Hey y'all!
I have 4 Echo devices in the house that say what door is opened when its respective contact sensor is tripped. There are ~6 second delays between the time the doors open to the time the message makes it to the Echos, and they all make the announcement at different times rather than all together. Is there a way to fix this?
Thanks in advance!
If the number of things that you want Alexa to say is fairly small, an alternative way to do it is to set up virtual contacts .. one for each phrase .. then have an Alexa routine triggered by the contact do an announcement of a hard-coded phrase to all devices. Even here, though, they are not completely in sync .. more of an echo effect through the house.
Can you provide some details on how you are sending the commands to the echo devices (which apps, configurations, etc)?
did you dabble with Whole Home? thats there 'group audio' - works well for me to send 1 message to it, and it plays on all assigned devices to that group. I haven't tweaked it in a long while - while mine still is working unsure if echo speaks is still allowing it to be generated as a device.
wha is Whole Home Audio - you go into Alexa on your web or phone, and look at groups - you can assigned specific devices to a 'group'. When one message is sent, all play. Sorta works like the 'Alexa, play music everywhere'
Create a zone in the Echo Speaks app itself.
I think I get what you're saying. I just want to keep routines out of the Alexa as much as I can... my wife hates that "bing-bong" sound before the whole house announcements. It's ironic that if I do this stuff in the Alexa app, the announcements are in perfect unison.
Using Echo Speaks.
Trigger: contact door opens
Action type: speak
Echo Speaks Devices: various echo devices around the house
Action type Config: default action response: %name%
I have not dabbled in WHA. This is something to look into. Thanks!
Also - you said "hardcoded". So, the announcement "lives" on the device and the Echo does not have to go up to the cloud to retrieve it? I don't think I understand the inner workings of Echo Speaks very well.
No, I was giving an alternative to using Echo Speaks. By hard-coded, I meant a fixed phrase set in an Alexa routine.
I used to use Echo Speaks and that's what I'd suggest if you want to construct what to say on the Hubitat side on the fly before having Alexa say it. But I realized there were only a few fixed phrases I wanted to say so it is much less overhead to just have virtual contacts like ..
etc.
Tried. Still the same thing, each of them talks one after the other instead of at the same time. I must be doing something wrong...
Did you create a zone in Echo Speaks? I didn't see a response to my recommendation.
Create the zone and choose the Echo devices you want to include in your announcements. Doing this will eliminate the pop-corning where devices announce one after the other.
Whoops, sorry. I did, but not like you showed in your screenshot. I will match those settings when I get time tonight. Thank you... Fingers crossed
After you create the zone and have the virtual device for it created, use that device when setting up your rules, etc. You should have all devices that you added to the zone announce at the same time when your rule/s run.
I'm unable to upload a screenshot for some reason, but when I go to "Devices", I now see my new Echo Speaks Zone Device. Do I still need to create a virtual switch off this?
Not sure what you are trying to do. Simply use the newly created virtual device in your rule/s, notifications, etc. Look at my example below. You can see my Echo Speaks zone named House.
Join the the Hub Owners group:
https://community.hubitat.com/g/owners
I don't use Actions within Echo Speaks, so I honestly couldn't tell you.
I use Rule Machine or the Notifications app.
Well. Despite the Echo Zone, I'm still getting the popcorn effect, unfortunately. I don't get it.
Download the Hubitat app
