I recently started on home automation. This is an addictive hobby. I have hue lights, Harmony hub, several echo dots and smarthings hub with few motion and contact sensors. I read on the smarthings community we can do voice notifications from smarthings and regular weather alerts.
I did a lot of reading and became confused :). Apparently, the potential is huge and there are so many things to try like CoRE (which I recently installed), echosistant, ask Alexa etc. So I am working my way backward according to my needs, few questions (please be patient :):
What is the additional use of voice notification from smart things besides door open/close and similar and weather alerts. Is the effort setting it up worth the gain in productivity?
On implementing the voice notifications I see several ways are possible: (a) use lannouncer+bigtalker coupled with an old android phone and pair it with echo dot; (b) buy a speaker Sonos or Samsung radiant series to pair directly with smarthings. Now I wish if I go by method (a) can I stream notification to all my echo dots (i.e. multi-room notifications?) I do not want to dedicate a tablet for each room Or the other way around is to buy a Sonos (I am not very impressed by reviews of Samsung radiant as sound quality is also a plus point for me) but close system of Sonos is prohibiting as I have several good speakers coupled through chrome cast audio. Unless I spend 500$ to get something like play 5 which has 3.5 mm jack, I cannot really include it in my other speaker selection. So that’s a dilemma.
The presence sensor has been driving me nuts with Smarthings I tried mobile phone [android] as presence sensor and then tried life 360. Still unreliable. I read arrival sensor have high battery drain so don’t want to go that way. Now I want to trigger lights inside my house whenever I open the door (contact sensor) and then motion detected inside the house (motion sensor right next to the door inside house), does CoRe [smarthings app, or any other app] has such capability to sequence these sensor events and trigger actions accordingly ? I guess sequencing should be a reliable way of knowing whether someone is entering the house or leaving the house and trigger lights accordingly.
I wish to play a welcome greeting (weather updates etc will be a bonus) and some music on my speakers when I enter the home. In terms of speakers, I have chromecast audio hooked to Bose sound link mini (also has Bluetooth), Yamaha receiver which again has chromecast audio and Bluetooth both, and few echo dots. Right now I use Tasker on Android combined with auto input to turn on wifi, cast screen to chrome cast audio and turn on the music app. This set-up works 60% of the time, not always reliable and takes ~ 30seconds. Is there a more efficient solution?
Apologies for multiple queries and if I have posted in the wrong section. Any help or pointers will be a big help.
1.i personally use a fabriq for my voice notifications. I use it for notifying me of open doors/Windows or washer/dryer finishing. I also have it say “the alarm is about to sound and the police will be notified” when there are 5 seconds left in the entry delay and the have it look"intruder intruder. Your picture has been taken and the police have been notified". Some other speakers allow you to preload audio files. Honestly I think it’s worth it. Can’t tell you how many times I have left a window open.
2.fabrig has become pretty popular recently. It costs usually $50 on amazon and it has multiroom capability. You connect it to smartthings as a dlna device. It’s about the size of a male adults fist.
It’s audio quality is pretty impressive in my opinion as well. For me, when these came out It was a no brainer. Get 4 for the price of one Sonos and have one in every room. Here’s a list of some other options you can look at
If you have installed core and not webcore I would highly recommend you install webcore and give it a try. It’s a lot easier and faster in my opinion. And yes it can do what you are asking. Webcore can pretty much do anything you want it to do. Your implementation would look something like; if front door contact changes to open AND THEN front door motion changes to active THEN turn on light. Pretty much anything you can think of, it can do when it comes to automation.
4.wlecome greetings are easily achieved through some smartapps but i personally use webcore. It says “welcome home” when I disarm the SHM and it says the weather when I activate the motion sensor in the front room when I get up in the morning. Once again webcore will allow you to pretty much set this up however you would like. Playing music has always been a problem for me to get set up correctly. I know a lot of people have gotten it to work and Sonos speakers have a feature allowing you to select a favorite station or song and smartthings can que that up from my understanding.
I hope this was able to help you at all.
Oh and also if you haven’t heard of it yet you can try and use bubbleupnp to turn your Chromecast audios into dlna devices and then you can just plug them into any speaker you can and send notifications to them.
It has Alexa built into it i have never used the Alexa aspect myself. It sits behind my tv and is used mainly for audio notifications. I think I need to press the mic button on it to activate Alexa too so doesn’t work well as an Alexa device in my opinion really.
Or the other way around is to buy a Sonos (I am not very impressed by reviews of Samsung radiant as sound quality is also a plus point for me) but close system of Sonos is prohibiting as I have several good speakers coupled through chrome cast audio. Unless I spend 500$ to get something like play 5 which has 3.5 mm jack, I cannot really include it in my other speaker selection. So that’s a dilemma.