HomeSeer Done Speaking

[sonypoolplr]

I am starting to use this plugin and I came across two triggers that the plugin can use, HomeSeer is Done Speaking, and HomeSeer Stops Speaking. Could someone explain the difference for me?

Also, I am trying to use this plugin with the callerID anouncements, and I am concerned that the plugin will trigger between the rings of the phone. How are others dealing with this?

Thanks.

[Blade]

I am starting to use this plugin and I came across two triggers that the plugin can use, HomeSeer is Done Speaking, and HomeSeer Stops Speaking. Could someone explain the difference for me?

Also, I am trying to use this plugin with the callerID anouncements, and I am concerned that the plugin will trigger between the rings of the phone. How are others dealing with this?

Thanks.

One of them might work better than the other. It depends on the users system. Try them and see which one works better for you.
You can also run a script or event before and after homeseer speaks. This is what I use to switch my AB8SS switchers.

[aperkin2]

I am also trying out this plugin. I am running the latest beta, 2.0.4.60. I am using my Sonos system for the speakers using the SRSL plugin.

I have a script that configures the Sonos speakers for TTS based on various factors. I have defined the BLSpeech options to call this script prior to HomeSeer speaking. I also check the option to Wait for script to finish before continuing. This part is working fine.

The problem I have is when speaking is done. I just can't seem to get that working correctly for me.

I also have a script that turns off the Sonos TTS.

The most obvious thing it seemed was to configure the BLSpeech options to invoke this script after HomeSeer is done speaking. However it seems that it is not really waiting for the speaking to finish. It immediately executes the script to turn of Sonos TTS resulting in the speakers being turned off before speaking. I set the delay property to a few seconds and I heard it speak up until the delay time fired the script. I then set the delay to an arbitrarily high number and I heard the entire message. and the script ran after the delay time out leaving a silence before my Sonos system started playing music again. This is not really ideal for me as I have messages that vary greatly in length from "Someone is at the door" to a very long weather report.

I then tried using the two triggers mentioned in this thread, HomeSeer Done Speaking and HomeSeer Stops Speaking. One does not fire at all and the other exhibits the same behavior as using BLSpeech options to invoke the script.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Andy

[nightwalker]

As a user of this plug-in for a couple of years now it seems you have set it up almost as I use it, with the exception that I use events as opposed to scripts to turn on the correct speakers depending on current conditions. I already had events set up to my liking before using the plug-in so I kept those events in place and just used the two event triggers.

I make extensive use of the prior to speaking and stops speaking triggers.

The prior to speaking events I use straight up and the delay is set by your setting in the plug-in setup. The length of the delay will depend on how long your speakers take to get ready to speak.

My events that use the stops speaking trigger I use a 2 second delay in the events themselves to account for that delay you're talking about. For example if you notice that 2 seconds of speech is not being heard then give the event itself a 2 second delay before it runs the script.

The only trouble I have is when using BLmediaplayer plug-in I notice that the music comes back on a couple of seconds before the speaking is finished. I keep meaning to request a feature to allow a user specified delay in that paused music before it is un-paused.

[aperkin2]

I think my problem is not just adding a small delay. It seems that the plugin (or HomeSeer) is not really waiting for the speaking to finish before calling the event or script.

Do you get just the final two secs of your messages cut off no matter what the length? Or are all of your messages just 2 secs in length?

If I add a 2 sec delay, all of my messages would be cut off after two seconds even if the message itself takes 20 seconds to speak. I could set the delay to be the largest delay that I might reasonably expect..say 30 secs. But then the script to return Sonos back to playing music will always take 30 secs even if the message is only "Hello".

I really want it to invoke the script/event "AFTER" the speaking is really finished, no matter how long the message is. That is what it says it will do: Event or Script to execute after HomeSeer is done speaking. So that is what I expected it to day with maybe a small timing adjustment like you have.

Oh well.. back to the drawing board I guess. Which is too bad, because I like the other aspects of the plugin, particularly the tags.

[nightwalker]

I think you may be misunderstanding how I do it. My speaking events like yours are all different lengths. My event triggers at the moment the done speaking triggers goes off, which for me is about a second short of what I needed.

Notice that my speakers don't turn off until 1 sec after the speaking done trigger fires. You could need more than that if you're switching a lot of them.

I don't use the tags so I can't speak to that part of it. This has been working very well for me for years now.

[aperkin2]

Hi Nightwalker.. yea, I get what you are doing.. and that is how I expected it to work. Mine just unfortunately didn't work that way. But, I think I figured out why.

I backed out the beta 2.4.0.60 and dropped back to 2.4.0.11, installed BLSpeech in that release and, lo, it works as I expected!! So, something in the beta seems to have broken the HS speech proxy events.

I was using IsSpeaking as my speech proxy in 2.4.0.11 but when I installed the HS 2.4.0.60 beta, it stopped working which is why I was checking out the BLSpeech plugin. So, I'll play around with BLSpeech for a while and see how I like it. I kinda like the tags.

I originally went to the beta so I could get speech output on our iPads. That's what ya get when you play around with beta's.

[nightwalker]

Yeah, been there on the beta's, as it turns out I'm not beta material.
If you're having a problem with BLSpeech in a new version drop Blade a debug log in a bug report, sometimes he's had it fixed the same day. Just a fore-warning though, he's not really beta material either, he is running Zwave so he might have dived into the newer versions.