Ecobee speaker for notifications

I have all google speakers and getting TTS through them doesn't always seem to work, as they are always in use with music. I do have ecobee thermostat with Alexa integration and i know it does have a speaker since it used to randomly play music. Can i access that speaker for notifications?

Yes, you can. Echo Speaks supports Ecobee devices with embedded Alexa. Here's the thread:

Echo Speaks was originally designed to use Heroku's free hosting service for managing cookies on behalf of Echo Speaks. Heroku got rid of its free service a couple months ago. There are three alternatives to cookie management:

  • Pay Heroku $14 a month
  • Install it on an rPi (node.js)
  • Install it in a Docker container on anything running a Docker instance (rPi or wherever you like to dock your Docker)

I use the rPi non-docker version and it works great.

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Thank you for the reply... sucks that it's paid for now. I have a pi3 with HA on it, but don't have the time right now to change that up and have dockers put on it. pi4's are too hard to find, but i am looking into a lenovo tiny to replace it all.

I have one with a pentium chip in it, which is slightly worse than a pi4 in some ways but better in others. Again... comes down to finding the time to throw linux on it, and set up HA, and then add dockers for various things.

I think you can run Docker on Windows... not that I would want to. I know you can run it on a Mac. I've also seen folks use their Synergy NAS devices of all things. Or you can run it natively on the rPi without docker. But yes it still takes some time to fiddle.

Yeah.. i have docker for windows and it has gone horribly. This just isn't my expertise. A shame i can't just use the speaker.

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Was there a tutorial for the way you installed it?
I have a Lenovo tiny running proxmox... In which HA is in a VM. So I gotta figure out how to set this up... $14/m is crazy.

Alas no. I just searched the most recent Echo Speaks threads and found some instructions. If you take a look here you might find what you need:

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If you have HA running in a VM, why not run the Node-RED integration under HA, and then use:

for TTS. It works very well, and you don’t need anything else, like Echo Speaks does.

hmm.. So i have the echo speak notifications when my doors open and close. Those rules are in Hubitat.

You can interface Hubitat very easily with HA and Node-RED.

Yeah i know.. i just have everything in Hubitat.. i only really wanted the dashboard from HA. I'll have to look into it though.

So I'm on mobile right now. But I got it working. I have proxmox and created a Ubuntu 20 container.. Following YouTube. Then basically followed these steps Echo Speaks / Heroku end anxiety support group. See one solution below. πŸ™‚ - #58 by vmsman

So thanks!

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Glad my guide helped.

It did. I've never done any of it before, or understand what I did. But it worked, even the disclaimer to restart the VM was needed.

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