Echo speaks everywhere group

Hi guys, apologies if this has been asked before.

I can enable announcements on my individual echos but my speaker groups don't work. It appears the problem relates to an announcements and TTS being false (see attachment) how or where do I change these settings to True.

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I was under the impression that the everywhere group does not work in Hubitat...Heck it rarely works in Alexa, lol.

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Ain't that the truth lol

Maybe @tonesto7 knows the answer.

I know he has answered this and if I am remembering correctly, it’s a limitation imposed by Amazon. That’s why Zones exist in the ES app. You can’t use the groups you create in the Alexa app for tts.

I fought the 'everywhere' group issue myself. it was not HE related. Amazon's Everywhere group is an undocumented keyword - it was implemented as a default group for multi amazon device environments for syncronized music. It flat out does not work! The solution I came up with was to create a new all-inclusive group on Alexa with a different name. This solved my Amazon problem and in turn allowed a 'WHA' device on Echo Speaks in the auto-detect new device if you have that enabled. GL.

Hi and thanks @jshimota .

If you look at my screenshot above, I have a group called downstairs. This appears as WHA in Hubitat but doesn't work. It shows TTS as false. How did you manage to enable your TTS as True?

Cheers in advance

I found it

Oh no! So I'm left choosing multiple echos and they speak one after the other rather than I'm tandem. Is there a workaround do you think?

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I set up a couple zones in the ES app that I use with announcements. You could also try the parallel speak command.

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Magic. That's worked a treat. I didnt notice the "create virtual device" hence struggling to get my head around matters :+1:

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Parallel Speak does not work for me. Each dot plays individually. Does setting up a zone solve that problem and play all of them in tandem?

Sometimes. You could also try using “announcement” instead of “speak”.

Yes, I had the same issue. Set up a zone (call it what ever you want). A child app will be created under echo speaks. Go into the child app and click the CREATE DEVICE switch. The name of the group will now be a device. Set your announcement to go to that device. It will now do all speakers in that group at once instead of one at a time.

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It sure does :+1::+1::+1:

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When you mean set your announcement. Do you go through the normal send message option in RM? Or does it need to be a custom action for the device with a string parameter?

no, use the audio notification (though you can do both text and audio)