While I think I started a thread like this in years gone by there seems to be resurging interest in getting HS to talk what with all of this Alexa business and what not and I can't seem to find said hypothetical thread, thus, a new topic is born!
So what does HS say to you?
Here HS is probably a little more chatty than in other installations. I have a Russouond whole house audio system. Blade has a great plugin for it. That coupled with his great plugin BLSpeech allows pretty comprehensive and rich options for automating TTS. I couple this with Jeff's Random plugin which allows HS to speak a randomly selected phrase from any specified category. As a result I now have thousands of possible things HS can say to me. It's a good activity to sit around with friends, drinking beer on a Saturday night coming up with new phrases. An abridged lexicon follows:
BLSpeech allows you to select a .Wav to be played before the TTS so most announcements have one. Usually it's just a chime some good soul here gave my but it changes with the calendar. So for example in the weeks leading up to Halloween it will randomly (Thanks Jeff and Random plugin!) change to things like chains dragging, cats screeching, Bella Legosi samples and so on. Spooky stuff. A turkey gobble around Thanksgiving. Jingle bells around the birth of Santa. Get the idea?
Everyone gets a custom greeting when the come in the door determined by what PIN was entered at the lock. These are randomized. Usually it's just a simple greeting but here's what it said to my daughter when she came home last night: "So I decided to cross reference my schematic with the one on my positive gravity auger. The results are still being computed but it seems safe to say that there will be thirteen chickens on the coming full moon who are all wearing stylish pants with dapper and sharp manly shoes and have made positive contact with extraterrestrials. Quantum physics aside. Linus Pauling. is my hero and should be ready at any point to produce the kind of thing that leads one to a third Nobel Prize. As a side note: Christmas Rocks. Bam". At one point she complained that the messages weren't "intellectual" enough so I copied the entire Wikipedia entry for the word "intellectual" and it will occasionally read that to her.
If I have to work the next morning (as determined by my Google calendar and BLGData. Thanks Blade!) I get a reminder to go to bed 9 hours before I need to get up and if I stay up later than 7 hours until wakeup time (as determined by a bed occupancy sensor) I get some randomly selected nastieness from HS. Most announcements for me personally are sent to the main speakers in the house if I'm home, to my bedroom if I'm in bed, outside if I'm outside or to my phone if I'm away from home.
HS reminds me to plug my phone in when I get in bed. If I nap during the day it's a simple one time reminder. At night if I persist in not plugging it in eventually it plays some Star Trek like red alert, Klingons are attacking, warp core needs to be jettisoned noise and keeps bugging me.
In the morning on days when I have to work HS wakes me up by slowly turning my bedroom light up from 0 to 100% over 30 minutes. Then I get a polite reminder to get up. If I persist in sleeping I start to get louder and nastier reminders.
I turned the ringer off on the home phones and when I come home HS mutes the ringer on my cellphone. All incoming calls are announced with randomly chosen messages with the caller by name. This is customized to a degree by who is calling. So for example when my crazy space aliens, CIA, world government, alien body switching technology, etc. friend calls there is a whole slew of custom announcements and the preceding sound is a clip from the X0Files theme song. When I'm in bed I'm picky about which callers get to disturb my beauty rest.
At noon I get reminded to say prayers wherever I am, home or not. "What are you Islamic?". "Nope. You don't need to be Islamic to know that you take a break in the middle of the day!".
One hour before sunset on Friday I get a reminder that the Sabbath will begin in an hour wherever I am. "What are you Jewish?". Nope. You don't need to be Jewish to know that you don't work on the Sabbath!". I immediately pack up my things and head home.
HS plays Alice's restaurant on Thanksgiving, The Clancy Brothers on St. Patricks Day (on St. Patrick's day the preceding chime is replaced with the drunk leprechaun from the Simpsons!), The Misfits on Halloween, etc.
When there is a party here, as determined by any number of occupancy detection methods, a randomly selected quote of special interest is played wherever people are hanging out. When it's the kids (as determined by occupancy in their part of the house) the quotes are a little different.
HS will occasionally give me location notifications about my daughter if it differs from her calendar, but this is fading as she gets older. She's 17 now and doesn't get as much supervision as in years gone by. Also she drank my vodka. WTF? Went to make a bloody mary Friday night to no avail.
On the full moon HS howls at sunset and gives me a heads up.
If the exterior door is open when I get in bed I get a notification about that.
There's too much to list verbosely. The main points are:
The Random plugin really makes these announcements interesting. The same thing over and over again gets boring and annoying, FAST. Especially when your HS system talks as much as mine does. I understand that BLRandom might be more functional. I'm not sure as I started using the Random plugin when I got HS3 and it's so chock full of stuff I'd have no idea how to migrate if I wanted to.
The ability to have the announcements sent to different locations based on occupancy is good. As with most things HA, sensor density is key.
