Bounty - device to play sound

Hardware Home Automation
1

Does anybody has interest in programming and assembling a device which plays a sound stored on an sd card and triggered by a dry contact or by API via wifi, such as Arduino DF Mini player?
Just drop me a PM.

2

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, You could do this using a raspberry pi easily. Or esp8266/esp32 with an SD card ā€œhatā€, and I think there are some pre-built variants that come pre integrated with an SD card maybe.

3

Or use Alexa/Echos.

4

Thanks Jim and stormi.
My openhab server is in the basement of my house and the wall-mounted loudspeaker on ground floor. I need to install the device on ground floor, close to the speaker. If I install the device in the basement, I get lot of noise and crackles.
Unfortunately the obvious solution is not working.for me.
Amazon echo is also a nice idea but my wife is going to kill me if I came up with this. WAF would go down to an absolute minimum.
Programming an esp is something I need to teach myself I currently do not have the time for.

5

Check out volumio

Google nest speakers can play MP3 as audio sink for openhab. Alexa/echo canā€™t.

You can even run a local TTS with this by giving it the TTS url to stream from. Just call Audio.playSound("file.mp3", thingid_of_nest)

Unfortunately they donā€™t have sound out (line out) for your speakers afaik. So itā€™ll just be played on its speakers. What is it for? Even the tiny nest is pretty loud as an alert/notification speaker

1 Like
6

If you use ESPHome, you donā€™t need to spend any time learning to program an esp, it writes the firmware for you

2 Likes
7

Something that does have line out but which is no longer made is the ā€œGoogle Chromecast Audioā€. You can still get them on sites like eBay.

8

I had the exact same situation and have been using the Raspi audio jack for a (too) long time, itā€™s not a reliable solution, moved over to amazonechocontrol and am happily using that since as my doorbell.
You can send your own sounds and even use the Echo TTS.

You can also fully disable Alexa input listening and only use it as a loudspeaker.

9

How do you send your own sound to amazon echo?

10

You send an XML command it can contain URLs and Echo fetches the sound from a web server of yours.

11

Does the url need to be:

  • https
  • with a valid ssl certificate
  • publicly accessible?

Since you didnā€™t provide any details, Iā€™m guessing itā€™s done through Alexa TTS SSML using this tag: <audio src="https://xxxxxx">
I tried it with a http and a local url e.g. http://192.168.x.x:xxx/xxxx but it didnā€™t work.

The same local url can be used by google nest / home device (chromecast) just fine.

12

In case you are in the Apple world, you can use HomePods as well to play audio, but you need Homebridge: GitHub - petro-kushchak/homebridge-homepod-radio

13

IIRC itā€™s not the local Echo to fetch the URL but some cloud server so itā€™s probably hitting your firewall.
You can also use Amazon soundfiles using a soundbank:// URL.

14

OK, at least this is not something that I didnā€™t know and have been missing out on. Iā€™ll stick to using google home/chromecast devices to do this. It wouldā€™ve been nice if alexa could do it too. I have and use both at home.

15

You could probably achieve this too by creating a virtual switch in OH and having changes trigger a shortcut on a HomePod/ATV. I know itā€™s then also leveraging HomeKit but for someone in an Apple ecosystem itā€™s less dependencies.

16

Thanks to all of you for your ideas and contribution. There are quite a few plan B solutions.
Nevertheless, if anybody has interest in providing me with an esp board, Iā€˜ll be happy to pay for that. This solution fits better into my existing infrastructure. I will wait over the weekend until I start with one of the solutions above.
Thanks

17

Hello,

Here a link to Sparkfun. They have players that can be triggerd by a contact. Not really cheap, but it works out of the box.

https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/343

18

That should work as well, but it doesnā€™t allow to play audio files from a Webserver.
With the homebridge plugin, I guess you can make it possible to generate audio with openHAB TTS and then play it on your HomePod.

19

A very simple solution could be to use this simple mp3 player module from dfrobot.

It can be used standalone, requiring only a few resistors and buttons to control it, or by receiving serial commands.

20

I have one I programed to play mp3 form internal memory. I would make one for you. Using a esp32 and sparkfun amp board and controlled by mqtt.