The plug-in is working fine with regard to controlling the speakers, but I am struggling with some aspects of TTS.
I had a whole house audio system planned using Russound or Monoprice distribution amplifiers, but i was overridden by my better half as she didn't want more holes in the walls and ceilings. I purchased a couple of Play 3 speakers to start and was very happy with the results. I think the Sonos ecosystem is very well executed, both in function and sound quality. I purchased a batch of broken Play 5 speakers and have managed to repair 4 of them, with hopes of repairing 2 more if I can find schematics and parts. I added another used Play 3 and am trying to purchase a couple of Connect
:Amps for the back yard.
The increase in clients has mitigated some of the problems, but has amplified others. I have some specific problems to address.
I had a whole house audio system planned using Russound or Monoprice distribution amplifiers, but i was overridden by my better half as she didn't want more holes in the walls and ceilings. I purchased a couple of Play 3 speakers to start and was very happy with the results. I think the Sonos ecosystem is very well executed, both in function and sound quality. I purchased a batch of broken Play 5 speakers and have managed to repair 4 of them, with hopes of repairing 2 more if I can find schematics and parts. I added another used Play 3 and am trying to purchase a couple of Connect
:Amps for the back yard.
The increase in clients has mitigated some of the problems, but has amplified others. I have some specific problems to address.
- I have created a number of linkgroups for announcements and alerts. They are working well, except when I want to include some Android clients in the mix. If I intercept speaker device 0 as below, the speech will come out of all devices.
The problem is that I usually play an alert wave file before announcements. This file is different, depending on the type of announcement. If I put the wave file in one speak action and the text to speak in another, the Sonos devices have a huge delay between the wave file and the test spoken. If I put it in the format that the plug-in likesCode:c:\Program Files (x86)\HomeSeer HS3\Wave\Chime2.wav|$$DTR:8850: <silence msec='500'/> The time is $$time <silence msec='250'/> the temperature is $$DVR:3695:
- The second issue is announcement volumes and destination devices for Sonos. There are times I may want to announce to all clients, and others where I might only want some. There are times I would like to have them at different levels than the defaults sent in the Linkgroup as above. I have created three linkgroups that take care of different levels, mute actions and devices included, but that is too limiting. I would probably need ten or more linkgroups to take care of the variables. If I run a separate action to control the volumes and mute status prior to the announcement, but that affects restoration of the levels prior to the announcement. It would be very useful if we could send the levels and mute override for each individual client for any announcement so that the plug-in could easily make an announcement in any room at any level, overriding mute if needed and then returning all clients to their state before the announcement.
- There seems to be a problem if multiple announcements are sent to the Sonos linkgroups in succession, the first one plays well, but the later ones can be seriously delayed and even ignored. Are there any suggestions as to reducing or eliminating these problems? It seems to ba caused by the plug-in's delay unlinking the speakers and making them available after an announcement. There is usually about 5 seconds of silence before an announcement and 10 seconds after an announcement before the speaker clients return to what they were doing before.
- If Pandora is playing and an announcement is made, the song is paused, the announcement made and Pandora starts a new song. Amazon, Deezer and others do not seem to have this problem. I can manually pause and restart Pandora without this issue.
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