WTH - voice_satellite.notify should allow to play a notification sound before the TTS

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

I’ve been using a HA voice satellite (secret) for a few weeks. A couple days ago I hooked it into my ceiling speakers for awesome sound quality all over the home.

I do like a lot to have voice notifications, like when the laundry is done, I so far I’ve been using my amazon echo devices.

In the transition to using HA satellites, I found the lack of a notification sound a bit jarring. It starts speaking so abruptly that it’s almost a jumpscare moment.

When using Alexa media player I used the type: announce option to play a short notification sound before the message.

action: notify.alexa_media
data:
  message: La lavadora ha finalizado
  target: 
    - media_player.echo_dot_habitacion
    - media_player.echo_dot_porche
    - media_player.echo_dot_salon
  data:
    type: announce

Playing a short notification sound before makes it much nicer.

(Also, while playing music with music assistant, the music lowers the volume for the announcement but it feels like the fade-in/out of the volume is also quite abrupt, I’d make the transition longer, but that’s a different topic)

2

I had the same issue and so I created the Chime TTS integration to locally combine audio files with the TTS audio. I hope it can help you too :+1:

3

Agree with this use. There should be the option to play a *ding or some other gentle but noticable noise to get your attention. It’s like when a person gets your attenion before asking a question, like “Hey Frenk” then asks the question like “Why isn’t spook everyone’s homie?”