Short of a blaring siren, but more than the X10 ding-donger, what are folks using?

 

This would be to for example alert that the garage door is opening. I have the keylincs beep, but that is not very loud. It would be nice to be able to play a number of different alerts, kind of like cellphone alerts.

 

* Orest

I use an IOLinc to ring my doorbell when the gate opens. If you want the sound local to the garage, you can get dual tone doorbell kits for under $20 including the transformer.

Rod,

 

Yes, I have an X10 ding-donger, and can use it for a number of things. I have a motion outside that it runs, the garage door opening, it rings it twice.

 

But what about a detected water leak, or some other more urgent condition. Ringing the same ding donger three times doesn't quite do it.

 

Or perhaps some other situation, non-urgent, that you want to differentiate from a motion outside.

 

* Orest

I am doing voice alerts using network resources to a low powered computer with radio shack 900 MHz wireless intercoms with aux input for music ect.

 

I created WAV files with AT&T's text to speech web demo. I have groups of slightly different wording and strange sayings I randomly chose from so it doesn't get as repetitive or as annoying.

 

I use it to alert for vehicle coming up the drive, going down, a couple deferent vehicle id's, custom door bell, and mail (if I can get the sensor working reliably).

 

-Nick

Interesting approach. I have a ton of old computers lying around.

 

* Orest

I like it nstein!

 

For now, I'm using text message alerts to my cell phone. I would like to use my Russound whole house audio system for announcements and I think the ELK M1 Gold systems are compatible with this device.

AT&T's text to speech web demo

 

Looks like that is no longer functional.

 

In any case, how did you trigger the wav phrase play?

 

* Orest

http://www.ispeech.org/

 

... will play it only, but you can just record the voice easily. From the brief survey I've done, seems to be the most natural sounding voice.

 

* Orest

Quick test, AT&T still seemed to work for me:

 

http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

 

Though at first, ispeech.org sounds even better and claims to be free for less than a minute. They want to send you a password to your email, what limitations after that I don't know.

 

http://www.ispeech.org/free.text.to.speech.tts.software

 

 

To trigget, I have ISY network resources call web served PHP, which calls aplay in Linux (had to add web server user to the group needed for audio permission)

 

I specify the folder to play in the URL (get), and PHP randomly chooses a WAV from the folder.

 

-Nick