feature suggestion (don’t like the word “request” at the moment…)

I don’t know how you get the system to talk but… any chances of implementing other languages into the app?

Not speaking for me, cause I understand English pretty well, but I’m thinking about my wife… she only knows Spanish…

We’ll keep in touch! For now I’ve already bookmarked this thread!! Thanks!

Daniel,

Thanks! I think you will love the Sonos speakers…I am buying a few more for my house with the success of the first one I got.

The system talks using some sort of backend system at SmartThings/Sonos. For the coders out there, this is either the ‘playText’ or ‘textToSpeech’ API calls. I do have a request into SmartThings to understand what happens on the backend for these calls, but it simply seems that it goes to Amazon’s cloud computing environment and converts the text to an MP3 that is then ‘played’ on the Sonos. As such, I know of no way to change the language…I also see no way in the SmartThings app to change the language either. However, I will add this to the list of questions I have for the engineers when they get to my question.

Thanks for the note and I will let you know what I find out.

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Hi Michael. I tried your app this morning and it worked great! It woke me up with the voice message and the weather forecast at 6:00 AM, and then changed the house mode to Good Morning. Here is some feedback… I missed the weather forecast while waking up. Yes the noise woke me up, but the forecast was over by the time I became alert. So maybe the option to play an alarm sound/music for a few seconds to get you awake, and then the weather forecast would work better in my case. Also, I was not able to figure out how to play a song after the forecast. Since this is integrating with Sonos, would it be possible in a future release to play for example a Sonos favorite station after the forecast?

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Carlos,

Ironically, one of the things I struggled with on this app is that it was taking a few seconds to trigger the voice after the lights came on…However, I see your point and think I know of a way to get this to delay (as an option) or some sort of sound after the lights or switches come on before the weather report. Let me add that to my list of things to investigate…

As for the song playing, I am not sure what you mean…the song must be in your list of previously played songs before you can choose it in the list…seems to be a limitation of the integration with ST. So, I recommend going to the Sonos app, maybe finding a online radio station, choosing that to play, and then go back into SmartThings and the Alarm Clock app. You should then see this song or radio station in the list.

Let me know if this works for you. And, great suggestions!!

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I just tried that. I used the Sonos app and played a Pandora station. That did not work. I also tried a TuneIn radio station. That did not work. It only works if I play a track from my music library. After I play from my library I can see the tracks in your app and I am able to select them. Sonos has a feature that allows you to create favorite stations, i.e. in Pandora → Today’s Hits Radio. When I use the Sonos app, I can select that station from my Sonos Favorites and it will play without having to drill down in Pandora for that station. The same applies to TuneIn, I could make a radio station from anywhere in the world a Sonos Favorite. It would be cool if you app could launch a Sonos Favorite instead of the same track every morning. With that feature I could remove the alarm clock in my room and listen to music, news, etc. when the Sonos Talking Alarm goes off, just like using any other alarm clock.

Never mind, I got a radio station working. I had to open the ST Sonos Connect app and rediscover my speakers. After that the radio station from TuneIn showed up in your app. That is great!

Excellent news! Thanks for the feedback and I am glad you got it working.

I did start putting the structure of the ‘pre alarms’ into the next version. Here is what I have so far:

  1. I will provide 6 ‘hard coded’ alarms in my github space that the user can choose within the app
  2. I MAY include the ability for a user defined sound
  3. The user can set a different volume for the pre-alarm verses the voice and music(post sound)
  4. The user can also define the length the pre-alarm goes off…Some of the sounds are 30 seconds and I am sure no one wants to hear beeping for that long!

Any other thoughts on this?

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That looks good to me! Thank you for the great app.

So I looked into this…the alerts are not ‘pushed’ from the cloud; they are ‘pulled’. So, having the alarm go off in case of a alarm is a bit outside of the scope of this app as it is covered with a separate app from SmartThings that will text you the alert (in the labs section). Also, when pulled, there isn’t much information in the ‘alert’ except description, date and expires. However, if anyone feels this is worthy to add, I could include it as an option in the voice area. In other words it would say the greeting, then have the option for current temp, weather, and then an option to say ‘there is an active alerts of …’. My bet is that this would be somewhat redundant if you have the weather report speak, but am willing to test this out and put in an option for this…

So, to summarize, no…serve warnings will not alert on their own, but a ‘tag’ could be put in the voice message from this app to say there is an alert and give a brief description.

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Well, now that you mentioned…I guess both :slight_smile: It would be nice to have an option to include weather variables from the Smart Weather app. For example Good morning! The current temperature is %temperature% and today’s weather condition is %weather%. Or something along those lines. The Smart Weather polls things like illuminance, humidity, localSunrise, localSunset, alerts, etc. As for alerts, I cannot believe no one tackled the voice alert. There is a severe weather text alert there, but I think a lot of people would be interested in voice alert. Any thoughts?

