Play TTS without interrupting media playback

1

Hi all,

I have several Google streaming devices around the house. I would like to utilize them to make announcements, like the dishwasher finished etc.

Issue is that tts.google_translate_say will stop the currently playing music, make the annoucement, and then not continue playback of music.

I tried to find information on this topic, but everything seems pretty outdated, like:

I read somewhere (Wait for sequence to finish - #5 by 123) that there should be an “announce”-option in tts, but that seems a false positive.

It seems the only solution is to save what is currently playing, start the TTS, then start playing the previous title. I tried that workaround, but it’s a bit slow with TuneIn and will take about 15 seconds to buffer from HA, but 0 from direct Google input (hey google, start playing ) for no apparent reason. That’s 70% why I was wondering if there is any other way to make an announcement over currently playing music …

So my question is: Am I missing something, or is there really no way to easily continue playback?

2

I just use a separate PC speaker connected directly on the audio out of the HA server.
Independent on all the media players in the house and no hassle with automation’s to interrupt and activate media players. EASY :wink:

3

That was in no way helpful.

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4

It was helpful, i spent my time to read your question and give you an viable option.
You choose not to do anything with it, and that is perfectly fine.
But saying it was not helpful works very demotivating for me to try help others. You could do something about this attitude…

5

Ok thank you buddy

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6

This is on my list as well, although I’m using Chromecast Audios and a Plex server.

I don’t have a solution either, unfortunately. I did my research a few months ago and the common thread I saw was to save the state of your speakers as a scene, make the announcement, then restore the scene.

I tried that a few different ways without any luck. That said, I’m not very experienced with scenes, so I may not be doing it right. I paused my attempts for now. Hoping someone had the answer…

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7

i still use this GitHub - TheFes/Google-Home-Resume: Google Home Resume package for Home Assistant

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8

That looks promising. I’ll give it a shot and update this thread.

9

You may have misunderstood what I had explained.

media_player.play_media offers control of the announce option (i.e. ability to set its value to true or false).

The announce feature isn’t exposed as a controllable option in tts.speak. It effectively behaves like media_player.play_media with the announce option set to true. Whether the announce feature actually works or not depends on the target speaker’s integration. For example, I know it works for Sonos.

10

That script is way too complicated for me. Thanks a lot for all the work, but I cannot for my life go through all this code :frowning: