Sonos:1; cheapest compatible speaker?

[RLDreams (Really Living the Dream)]

I think the cheapest way most have gotten around announcement is with Landroid and an old phone or tablet with a external speaker .

Android as a Speech/Alarm Device released! And Updated!

Well… released on Google Play and on the website. SmartThings hasn’t approved the device handler or SmartApp yet. But… Do you want an easy way to announce events - with speech or with chimes and alarms? Do you want to have such announcements handy while you’re not home - e.g. a chime when the front door opens on your cell phone? Does buying a Sonos system or dedicating a computer to VLC Thing seem like overkill to get sounds out of SmartThings? Then perhaps LANnouncer (formerly LANdroid) is the solution. LANnouncer enables SmartThings to talk on Android devices running Lollipop or higher, via LAN (local network) or via SMS. See the LANnouncer web page for more information and to download the groovy driver (for now, until SmartThings approves the publish), plus LANnouncer on the Goog…

RELEASE Generic Media Renderer (DLNA Speakers). Cheap Sonos Alternative (Update V2)

Amazing! Bravo Sir! You have just given everyone the ability here to use devices that many of us commonly own to get Text To Speech notifications or alarms all around our house, without buying expensive Sonos speakers! For some who dont know: DLNA is the protocol that many of already have in our Android cell phones, Android Tablets, SmartTVs, Media Players, Blu-Ray, Xbox and Playstation game consoles, Raspberry Pi or Amazon Fire TV with XBMC or Kodi, Talking of millions already have DLNA. I believe the new Pure Jongo devices people were talking about on have it too. I wonder what other more affordable network speakers will work out of the box with this? Yeah thats right, its Saturday night and new code came out lol! EDIT: So Media Render is a type of DLNA speak, so NOT all devices have i…

Audible alerts when sensors are triggered?

In the Devices forum, I’ve announced the LANdroid beta. It won’t let you announce events with your 2gig system, but any Android device (a tablet on the LAN or a phone using SMS) can do voice announcements, chimes, etc. It requires LANdroid SmartThings device driver, Remote LANdroid SmartApp if you want SMS rather than LAN alerts, the TTSService (an android service I wrote to enable the functionality), and a speech-to-events SmartApp like Big Talker. All are free; the first three are part of “LANdroid.” Hope this helps.

Speaker Notifications

I use LANnouncer on a cheap Android device running 5.0 (you can purchase as little as $20 at Walmart). For bigger sound, you can connect to speakers via Bluetooth. It does everything you request along with a SmartApp called Big Talker.

Tasker as my Smartthings voice

After wrestling with my Sonos system being far from dependable as a voice for my ST, I decided to try use a very cheap Android tablet, Tasker and Sharptools. Sonos was good, but inconsistent in actually playing the custom phrases or resuming any music it may have disrupted. Custom phrases seem to have their beginning and end lopped off, if you adjust the volume for the message. So, after a year I finally gave up. I have a mesh of ST devices, with IFTTT acting as a more reliable bridge between my Belkin Wemo devices and ST, SimpleRuleBuilder to build more complex rules for my ST environment, Virtual On/Off tiles to record conditional states, but finally, I have that voice that is reliable. I bought a cheap Android 5.1 tablet for $50, installed Tasker and Sharptools. Sharptools gives me t…