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Maybe that SmartThings app needs a revision to allow for voice…maybe that will be my next project.

The weather settings you mentioned are already included in the next revision of my, but is a bit easier to manage than typing the variables in a single like (i.e. you choose to have the temp, or weather, or sunrise, etc, through a yes/no slider).

Let me see the amount of information in an actual alert (unless someone has that handy and can post it here) to see if it is already part of the normal weather report…my bet is that it is…

Ha I didn’t see your comment. I realized that weather alert is out of scope for your alarm. But it would be nice to have future app, or an expansion of the current text alert. As for the optional variables, I don’t think it would be redundant. It would be a better (quicker) alternative. Thanks for looking into it…

Yeah…depending on the amount of information in the description of the alert, it would be rather easy to have the speakers go off (instead of a text message) to say “danger…something something something”. We agree that is a separate app, so I might tackle that next.

As for the variables, the one thing I struggle with is the limited space on the interface to enter your own text. Unless I am missing something, it can only be one line…Otherwise I would use variables instead of switches. To me, in this case, switches make more sense. Make sense?

Well, while I got some neat GUI integration in, it appears I ran into a technical roadblock. It appears you can only do two combinations of ‘tracks’ per alarm. So, for those that wanted a loud, beeping alarm, then a voice message, then play a music track, it appears we may be out of luck. I will need to figure out how to pause code, but that is more a ‘hack’ than anything else.

However, in thinking about this, it is an alarm clock…so it probably only needs two of the functions, with the ability to choose WHICH two as an option. In other words, the options for the user would be:

No ‘pre-alarm’…start with a voice (greeting, weather, etc), then a track…or
A pre-Alarm and then a voice…or
A pre-Alarm and then a music track

And of course, the option of only having ONE of the options available would be possible.

I will keep looking into this…Now, a person COULD use the same app, set one alarm to a loud pre-alarm, then another alarm a minute later that is a voice message and then music…so there is an overall ‘hack’ that is possible to have all 3…

Will keep everyone posted.

I set up the text messaging app and am awaiting an alert to come it to see what information is in it…am working on the alarm piece now, so this piece may not be in the next version.

Awesome! I started playing with it too. I am pretty new at coding, so what I did, I used the code for the text app and added a section to flip a virtual switch on, when a weather alert text is sent. Then I set up a custom message on Sonos (when the switch is on) to say ‘A weather alert has been issued’. I also set up my hue lights to blink red when the virtual switch is on. It would be nice to be able to set up everything in one app.

Nicely done! Have you had an alert come in yet? How much information is in the alert?

Thanks. No, I did not get a notification yet. I think that app is looking only for high intensity severe weather alerts (like tornado, flash floods, etc.) because my house suffered some damages during a strong thunderstorm the other day and didn’t get any texts or push notifications. That’s mainly the reason why I was looking into the Smart Weather app fields, because it pulls any weather statements released by NOAA. Will see…

Ok…I got the framework done for the app completed and am rather pleased with it. I expect to release it next week. Here are the compromises I made based on the technical limitations of the Sonos implementation:

Within one of the 4 alarm schedules, you choose one of 3 primary alarms: A ‘canned’ alarm sound, a voice message, or a track/internet radio station. If you choose the canned alarm or voice message, you can then choose a secondary alarm (i.e. a musical track for either, and a voice message if your first alarm is a canned sound).

If you choose a voice message, you have all sorts of options in the weather report, along with vocal confirmation of switches modes or Phrase changes.

So, for those that want a long (up to 20 second) of beeping to wake them up before the weather report, you got it. If you still like the weather report and then music, you have that option.

I will be putting a polish on this…Unlike many SmartThings app, I really made the GUI dynamic; in other words, you don’t see the music options unless you chose that Alarm. The interface is more interactive, only showing what is relevant. This IS jarring for someone who memorized locations of buttons as each alarm has the potential of having different buttons…but that is part of the fun…the discovery of things. One of the drawbacks of this is the refreshing of the pages when certain selections are made. I tested this on cellular and it isn’t too bad…the Android app does crash sometimes when doing changes, but it isn’t just my app that happens in. All in all, I can revise this if it becomes an issue for anyone, but I see more flexibility in the dynamic interface.

I will create a post here when it is ready for folks to test. Thanks for all of the positive support I have received!

@MichaelS Ok Micheal I just want you to know… This app saved my bacon this morning. One of my cats decided to use my bedside table as a launch pad to get to the window sill last night .Apparently, she also stepped on the off button on my normal alarm. Without Sonos Talking Alarm Clock I would have slept until noon.
I thank you, my employer thanks you, the folks that I had an early morning meeting with, thank you… and I am pretty sure the cat thanks you too :smile: