Just got this and I absolutely love it!
I was wanting to play around with the custom sounds on an SD card. I loaded a test .wav per instructions. I have it showing up in the list. But I go to play it, it sounds really weird. Something is not right. @bcopeland
have you had success with custom sounds?
Haven’t tried it TBH… I just made the driver support it..
Is your test file mono or stereo? I suspect it only supports mono. I have an Aeotec Gen 5 doorbell/siren that allows recording custom sounds/messages. Unfortunately, the Gen 5 is no longer available and the Gen 6 does not support custom messages. Thus, I may pick up the Ecolink device as a backup.
Rather than playing sound tones and trying to remember what each tone means, I used a program called Zabaware Reader to record custom messages. You type in the message you want, select a voice, and the Reader speaks the message. It can be saved as a .wav or .mp3 file. It works great with the Aeotec Gen 5. I presume it would work equally well with the Ecolink device.
Resurrecting this thread.....
@markbellkosel84 - Did you get the custom sounds to work correctly?
My Zooz ZSE19 has failed which allowed custom sounds. The Ecolink ISZW7-ECO looks like a good replacement option, but I was hoping to get confirmation the custom sounds work. On the site it says Hubitat is supported.
For the ZSE19, custom sounds had be done as follows: 8 Bit, Sample 8Khz, Mono .wav file
I now have two of the Ecolink 700 series chime/sirens. I have had one for a while. I liked it so well that I recently purchase a second one when Ecolink dropped the price to $69. It was originally listed for over $100 and I refused to purchase at that price. One thing I like about using the Ecolink is that it will continue to function even when the Internet is down. It is a mains-powered device, but it contains a battery backup that will keep it online for a while even during a power failure.
https://www.amazon.com/Ecolink-Enabled-Security-Intruder-ISZW7-ECO/dp/B099CS76K3
It is available at that same price from other outlets.
I also have an Aeotec Gen 5 doorbell chime siren, but I found that the Ecolink devices respond about 1/2 second faster. Thus, I now use Ecolink devices on my first and second floor and moved the Aeotec device to the basement.
The only issue I have experienced with the Ecolink devices with either the C7 or C8 hub is that one time the older Ecolink stopped responding. I removed and reinserted the microSD card and it fixed the issue.
The devices are also capable Z-wave repeaters. However, if you have the C8 hub, the new 800 series radio seems to connect most devices direct to the hub.
In order to use custom sounds, you will need to purchase a microSD card and record the sounds to . wav format in 16 bit mono rather than stereo. The custom sounds can be music clips, sound effects, your own recorded voice or computer generated voices. I highly recommend the use of the program Zabaware Reader to generate custom announcements.
The Zabaware Text to Speech Reader itself is free, but you can download higher quality voices for a fee. It also works with other voices as long as they follow the standard format. These are better than most of the free Zabaware voices that are pretty cartoonish. If you are using Windows, you can use the built-in text to speech capability and voice recorder to generate the should, but I have found Zabaware Reader to be quite user friendly for generating multiple announcements. When saving these files to the microSD card always name them xx_my announcement.wav where xx is the two digit number used to reference the sound during playback. When you first plug in the device or if there a power failure, the voice labeled 01 might play, so you might want to assign that slot to the a blank announcement named silence. Also be sure to listen to all of the default sounds as some are designed to be loud siren sounds repeating for a while. Reserve those slots for emergency announcements such as an intruder alert at night or a water leak detected. You can even leave the default sounds and assign your custom sounds to higher numbered slots (up to 99).
If you obtain the device and have difficulty setting it up or generating custom sound files, send me a PM with your questions and concerns and I will gladly help you work through them.
Appreciate the thorough reply.
I did order the Ecolink, getting it setup this evening. Paired without issue, swapped devices and testing completed.
I'm converting all my custom sounds from 8bit to 16bit bit mono wav files. The "sounds" are quieter than the Zooz ZSE19, did turn up the volume to 100 on the Ecolink.
If the sounds need to be louder, you can always increase the volume of each individual sound. I suspect the same software that you used to change the bit depth of the sounds also has the capability of increasing the volume. I use the program Audacity to do all kinds of audio file manipulations. It is free and cross-platform.
The Zabaware text to speech reader I recommended also has the means of adjusting volume, although if you had it set to full already, that is the best it can do.
Audacity can boost volume all the way up to distortion levels.
