I’m using a Zigbee door sensor with Hubitat, and it works well—the open/close status updates almost instantly on the Hubitat dashboard. Currently, I have a rule set up to play a sound through my Google Home speakers using the "Chromecast Integration (beta)." However, the delay in triggering the audio is quite significant. By the time the sound plays, someone could have already opened the door, entered the house, and left!
I suspect the delay is caused by the Chromecast Integration. Can anyone suggest an alternative way to receive faster notifications when the door sensor is triggered? Maybe a smart home chime or another device that works more efficiently?
The Aeotec Siren 6 can be used as a chime for doors. It isn’t cheap, and apparently has some caveats, but the Amazon reviews are helpful. It is a Z-wave plus device, so it should have an immediate response.
I also use the Chromecast integration for alert sounds. I've found that a "keepalive" silent sound played every couple of minutes (via RM) keeps the device awake and minimizes lag. I can push a test button and get a sound to play almost instantly. The keepalive trick also means the Google speaker won't go BLOOP before it plays my sound.
BUT, the integration isn't perfect and every few days my Home Mini speaker will play sounds with a delay, or the BLOOP will return, or sounds will not play at all until I start rebooting things. (Perhaps a scheduled hub reboot overnight would fix this.)
Anyway, so far in my experience, the Chromecast is just not great if you need a quick and highly reliable means of playing sounds.
When I was looking into this before, everyone said the Sonos integration was very good. As far as I know today, that is the best route if you want to play your own sounds. If a generic chime is acceptable then there's probably a much cheaper gadget there -- if you go that route let us know what you find.
Personally, I'm hoping to find a cheap used Sonos speaker someday. I don't need top of the line audio quality for Star Trek noises!
I had one of these bells laying around, tried some different wall warts to find one that produced the volume I was looking for.
Plugged the wall wart into a ZigBee wall plug. Works good for what it is.
I have a family room out back, and I use a red color flashing notification on my inovelli Z-wave+ dimmer switch. It turns on for 30 seconds when the front door is opened. I also have an ecolink 700 siren, but we prefer silence. If I see the red light and I'm not expecting anyone my "little friend" is at the ready.
The nice thing about this device is that you can add a microSD card with custom audio. For example, if my front door is opened, a contact switch opens and the Ecolink device announces "The front door has been opened". That is a lot more useful than having just a tone as you do not have to remember which tone goes with which activation. I have nearly 50 different alerts set up. You can have 99 max.
Oh, that is great! This seems like a good alternative to a more expensive Sonos device for playing custom sound cues. The SD card is less convenient than playing over the LAN, but that's life.
The only thing inconvenient about the microSD card in the Ecolink Chime Siren is that you have to remove the card from the device, place it in a USB card reader device connected to a computer and add, delete, or modify files every time you need a revised announcement. Of course, you also need to convert your message from text to sound, which I do with a program called Zabaware text to speech reader.
Although the program itself is free, the free voices are rather lame. If you already have Microsoft or Google voices installed on your computer, you can link them, but it is easier to purchase one of the better voices from Zabaware.
Now that my HA system is mature, I only add new devices a few times a year. I only add new announcements to my chime once or twice a year. It would be easier using something like Sonos, but it is not that big a deal.
