"Speech Synthesis" Device Capability

SmartApps & Automations
1

I’m delighted to see “Speech Synthesis” capability added to SmartThings device capability taxonomy. This opens up the door to adding voice notifications to our smart homes with just a few lines of code. I gave it a shot in Smart Alarm, using VLC Things as a speech device and it worked beautifully.

If I could make a suggestion (or a request) though, I’d like to have an ability to install a “default” speech device at the “location” level, so that all apps could take advantage of it without explicitly adding a speech device to each app. In most cases a home (location) needs only one speech device for “public” announcements, in my opinion.

So instead of mySpeechDevice.speak("Hello World!") you could simply use location.speak("Hello World!").

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2

Mine would continually be saying “recalculating” due to all my hacking. Either that or it would get a severe case of Tourette’s syndrom. Man, that should be a plug-in to the IDE. :grinning:

1 Like
3

After a couple weeks with VLC Thing, I’ve been asking myself “Why can’t I use VLC for notifications from all my stuff?” I hope this becomes the standard.

1 Like