You have to be careful with volume; you want it to be loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to be distuptive. The exception is emergency alerts that you want to awaken you at night. We got a lot of rain yesterday and last night. I have two sump pumps. The back-up pump only runs if the main pump fails or if rain is so heavy that the main cannot keep up. Sometimes, I can go for months without the backup pump ever running. Last night, the backup pump triggered about every 20 minutes and the event was announced. While I can still hear the announcement if I am drowsy, it was not so loud to awaken me from deep sleep. For me, that is about right.
Now if there is a water leak in the house and the main water supply line is turned off, the announcement is loud enough to wake the dead. The same thing happens if someone were to break into my house in the middle of the night. However, I also have all the house lights come on as well to deter an intruder trying to work in stealth.
Just purchased a Ecolink Chime Siren and came across this thread. Great input. However, in my attempt to convert text to audio using Zabaware I find that it doesn't process the first few words of the text. I tried this with Panopreter as well and experience a similar omission of the first few words.
Any thoughts on what I might be missing in using these to text to audio tools?
If you type some words into Zabaware (HAL) reader and tell it to read the words aloud, does it speak all of the text string? If it does, you should then be able to use the output as wav file to save the sound.
Are you saving the file in the right fornat: 16 bit mono.
If it is not speaking the entire text string, you might try to preface the text with some spaces to see if that solves your problem.
If you still cannot get it to work, send me a private message with some of the text strings you wish to create and I will try to create them for you using a high quality voice I purchased years ago. If I am successful I will let you know via PM. I suspect I will need your email address in order to send you the finished files. There is no need to provide your email address until I have the files ready to send.
@ rwclements228, Thanks for the feedback. In exploring the issue further, I discover that the problem of the missing first words seems to be related to my desktop PC. When I load the Zabaware reader on my notebook PC, it captures all the words. So, I don't know exactly what is happening with my desktop PC, but I can use my notebook PC to create the files. Appreciate the offer to help but I'm on my way, just waiting for Amazon to deliver the MicroSD card.
Sounds like a sound card/driver issue or compatibilty compared to the laptop.
I do not know why the desktop is not working as it should, but I am glad you were able to get the laptop to work.
Amazon delivered my microSD card and I created a dozen Zabaware tones starting with 40 as per your notes above. I was successful in getting Zabaware to play the custom tones from the microSD card when it was inserted into my PC (although not the full-length tone). Card was then inserted into Ecolink and unit was plugged in. Ecolink plays the default tones, like #1, fine, but nothing is heard when I try to play #40. Any hints on what I might be missing? Is there a parameter I need to set to get Ecolink to accept custom tones?
Perhaps this log is helpful? I asked for Ecolink sound #1, then sound #22 which both worked. Then I asked for my sound #41 and got nothing:
I got my from Amazon couple days ago. It took me awhile to figure out how to
create and use custom sounds.
All custom sounds must be listed on a right side device page. If they aren't listed
custom sounds will not play.
Finally I am able to create and play custom sounds. The only problem remains -
play back is not enough loud. At this time I am not sure if this is a device limitation
or something is not right with the created wav files.
Yes, the specs you noted for the SD card are correct. FAT32 only supports cards up to 32 GB. Many cards today are larger than that.
The .wav, 16KHz mono sound format is also correct.
As for sound volume, the chime/siren is capable of playing up to 105 dB which should be sufficient for indoors. However, the sound files have to be designed to play at high volume. Make sure to create the sound files in Zabaware reader with a sufficient volume level. You can also use a sound editor like Audacity to modify the sound file to make it louder or softer as desired.
Seems to be some confusion on formatting for microSD in the comments above. I was unable to get Ecolink to accept the default formatting of the 64GB microSD so I restricted the partition to 4GB and re-formatted it as FAT 16. Sounds now play as expected!
In my case 4GB FAT16 partition was ignored all together but 8GB FAT32 works very well.
A 64 GB microSD card is formatted by default using exFat. Ecolink specifies FAT32 which is limited to a volume size of 32GB In your case, you used FAT16 which is limited to 4 GB volumes. Generally, FAT32 readers can read FAT16 volumes, just like exFAT can read FAT32 volumes. If you had partitioned your 64K card into two 32K partitions, you should have been able to format using FAT32 and still been able to read the card on the Ecolink. The only disadvantage of FAT16 is that the file size is limited to 2 GB file sizes, but I doubt your custom sound files are close to that limit.
It is easy to find microSD cards in sizes of 64GB - 1 TB, but finding cards smaller than 64GB is getting more difficult. Fortunately, Ecolink only cares about the size of the primary volume on the memory card, so you could use a 1 TB card if you made the primary partition no larger than 32 GB and formatted in using FAT32.
Download the Hubitat app
