OverloadUT Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 I am curious what people's solutions are for getting audio feedback throughout their houses. I'm not looking for high quality per-room speaker systems for playing music, but a minimalist way to get audio in each room for doing simple things like playing audio files, text-to-speech, or beeps and boops in reaction to ISY events. For example, I'd like a nice chime to play (or maybe a "good night" voice) when a user double taps the off switch by my stairs, to indicate that the bed time program has activated. I figured with the abundance of ultra-lightweight computers like Raspberry Pi, and things like Ubi on the horizon, people must have come up with solutions that revolve around these devices rather than expensive distributed audio systems! Link to comment
Vyrolan Posted December 12, 2012 Share Posted December 12, 2012 I'd also be interested in this... There is a thread with one solution, but it's Mac specific. I think a real problem is if you don't have speakers everywhere, how do you make it work. There's no great way that I know of to just add speakers...and even where I do have them, I have no good way of playing arbitrary stuff. I could probably hack together some crazy thing to use AirPlay to an Airport Express speaker, but it would be a brutal hack I think. I do like the idea of Voice Alerting though... Link to comment
Michel Kohanim Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Hello everyone, UBI (http://theubi.com/) looks pretty good but they do not yet have their APIs. Once they have the APIs, it should be pretty simple to integrate. With kind regards, Michel Link to comment
kevkmartin Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 viewtopic.php?t=8142#p61777 Is what I did. It talks about the nslu2... But you could use any audio source you wanted. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD Link to comment
TJF1960 Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 I ran wire to each room, picked up some cheap small speaker boxes with wall/ceiling mounting included from a company called All Electronics http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/SK-331/SATELLITE-SPEAKER-W/BRACKET/1.html I also picked up a small cheap amp which runs off of 12 Vdc and a pogoplug from eBay. Total cost about $100, but a lot of labor running the wires! Tim Link to comment
ELA Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 I had an Arduino with audio shield available from a another never implemented project that I wanted to use. So I bought an EZIO8SA and interfaced it to the Arduino and an inexpensive power amp/speakers combination (one of those that you can use with for a computer). I wanted decent sound quality and significant volume. The Arduino allows you to "can" wave audio files that are accessed via a combination of digital inputs. It has a lot of storage space. The EZIO8SA turns power on to the power amp and Arduino when it receives a command so that they are only on when required. The EZIO8SA is always powered. This works great. Both sound volume and quality are good. I had wanted the EZIO8SA for the ability to also take in inputs such as the door bell. In theory you could access very many sound files ( up to 255) using binary combinations of 6-8 outputs. ( in my application I used two outputs to interrupt power to the Arduino and Power Amp.) Unfortunately the ISY did not support the ability to create the required scenes ( w/binary combinations of outputs) required so I ended up being limited to 8 sounds. Also had to use the Simplehomenet Utility to configure the required binary relay combination outputs (snapshots) to responses from group commands . While for my use 8 sounds/responses was probably enough I have yet to install it in any permanent fashion. Have not decided yet if it is just a fun novelty or actually practical for my use. Either way it was a fun exercise and I can always use the EZIO8SA in other ways. I had some fun being able to emit sounds with a push of a button on my remotelinc2. Until I forgot and left the remotelinc2 in a shirt pocket. It got run through the washer Surprisingly I was able to recover it by opening it up and drying it out. Speakers could be distributed as desired with the right amp. Definitely not the best/easiest solution given others out there, just another way of doing it. Link to comment
Vyrolan Posted December 13, 2012 Share Posted December 13, 2012 Total cost about $100, but a lot of labor running the wires! That's always my problem...such a nightmare in my unit. =( Link to comment
KeviNH Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 I've script a tool to convert arbitrary text to speech and play it via Apple Airplay, e.g. to an Airport Express, see viewtopic.php?f=26&t=10534&p=79998 I picked up a half dozen cheap wireless speakers from a discounter, not good for loud music but fine for this application. Link to comment
Michel Kohanim Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 Hello KeviNH, This is wonderful news. Thank so very much for sharing. With kind regards, Michel Link to comment
Exten Posted January 26, 2013 Share Posted January 26, 2013 I'm looking at the same type of thing - audio notifications in different rooms of the house. Speakers with IP addresses that speak multicast audio that is delivered via 802.11 wireless and TCP/IP based audio amplifiers. Having audio that is TCP/IP based sure makes it easier to get the audio into and out of a computer as well as transmit the audio all around the house. Doing this may add a layer of sophistry to deal with, but so far I'm liking this solution the best. If I can just get it all to work with a raspberry pi I'll be happy. One thing that I watch out for - the device MUST be a POE device. I can't tolerate wall warts. If a device is POE, it's always stated in the blurb, advertising. If you don't see POE mentioned then there is a wall wart and it is usually not pictured in the ads....watch out if you require POE devices, they like to hide the ugly wall wart from you and make it look like it doesn't have one. kinda like this..... http://www.cyberdata.net/products/voip/ ... index.html The speaker has a little button on it - press the button and the speaker actually speaks it's IP address to you. Kool! Link to comment
Xathros Posted January 28, 2013 Share Posted January 28, 2013 I'm looking at the same type of thing - audio notifications in different rooms of the house. Speakers with IP addresses that speak multicast audio that is delivered via 802.11 wireless and TCP/IP based audio amplifiers. Having audio that is TCP/IP based sure makes it easier to get the audio into and out of a computer as well as transmit the audio all around the house. Doing this may add a layer of sophistry to deal with, but so far I'm liking this solution the best. If I can just get it all to work with a raspberry pi I'll be happy. One thing that I watch out for - the device MUST be a POE device. I can't tolerate wall warts. If a device is POE, it's always stated in the blurb, advertising. If you don't see POE mentioned then there is a wall wart and it is usually not pictured in the ads....watch out if you require POE devices, they like to hide the ugly wall wart from you and make it look like it doesn't have one. kinda like this..... http://www.cyberdata.net/products/voip/ ... index.html The speaker has a little button on it - press the button and the speaker actually speaks it's IP address to you. Kool! Exten- Love the idea and am subscribing to this thread to follow your project. One question though, How does POE work over 802.11 ? -Xathros Link to comment
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