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Easy Way to direct Audio to Occupied Rooms

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    Easy Way to direct Audio to Occupied Rooms

    Ok, so I finally pulled the trigger here and bought this plugin yesterday. I have the russound plugin as well and have to say, the integration between the two is pretty slick and saved me a lot of hacking scripts together to get the same functionality.

    I am still in over my head with the plugin and working thru it. I have the basics working (sending audio to one zone I created that has all my speakers on it). But what I would like to do is only send audio to rooms that have motions tripped, no need to send audio the the master bathroom if no one is there. Likewise to my backyard speakers if no one is outside.

    I have all the pieces in place, but now want to see if what I am wanting to do is even possible, and if so, how? I suppose I could do it with lots and lots of events, but I am really trying to avoid that if possible.

    #2
    This is how I do it:

    It' only 2 events per zone.
    Attached Files
    Originally posted by rprade
    There is no rhyme or reason to the anarchy a defective Z-Wave device can cause

    Comment


      #3
      Yea i had that setup for a while too, had the music follow thru the house. But wife and I found it kinda annoying.

      What I am really looking for is if TTS happens, only do it in the rooms that have people in them.

      The music part I have down and working to our liking, but I am trying to shift the TTS from my HSTouch clients to the russound system.

      Comment


        #4
        Oh! OK. That's a whole different story. I feel your pain! It takes tons and TONS of events!

        Check out this thread : http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=175182
        Originally posted by rprade
        There is no rhyme or reason to the anarchy a defective Z-Wave device can cause

        Comment


          #5
          Well SOB... seems like I am gonna have to roll up my sleeves and build some scripts to handle this.

          Thanks for the link, at least it pointed me in the right direction of how I need to handle this. I think I will make a script that I can feed variables to and that way I just have to use one event for each thing that is spoken...

          Another question since I have your attention, I am noticing my sounds are not getting sent to the speech proxy of blspeech... they are all mp3. Does it only support wav files?

          Comment


            #6
            Like S-F, I also combine my lighting and my sound into one event to handle this scenario.

            https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resi...nt=photo%2cPNG

            I also have another event that turns the TV on in each room to the main HDMI house feed to allow programs to follow you. That is two other events triggered off the Russound sound zone turning on or off...that way you have ability to turn off all audio and the tv with on with one press of the russound room audio control in each room's single gang wall control.
            Last edited by AgileHumor; April 16, 2016, 12:16 PM.

            Comment


              #7
              Thanks, but this still only just does the audio control of turning russound on and off for audio in general.

              What I am looking for is no matter the state of the system (zone on/off), if TTS happens, send it only to rooms that are occupied.

              I don't have my AV connected to HS yet, and only use the russound system to pump pandora thru the house for wife. We manually control it thru the HSTouch screens I have around the house (she really hated the audio following her thru the house when I had a similar setup as above).

              So example being I have an event that pushes TTS that the laundry is done, I only want it to send the TTS to the rooms with people in it based off motion sensors.

              Comment


                #8
                I have not done that, but can provide uniformed brainstorming.
                1. You setup kinda like my post above.
                2. Use a HS speaker device (can be on a PI box, or PC) near russound. Y cable the audio from the HS speaker to the Pandora input and the "mute" (TTS Only) input.
                3. On my room motion off, I also set the source back to our default Kodi media center which plays TV or music. For you, set one of the unused Russound inputs (like #6) and call that "Mute" or "TTS Only" so it turns on to a an input that is mostly muted (except TTS).



                My Russound sources are:
                1. Media Center & Amazon Echo Dot & HS Speaker audio feed into this input.
                2. Bluetooth (Russound Module)
                3. Mute TTS Audio Only. Split from HS speaker above.


                BTW - Does it matter that TTS audio is going to unoccupied rooms? If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it...

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by AgileHumor View Post
                  I have not done that, but can provide uniformed brainstorming.
                  1. You setup kinda like my post above.
                  2. Use a HS speaker device (can be on a PI box, or PC) near russound. Y cable the audio from the HS speaker to the Pandora input and the "mute" (TTS Only) input.
                  3. On my room motion off, I also set the source back to our default Kodi media center which plays TV or music. For you, set one of the unused Russound inputs (like #6) and call that "Mute" or "TTS Only" so it turns on to a an input that is mostly muted (except TTS).



                  My Russound sources are:
                  1. Media Center & Amazon Echo Dot & HS Speaker audio feed into this input.
                  2. Bluetooth (Russound Module)
                  3. Mute TTS Audio Only. Split from HS speaker above.


                  BTW - Does it matter that TTS audio is going to unoccupied rooms? If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it...
                  I use squeezebox to stream pandora (have a Pi connected to a source on my russound). I also do have my HS server connected to another source on the russound system. So I am thinking that I have the pieces tied together that need it.

                  For streaming audio, I have an HSTouch screen that the wife can just hit the pandora button and it turns the zone on in the room she is in, and sets the source and volume automagically for her. This about the only thing in the HS ecosystem that she demands work properly and likes .

                  I get the logic about if no one is in the room, why does it matter, but here are my two reasons:
                  - Sending it to all the russound zones adds a decent delay to the system vs just sending it to one (it turns each zone on linear instead of just blasting an on command to all of them), which in turn also adds a delay to the TTS to actually happen.
                  - Also I have a couple TTS things that happen first thing in the morning when I wake up (weather for the day and such) that I wouldn't want to have pumped thru the master bathroom when the wife is still asleep. Granted I could just have it setup to only send it to that one zone, but I would like this to be a little more dynamic and "smart"

                  Comment


                    #10
                    I think we should put in a feature request to Blade on this one because it's gotta be a common issue with BLSpeech users. It sucks but this is how I'm handling this type of situation:

                    An event triggers on whatever. It's actions are to run other events.

                    I have 4 locations that I want my announcements to be sensitive to. Home (plays in the kitchen) in bed (plays in the bedroom) outside (plays outside) and away (TTS on my phone).

                    I have different announcements on holidays or depending on who is here and on and on. They are each in their own event group. Halloween has it's own group and so forth. So I have 4 separate events for each announcement in each group and one master event that runs them all.

                    So the first event runs all of the master events in the other groups.

                    As you can see this is complicated and has taken me a few years to set up. Understanding why I was so frazzled when my events were loosing actions?
                    Originally posted by rprade
                    There is no rhyme or reason to the anarchy a defective Z-Wave device can cause

                    Comment


                      #11
                      [QUOTE=waynehead99;1240577]
                      For streaming audio, I have an HSTouch screen that the wife can just hit the pandora button and it turns the zone on in the room she is in, and sets the source and volume automagically for her. This about the only thing in the HS ecosystem that she demands work properly and likes .
                      [QUOTE]

                      You would update HS touch to switch between Pandora input and the "mute" (tts input). So no changes needed for WAF.

                      Re: Turning it off...I understand. However, it was a question that my wife asked on why I spending all the time on it

                      For #1 I would never suggest turning on all zones. In my brainstorming session without all the details... If the zone is already on (albeit to the "mute" (tts only) input. If she is listening to the Pandora input, the y cable from the HS speaker should also play announcements it in that zone.

                      For #2, you should add a condition to only play those items when bedtime mode is off. that's how I do it at least for recurring announcements.

                      just a thought, I know you have a much better handle on your setup than I

                      Comment


                        #12
                        [QUOTE=AgileHumor;

                        For #1 I would never suggest turning on all zones. In my brainstorming session without all the details... If the zone is already on (albeit to the "mute" (tts only) input. If she is listening to the Pandora input, the y cable from the HS speaker should also play announcements it in that zone.

                        For #2, you should add a condition to only play those items when bedtime mode is off. that's how I do it at least for recurring announcements.

                        just a thought, I know you have a much better handle on your setup than I[/QUOTE]

                        I highly doubt I have a handle on anything .

                        I never did think about tying it to my house modes... that might help. Let me think about this one and thanks guys for the brainstorming.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by S-F View Post
                          I think we should put in a feature request to Blade on this one because it's gotta be a common issue with BLSpeech users. It sucks but this is how I'm handling this type of situation:
                          Perhaps this "feature" could work like this. When configuring a "speaker", you can select a virtual device (or any other device perhaps) that determines "Occupancy". I say virtual device because then each person can determine what occupancy means instead of having the plugin do it. Though perhaps it could be as simple as 0 is "off" and anything else is "On" for the occupancy.

                          Then, when you set up a "zone", you can have an option to either Honor or Ignore the occupancy settings for the speakers in this zone. This could be either be by speaker, or for the whole zone. I prefer the "by speaker" option, but realize that doing it that way might be a lot of work for Blade.

                          So, as an example, I could set up my speakers like so:

                          Code:
                          Master bedroom: BLRussound zone 1; Occupancy Device: Master bedroom Occupied (Virtual Device)
                          Kitchen: BLRussound zone 2; Occupancy Device: Kitchen Occupied (Virtual Device)
                          Living Room BLRussound zone 3; Occupancy Device: Living Room Occupied (Virtual Device)
                          Back Yard: BLRussound zone 4; Occupancy Device: Back Yard Occupied (Virtual Device)
                          Foyer: BLRussound zone 5; Occupancy Device: Foyer Occupied (Virtual Device)
                          Media Room: BLRussound zone 6; Occupancy Device: Media Room Occupied (Virtual Device)

                          Then, lets say I want to set up a zone. Maybe I want only certain rooms to have the occupancy device determine if it plays so when I set up speakers for "whole house". I want it to honor occupancy for all zones, so it could be set up like this:

                          Code:
                          Zone: Whole House; Use Occupancy: Yes
                          
                          Speakers: Living Room,Master bedroom, foyer, back yard, media room, kitchen
                          In the above example, it would use the occupancy device for each speaker when you used this zone (I would assume if a speaker didn't have an occupancy device, it would just play over that speaker).

                          Now, another option (maybe in addition to above) would allow you to create a "zone", but determine which speakers use their occupancy device. For instance, you want the announcement to play in the common areas, but in the back yard and Master bedroom, you only want them to play if their are occupied:

                          Code:
                          Zone: Whole House; Use Occupancy: Yes (per speaker)
                          Speakers:
                               Living Room; use Occupancy: No
                               Kitchen; use Occupancy: No
                               Master Bedroom; Use Occupancy: Yes
                               Back Yard; Use Occupancy: Yes
                               Media Room; Use Occupancy: Yes
                               Foyer; Use Occupancy: No
                          I think a mix of both would be awesome and would make creating events a lot easier.

                          Anyways, just a suggestion. Not sure if it would work for everyone.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            That is probably the most elegant solution to the problem. I like the idea of a virtual device, just because I try to keep my motions to reset as quick as possible and I don't mind creating an event to trigger a device based off timer (already have this in place anyways, so it would be an easy add).

                            I will figure out how to do a feature request and see if this can be added.

                            Awesome thought!!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Request Was Opened:

                              http://bladeplugins.no-ip.org/ListFeatureRequests.asp

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