Bluetooth speakers for whole house announcements

[Steve Q]

Small bluetooth portable inexpensive speakers are available in all the big stores. Is there a way to use them with HS3 to make announcements in specific rooms. I would love to have one of these in my bathroom for medication reminders.

Steve Q


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[S-F]

Yeah this is a tough one. I think the only way to do it would be to have a bunch of sound cards each equipped with it's own Bluetooth transmitter. That would get costly and confusing fast. What about getting a bunch of RPI's and turning them into squeezebox clients?

[Steve Q]

What are RPIs?

[S-F]

Raspberry PI

http://www.squeezeplug.eu/

[Steve Q]

Thanks, but this is way too complicated for what I need. I already have a whole house audio system that meets my music needs. I am looking for something to use in places where wiring is not feasible.


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[mrhappy]

Sonos is likely to answer your prayers albeit they are comparatively expensive to BT speakers. You can send TTS to it from HS and the plugin is excellent, wireless and very good sound quality.

[spud]

another option is to use Airplay compatible speakers (which are cheaper than Sonos) with the AirplaySpeak plugin

here is a few possible speakers:
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-AD7000...dp/B005HY4UJ6/
http://www.amazon.com/iHome-AirPlay-...dp/B009P2QUFS/
http://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-Resea.../dp/B007H1ZB5Y
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00903HKIS
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00903HKOC
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00903HKXI

[Steve Q]

Using an AirPlay speaker sounds interesting. I already use AirPlay for Spotify to my appleTV. I will check out the plugin.

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[LeoS]

Some things to consider when using Sonos for TTS:

- 1-3s lag. May be worse if you have many wireless speakers, or those with weak signal location, or linked ones. The lag may be fatal if you're doing whole-house VR or any time-sensitive interactions.

- They don't show up in 'speakers client list' during event creation. So you need to have separate actions if you use both speaker clients and sonos.

- Unlike other plugins that group their device types under the plugin's name (Z-Wave root, Z-Wave battery, etc), the current sonos plugin doesn't do that... and it does come with a LOT of new device types (ie: Album, Art, Artist, Balance, Duration, Loudness, Master, Mute, Next Album, Next Art, Next Artist, Next Track, etc... you get the idea) . That, coupled with the slower HS3 interface, made editing things on the web config a bit more annoying.

Other than that, the Sonos system is very close to plug and play and has pretty good accessibility with apps on all major platforms (both desktop and mobile).

Also, please CMIIW, if you plan to use HomeSeer's voice commands then you need speakers that can be connected to the Speaker.exe client (directly connected to an onboard or USB sound adapter, not through a 3rd party plugin that manipulates the speakers via IP or bluetooth.

[TomTom]

Some things to consider when using Sonos for TTS:

- 1-3s lag. May be worse if you have many wireless speakers, or those with weak signal location, or linked ones. The lag may be fatal if you're doing whole-house VR or any time-sensitive interactions.

- They don't show up in 'speakers client list' during event creation. So you need to have separate actions if you use both speaker clients and sonos.

- Unlike other plugins that group their device types under the plugin's name (Z-Wave root, Z-Wave battery, etc), the current sonos plugin doesn't do that... and it does come with a LOT of new device types (ie: Album, Art, Artist, Balance, Duration, Loudness, Master, Mute, Next Album, Next Art, Next Artist, Next Track, etc... you get the idea) . That, coupled with the slower HS3 interface, made editing things on the web config a bit more annoying.

Other than that, the Sonos system is very close to plug and play and has pretty good accessibility with apps on all major platforms (both desktop and mobile).

Also, please CMIIW, if you plan to use HomeSeer's voice commands then you need speakers that can be connected to the Speaker.exe client (directly connected to an onboard or USB sound adapter, not through a 3rd party plugin that manipulates the speakers via IP or bluetooth.

Thanks for this feedback. Lot of choices and its good to know all the pro and cons of each choice.