Building a new house any reccomendations on what to add.

[mulu]

Nice. How are you getting the announcements to the Alexa devices?

I first tried node-red. However, I ended up using the voice-monkey setup. It now requires a minimal fee (I think like $6/year) but it's the most straightforward solution.

[kenm]

So you would have an amp right where the speaker is mounted? How does it get power? Through the CAT5/6 cable? Now I wonder if there would be such solution you describe and provide both power and digital music data over the existing 2 conductor speaker cable.

I did initially have humming issues and even today when I move some cables I temporarily still get humming while moving cables at the central location. What I ended up doing is using a fiber optical cable from the "wall mounted" Chromecast device to a digital to analog converter right at the 16 channel amp.

What I envision is something like a Sonos system, only wired. The amp would be mounted in-wall with the speaker wiring going up the wall to the ceiling speakers. The amp would need AC power in the box to operate. I'd still need to be careful when routing the speaker wires, but I wouldn't be routing 100 ft long speaker cables.

Something like this only with digital audio in instead of the Aux line input, or maybe, in addition to the Aux line input. Of course, I'd prefer to have the UI customizable, instead of the canned UI.