Hi,

 

I was doing some reading on the chumby & the Nabaztag (net rabbit). I love the idea of the ISY using a 3rd party app to do voice announcements. That is a great idea & another step closer to having Homeseer functionality on the ISY.

 

While I think the Rabbit is neat & it works, the price tag is quite a bit considering all I want is voice announcements. I also think it looks a little foofoo.

 

So I started to think, I have a photo frame that plays MP3's & AVI/Mpegs aside from the jpgs. I did a little looking online & there are now (new to me) frames that do all this & can accept uploads via wifi.

 

Since it sounds like the photo frame is more or less a webserver (like the Rabbit) I wonder if its a stretch to get it working with the ISY.

 

I think the WAF factor would be higher if I could have a photo frame displaying photos & have the "garage door open" announcment if its after 10pm, or the "fridge is open" announcement if the fridge was left open.

 

Any thoughts on how hard this would be? Any directions to look?

 

Thanks,

Rich

Hi Rich,

 

Two conditions have to be met for ISY to be able to accomplish this feat:

1. The frame must be web enabled preferably with a static IP address

2. It must provide you with the APIs to communicate with it

 

As long as those conditions are met (and as long as you have the Network Module), then you can ask the frame to do whatever their APIs allow you to do.

 

The one exception to all this is that ISY cannot stream audio/video to your frame.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Just a thought, if you have a computer running all the time, you can accomplish the same thing using VLC (www.videolan.org). You will have to download an older version of it (0.8.4 0r 0.8.6). They let you enable a web interface. You can then make hit the appropriate url and play mp3s etc...

Further to davidn70's comment, for a low power, small footprint solution, there are some wall-wart sized computers like this one appearing on the market lately. But at $100+, this would still be an expensive solution for just playing audio alerts.

 

Is anybody aware of a compact, < $50 device for playing audio alerts that would be either Insteon or web controllable?

 

-Jim

I think this is a great product idea. I'd buy several!

I'd buy some too....

 

I've been dabbling in home automation for a long time and always trying to use what I have laying around to accomplish something "strange and wonderful".

 

If you have a multi media cell phone like iPhone or Blackberry you could have the ISY send email to a special address for each type of alert and then have the phone play a sound in response to the email. I do that with my blackberry and my homebrew home automation server. No reason you couldn't do it with just the ISY as it can send mail...

 

It's a bit of a hack because you need to set up a specific email address for each alert but it works anytime you're in the coverage area.... It's also basically free for people who already have an ISY and a smartphone.