BLSpeech is for sophisticated people. The options are myriad. Check out Blade's youtube video on it.
What does HS say to you?
So what does HS say to you?
Here HS is probably a little more chatty than in other installations. I have a Russouond whole house audio system. Blade has a great plugin for it. That coupled with his great plugin BLSpeech allows pretty comprehensive and rich options for automating TTS. I couple this with Jeff's Random plugin which allows HS to speak a randomly selected phrase from any specified category. As a result I now have thousands of possible things HS can say to me. It's a good activity to sit around with friends, drinking beer on a Saturday night coming up with new phrases. An abridged lexicon follows:
BLSpeech allows you to select a .Wav to be played before the TTS so most announcements have one. Usually it's just a chime some good soul here gave my but it changes with the calendar. So for example in the weeks leading up to Halloween it will randomly (Thanks Jeff and Random plugin!) change to things like chains dragging, cats screeching, Bella Legosi samples and so on. Spooky stuff. A turkey gobble around Thanksgiving. Jingle bells around the birth of Santa. Get the idea?
Everyone gets a custom greeting when the come in the door determined by what PIN was entered at the lock. These are randomized. Usually it's just a simple greeting but here's what it said to my daughter when she came home last night: "So I decided to cross reference my schematic with the one on my positive gravity auger. The results are still being computed but it seems safe to say that there will be thirteen chickens on the coming full moon who are all wearing stylish pants with dapper and sharp manly shoes and have made positive contact with extraterrestrials. Quantum physics aside. Linus Pauling. is my hero and should be ready at any point to produce the kind of thing that leads one to a third Nobel Prize. As a side note: Christmas Rocks. Bam". At one point she complained that the messages weren't "intellectual" enough so I copied the entire Wikipedia entry for the word "intellectual" and it will occasionally read that to her.
If I have to work the next morning (as determined by my Google calendar and BLGData. Thanks Blade!) I get a reminder to go to bed 9 hours before I need to get up and if I stay up later than 7 hours until wakeup time (as determined by a bed occupancy sensor) I get some randomly selected nastieness from HS. Most announcements for me personally are sent to the main speakers in the house if I'm home, to my bedroom if I'm in bed, outside if I'm outside or to my phone if I'm away from home.
HS reminds me to plug my phone in when I get in bed. If I nap during the day it's a simple one time reminder. At night if I persist in not plugging it in eventually it plays some Star Trek like red alert, Klingons are attacking, warp core needs to be jettisoned noise and keeps bugging me.
In the morning on days when I have to work HS wakes me up by slowly turning my bedroom light up from 0 to 100% over 30 minutes. Then I get a polite reminder to get up. If I persist in sleeping I start to get louder and nastier reminders.
I turned the ringer off on the home phones and when I come home HS mutes the ringer on my cellphone. All incoming calls are announced with randomly chosen messages with the caller by name. This is customized to a degree by who is calling. So for example when my crazy space aliens, CIA, world government, alien body switching technology, etc. friend calls there is a whole slew of custom announcements and the preceding sound is a clip from the X0Files theme song. When I'm in bed I'm picky about which callers get to disturb my beauty rest.
At noon I get reminded to say prayers wherever I am, home or not. "What are you Islamic?". "Nope. You don't need to be Islamic to know that you take a break in the middle of the day!".
One hour before sunset on Friday I get a reminder that the Sabbath will begin in an hour wherever I am. "What are you Jewish?". Nope. You don't need to be Jewish to know that you don't work on the Sabbath!". I immediately pack up my things and head home.
HS plays Alice's restaurant on Thanksgiving, The Clancy Brothers on St. Patricks Day (on St. Patrick's day the preceding chime is replaced with the drunk leprechaun from the Simpsons!), The Misfits on Halloween, etc.
When there is a party here, as determined by any number of occupancy detection methods, a randomly selected quote of special interest is played wherever people are hanging out. When it's the kids (as determined by occupancy in their part of the house) the quotes are a little different.
HS will occasionally give me location notifications about my daughter if it differs from her calendar, but this is fading as she gets older. She's 17 now and doesn't get as much supervision as in years gone by. Also she drank my vodka. WTF? Went to make a bloody mary Friday night to no avail.
On the full moon HS howls at sunset and gives me a heads up.
If the exterior door is open when I get in bed I get a notification about that.
There's too much to list verbosely. The main points are:
The Random plugin really makes these announcements interesting. The same thing over and over again gets boring and annoying, FAST. Especially when your HS system talks as much as mine does. I understand that BLRandom might be more functional. I'm not sure as I started using the Random plugin when I got HS3 and it's so chock full of stuff I'd have no idea how to migrate if I wanted to.
The ability to have the announcements sent to different locations based on occupancy is good. As with most things HA, sensor density is key.
BLSpeech is for sophisticated people. The options are myriad. Check out Blade's youtube video on it.
What does HS say to you?
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