At a previous home (years ago), I used an Elk M1 Gold security panel to announce various events that could be detected by the Elk. For example...
"Utility power is off" when we had a power outage. Also announced when power successfully switched to standby generator and when utility power was restored.
"Garage door is open" every few minutes when the garage door was open.
I know how to get these types of events detected by Hubitat, but I don't understand how to get them "announced". What my searches have turned up so far seem to require fairly expensive speakers (for high fidelity music), cloud access, and/or hardware like an Echo Dot or Nest Audio.
I think my requirements are pretty simple...
Speakers only. I don't want voice control.
Wifi connectivity.
Smaller the better (my Elk speaker was about 3"x3"x2").
100% local.
Will never be used for music, so no need for stereo sound.
TTS and prerecorded files.
I'm okay with running something on a rPi.
Send announcement to several (up to 4) speakers at the same time.
I use a single IKEA Symfonisk bookshelf speaker. It 'just works' with Hubitat's built-in Sonos integration, and Text to Speech is awesome.
As for 100% local... that is a little more difficult. Hubitat's built-in TTS solution is close, though. As long as the text phrases do not change (e.g. do not include a date/time variable, or other numeric variable), only the first time a phrase is processed will the hub reach out to AWS to covert the text to an audio file. Those audio files are cached on the hub, to avoid the AWS call the next time that exact same TTS call is made.
To be clear, the IKEA speaker is made by Sonos, but much cheaper. Another option is Apple HomePods. There is a native solution that I believe is currently only available via the Beta release, but works great. I have moved all my announcements from the IKEA to HomePods.
I saw several posts about the Symfonisk. It is more than I would like to spend, but it's probably because the speaker has high quality sound (which I don't require). I don't know for sure, but my guess is the cached audio files may have to be rebuilt after a system reboot.
Can you be more specific about the "native solution", i.e., do you mean the HE HomeKit Integration App, or is it a HE community app? I bought a HomePod Mini a few weeks ago to play around with, and Apple Home (integrated with HE) will probably be a part of my overall environment. I will consider a HomeKit solution if it will do what I want without Internet access. Thanks.
Not clear from your original post if "I don't want voice control" is communicating that you don't have a desire and/or need for voice control, or if you absolutely don't want it in your house because of the always listening microphone. If the latter, my understanding is the Apple Home Pod mini has an always listening mic...
I haven't gotten into the big brother is listening to you thing, although my TV and laptop probably are, lol.
I use the Ecolink Chime/Siren to do all kinds of voice alerts.
It is Z-wave, battery/mains powered, so can act as an outage detector.
I record synthesized voices on an SD card for each announcement-I think I have maybe 20 now.
It also has canned sounds that I use for the garage Z-wave smoke/co detector-quite loud and they correspond to Smoke or CO alarm patterns.
I think this would be closest to what you had, without getting too fancy.
I don’t agree with that assessment. None of the options below are perfect and have caveats, but there are local options. In addition to Sonos as already mentioned above.
That would be a waste of their time and our money, IMO. The hub would still need to call out to AWS for the initial TTS file. And then the announcement would be played over a small, tinny-sounding speaker built into the hub? No thank you…
Please no. I don't want to pay for more stuff stuffed into the hub (e.g., others are also asking for POE support) that I dont' want/need integrated. Also just plain don't want the size of the hub increased, I like the hub as small and unobtrusive as possible. The antennas on the C8 are the exception (don't mind the additional "bulk") as they enhance the core functionality of the hub, controlling devices/running automations.
We have our hubs in the office, best place for them to be close to the middle of the house. If they were in there announcing stuff all day my wife (who works in there a lot) would kill me and then burn the hubs.
Everyone in this forum probably has one or two "If only the hub also had this built in" dreams, but if you go down that rabbit hole you end up w/creeping (creepy? ) feature clutter and physical device bloating that turns a cool sports car into:
) feature clutter and physical device bloating that turns a cool sports car into: 
