Google Home Mini - A great little tts speaker

Doors opening/closing.
Locks locking/unlocking/type (digital versus manual).
House status at bed time (open sensors, lights still on, doors open, etc).
Weather alerts and warnings.
Windows open when rain is predicted.
Arrival/departure of me or my wife.
High power usage on outlets.
Doorbell presses.
Motion detected on cameras/sensors.
House mode changes.
Low battery alerts in devices.

That's correct. How else would you use it?

Thanks for the ideas.
Do you use the Rule Machine to make all of these work?

There's several community drivers. You can use Google Assistant Relay (super useful for controlling things that are only compatible with Google Assistant) or you could use @Cobra 's Speaker Central to name a few.

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I use combination of RM, Speaker Central and NodeRed.

You create a custom command in RM and choose Actuator for the type.
Then you enter the string you want it to speak. I entered Hello for my example.
Then you create a RM Trigger or a RM rule that calls the custom command you created for the action of your RM Trigger or RM rule.



If you like lots of TTS there is also @rayzurbock's BigTalker2 ([RELEASE] BigTalker 2.0.8.4)

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I am confused... why would you need to create custom commands in Rule Machine for TTS? Under actions you can use the “Send or Speak a message” to implement TTS.

I don't use it, and someone wrote in another thread that's how you used it. I think I tried early on in the beta and it wasn't selectable like Google Assistant Relay for Send or Speak a message, so a custom command was how you did it. I guess that's resolved now. I didn't even look. Just posted the information I read before. Maybe they were talking about a completely different use case for the customer commands and I just misunderstood.

[Edit] Actually, I just tried it again and it's not available as a speech device. I can only see my Google Assistant Relay, so a custom command seems to be the only way to use the Chromecast Integration for speech at this time.

You can easily use the Chromecast devices as Text to Speech devices without custom commands, using the method I mentioned earlier.

They do indeed implement the Speech Synthesis Capability, as is shown below

And here they are in Rule Machine as selectable options...

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Duh,:upside_down_face:
I forgot to turn on Speak this message. Have gotten too used to Google Assistant Relay where that's not needed.
Thanks again Dan!

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Really hoping zone player manager makes the port to HE soon. I'm working on bringing things over from ST and this is one of the items remaining on my list.

I had done some alpha testing on ZPM for you back in 2016 :sunglasses:

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Is there a way to adjust volume on Google Home speaker?

Because "setVolume(50) on GH" doesn't seems to work.

Really? It should. That's how most folks are doing it. I use cast-web-api which exposes each device as a dimmer to set the level. Might want to look at that.

cast-web-api ?

Could you explain a bit more?

If you install the Chromecast Integration (beta) and run these Custom Actions on your GH speaker, you can adjust the volume from a rule or trigger.

Yep, did all that. Doesn't seems to work.

Will try again.

Thanks

Absolutely works. I have been doing it by activating custom commands, so hadn't actually tried it with a custom action (which @ogiewon graciously reminded me was much simpler :grin:), so I just tried a quick test rule. Set the volume by voice to 70% and turned it back to 50% by pressing a virtual switch. Tried it three times in a row. Works like a champ!

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It very well may be the device and not HE.

I have a Lenovo smart tab that works flawlessly with the custom command to change the volume. Then I have a JBL speaker that sometimes changes with the custom command. I have noticed with the Google home app that sometimes my speaker isn't connected to it either.

There is a setting in the Google home app that allows you to set a max volume given the time of the day, so I have used that as a work around for now to keep it from being to loud.

Is anyone else having issues with their Google Mini not processing TTS? I had it working for weeks and now all of a sudden it no longer works.

Troubleshooting ideas are welcome.

YF

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