I’m about ready to pull my hair out… there has to be a “simple” way to activate a sound notification in my house from an automation. I want to use a dedicated speaker/device to play a sound when a door opens, the alarm arms/disarms/set off, or whatever. I can’t find a way online to do it without building my own device or “hacking” another device.
I have had limited success passing notifications to Alexa devices but it interrupts music, which gets real annoying when your are having a gathering, listening to music, and people are going in and out…
I’m running HA on hassio on a RPi 4. I tried installing Mopidy, but it looks like it isn’t supported anymore and it won’t install. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, but playing a sound directly out of the 3.5mm port on my RPi seems like the best and simplest option.
My latest attempt was to buy a Aqara Hub, but I didn’t realize I had to hack into it by signing into it’s Chinese servers… they must have figured it out because that doesn’t seem to work anymore either.
I am so frustrated and it seems like it should be something so simple. I can turn on every light in my house, I know the temperature and humidity in every room, know when every door is open, lock all my doors, view four cameras, see who’s home, and close my garage, but I can’t make a simple chime that every single other alarm system can.
Can someone please tell me how to make this happen? I’m open to buying a zigbee/zwave/wifi modual if I don’t have to modify its natural state.
I’ve implemented a lot of audio “solutions” over the past few months.
A lot of people seem to like Google Home Minis, I haven’t tried them due to privacy concerns, but might be right up your alley.
SONOS speakers (even the IKEA ones) are okay, but obviously expensive if you just want a simple WiFi speaker.
Also experimented with Raspberry Pis, they work really well. Slap MPD on there, set the audio output and you’re basically done. If you want the sound to be played perfectly in sync, snapcast is the solution. (There’s an official integration for Home Assistant).
If you want to use the Raspberry Pi you’ve installed Home Assistant on, you might want to look at https://github.com/Poeschl/Hassio-Addons/ and set up MPD or ympd, I haven’t had great success with it on my NUC, but it’s worth a shot. You should use active speakers with an external power supply for the raspberry pi or a usb soundcard.
You can also install supported media players on old android devices you might have lying around, stick an old phone to a charger, hide it in the cupboard and have that as your makeshift speaker.
EDIT: If the sounds are static, you could also look into doorbell alarms with mp3 support and use that
It’s really cheap and can output enough to make an acceptable volume with those cheap “internal pc speakers”.
I just got glued the speaker to a lid from somewhere.
It works great.
Although I don’t use it with an esp, but that doesn’t matter since the esp will just control the Dfplayer.
Here is the player in action, controlled by a arduino micro (I believe).
Thank you both for your replies. I’ve tried MPD, and can’t get it to install. It also looks like it is depreciated, I was assuming that is why. I haven’t tried YMPD, so maybe that’s next. SONOs speakers are a little higher than what I would want to spend, and if I did buy them, I’d want to play music on them. I do have an old Rpi laying around, maybe I can make that a dedicated music server.
Honestly I’m not great at coding, I can barely get by. I usually go through the HA GUI, which has gotten so much better lately!! The ESPHome is pretty far out of my comfort zone. I really can’t believe there isn’t a “notification” device. I thought the aqara hub was perfect with a RGB LED and speaker.
Can you share your automation? I want to get a sound notification when my backdoor opens. I have Sonos and Alexa. I don’t necessarily care about the music interruption.
Really old thread I know.
Thought I’d add my solution was to use ESPhome on a $4 ESP8266 (NodeMCU) and a $3 arduino compatible 3.3V buzzer. Can be put anywhere you can put a USB wall wart to power it.
If the buzzer is configured in ESPhome as a binary light it can be also used with light effects like strobe to create chirping or siren type sound, as well as on off etc.
This has worked great for me for a few years. Mine also has a RGB led for colour indications as well as sound.
I do have an old Rpi laying around, maybe I can make that a dedicated music server.