hi @Nimrod_Dolev,
Thank you for your response. I can confirm that I’ve tested the announce feature on both Google Nest Hub 2 and Nest Mini 2, and unfortunately, it does not work as expected on these devices. Despite enabling the announce parameter in the latest version, the feature does not function properly.
I appreciate your willingness to troubleshoot and potentially add support for these platforms. If there’s any further information I can provide or if you need assistance with testing, please let me know.
Problem w Alexa in v1.0.0 ? --I installed v1.0.0 yesterday, and ever since my Chime TTS announcements have not been working over Alexa – they play the starting chime OK, then announce that they’re having difficulty with the Simon Says skill --which I do not think I’ve ever enabled in my Alexa account
My automations send message to a persistent notif. in HA, then a notif. to my iPhone, then Chime TTS targeting 3 Amazon Echo units w most options not selected --just chime path, volume level, join players & unjoin players, cache, announce, & gender= female. Using Nabu Casa Cloud for TTS option.
Has been working REALLY well (v0.13.0), with only minor occasional hiccups (maybe timing glitches, maybe with cloud services). But after v1.0.0, I don’t think it has played properly even once. (Can’t test right now, due to sleeping folks in house.)
Hi @tim.plas, I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having issues with the new version.
In your comment you mentioned using using the gender parameter, which has been deprecated. There is a new beta version of Chime TTS which replaced gender with voice. Could you please upgrade to the beta and let me know if it fixes your issues?
Enable the Show beta versions option (it may take a moment to update the list)
Select version v1.0.1-beta2 from the updated version drop-down list
Restart Home Assistant
Another possible cause might be that you don’t have an external URL configured in your configuration.yaml file. Can you please add the following YAML to configuration.yaml ?
I upgraded to v1.0.1-beta2 then built & ran a quick new automation for testing.
Unfortunately the issue was still present after the upgrade.
I did not know what to put into the “voice” parameter, so didn’t use that at all.
I then updated configuration.yaml as you suggested to include internal & external URLs.
Unfortunately still had the same difficulty.
The exact voice message I’m getting from Alexa Echo is “Sorry I’m having trouble accessing your Simon Says xxxx skill right now.” --I can’t quite catch the word right after Simon Says; it sounds something like “Simon Says noss skill”.
I tried to enable debug logging, but am unsure where to put the YAML lines you suggested? When I tried putting that into configuration.yaml it failed the “Check Configuration” in Developer Tools.
I can certainly try again for debugging info, if I find out what I’m missing about setting up debug log.
Since v1.0.0, Chime TTS uses the notify.alexa_media service to play audio on Alexa media_players (I was under the false impression that it wasn’t possible to use the media_player.play_media service - as I wrote in my previous post).
Now that I understand that some Alexa media players can play media via media_player.play_media and others require the notify.alexa_media service, it would be great to be able to distinguish between the two so that I can direct Chime TTS to the right service. This is where I’m hoping your debug logs can be useful.
Ultimately if there isn’t a way to differentiate between these two classes, I can implement a toggle in the configuration to force the use of one service or the other, but it’s more clunky.
Debugging
To enable debugging you can call the logger.set_level service from the Services tab in the Developer Tools page
I don’t have an Echo speaker so I am not familiar with the ecosystem, and without the debug logs it’s difficult to pinpoint the issue - but you should check if you can access the URLs generated by the chime_tts.say_url service:
Run chime_tts.say_url and open the URL returned by the service call in a browser. If it is not accessible, you likely have either:
a. An issue with your remote access to your Home Assistance instance
b. An incorrect folder path for chime_tts.say_url to store MP3s
Assuming the URL is accessible, please try using it to call notify.alexa_media:
If it is still not working, perhaps you have an issue with your Alexa integration. I believe there is a setting in the Alexa Media Player’s configuration to define your remote URL: Public URL to access Home Assistant (including trailing '/')).
If you’re still stuck, then hopefully the debug logs will be useful. Otherwise you can search this forum/Google to find out what other users have done to fix the issue.
Voice
As I understand, the voice parameter replaces the gender parameter which has now been deprecated by Nabu Casa. You can find a better explanation of using different voices in this post.
Re need to use notify.alexa vs media_player.play: Ooh, that’s ugly, if they have different requirements for different Alexa media players. I am using the standard HACS Alexa Media Player integration. But I’ve got all of the Alexa Echo generations: an Echo-1, and Echo Dot from gen 2 thru 5. I don’t honestly care if gen-1 and gen-2 devices work for notifications.
Re debugging log setup: Thanks for detailed info to do that. As I tell people, I haven’t been a developer since the last century. I will try that, and report back the log results.
Re Simon Says error: I will perform the tests you requested, and report the results.
Re Alexa integration: A config issue with mine is certainly possible. I do have the “Public URL to access HA” set properly in the Alexa integration. But my instance does act differently than some peoples’ --Amazon Echo sensors (like temperature) are supposed to show up in HA automatically, but mine never have.
Re Voice: Wow, that’s cool. Thanks for link.
I’ll be posting my test / logging results yet today. Thanks again.
Here are the debug logging results that I just ran. The call was stripped down to absolute basics: a single Alexa Echo Dot target device, a chime path, and a text message. I ran it twice, on 2 different devices: a Gen-3 Echo Dot, and a Gen-5 Echo Dot. Both acted the same (speaking the same error message re Simon Says).
Thanks for the logs Tim. Everything looks valid and there’s no leads for the time being.
When viewing the logs page in Home Assistant, can you please try removing any search filters so that you see all log messages from all components? I’m hoping to see log messages from the Alexa Media Player when trying to play on the Echos which might be useful.
TO enable log messages for the Alexa integration, please run the following in the Services tab of the Developer tools page:
Then I brought up my normal Nabu Casa link, which does NOT have the 8123 port: https://REDACTED.ui.nabu.casa/
and that DOES work to get to my dashboard.
I then noticed that Alexa Media Player integration in HA has the configuration item that says "Public URL to access HA (including trailing ‘/’) does NOT include the 8123 port. (I had copied the URL from HA “Cloud” settings page (where no port # is shown), & had just added the ‘/’ as directed.) I added the port # to the Alexa Media Player integration config. And restarted HA, since I had changed something on a HACS component.
and that works !!! (It plays the message from the URL on the PC.)
I have reverted the “Public URL to access HA” setting in AMP (Alexa Media Player) integration back to just the URL without port #. And restarted HA again.
It feels to me that the Chime_TTS.Say_URL should NOT include the 8123 port # in the generated URL. Does that make sense? (At least for Alexa usage?)
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll look into how & when to include the port number. I probably won’t get to it today but hopefully tomorrow I’ll have an update.
I’m so sorry to have wasted your time helping me chase this down. This was the first time that I’ve had to include config for External_URL, and I got it wrong. Bummer.
I just released a new beta version, v1.1.0-beta1 which introduces a Chime TTS notify platform, allowing you to setup notifications with Chime TTS.
Using notifications, you can make your own custom chime_tts.say calls with defined parameters, allowing you to more easily integrate Chime TTS into your scripts and automations.
I have outlined how to get started in the documentation, and I would appreciate it if you could please try it out and give any feedback you might have
How can I remove this warning that was not there before version 1xx
This error comes from the integration itself.
Logger: custom_components.chime_tts
Source: custom_components/chime_tts/__init__.py:305
integration: Chime TTS (documentation, issues)
First occurrence: 18:00:20 (1 occurrences)
Last logged in: 18:00:20
Timed out waiting for playback to complete
EDIT: You can think of Chime TTS notifications as presets for chime_tts.say, allowing you to define any/all parameters for calls to chime_tts.say, besides the message parameter. This allows you to use (and reuse) any notify entry in your scripts/automations where you just need to provide the message parameter string (with the other parameters already configured).
Note that you can always override those values when using the noitfy.chime_tts service.
I will try that, and report back the log results.
Excellent!