Greetings, I have hass.io running nicely on a RPi3 and I have an automation that text’s me when an event is triggered, but what I really want is for HA to play a sound. Ideally, without depending on a 3rd party device like a chromecast, etc… Right now the RPi is wired directly to a speaker, but I haven’t a clue how to get HA to send audio to it. I saw that there’s a gstreamer plugin, but I don’t think that’s available on hass.io.
If the only option is to get a 3rd party device, I would likely opt for a chromecast audio. Is such a device practical for playing audio in response to automation events?
Can’t speak for audio direct from the pi speaker in hass.io, but many users have chromecast audio configured for this exact purpose and more, and it is pretty easy to set up.
You could install VLC directly onto your Pi and then use it as a media player in the config. It will then play audio to a speaker directly attached to the Pi.