For some reason all messages, TTS and sound files, are cut short after a certain period of time. Maybe around 20 seconds or so. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I’d love to have Vera Alerts play songs but they don’t play through. Likewise, some of the more interesting concoctions Signal15 has come up with fail repeatedly.
You will have to set the message spacing time longer … otherwise a new message will clobber a long running message.
I too have this issue. It does not always occur though.
I have lengthened the message delay to 10 seconds, however that setting seems to not have any effect.
For example, I have a scene that fires when I leave my house to lock all doors, arm the alarm, and close the garage door. I receive the following 3 messages via TTS -
Kitchen Door Locked
Alarm is Armed
Garage Door Closed
Sometimes they run over each other, other times they just speak one after the other. This occurs no matter what I have the message delay setting set to. I have tried 3, 5, 10, and 15 seconds.
That’s a small bug … If there is no entry in the queue I do not wait … So if the events are slightly delayed they might not get the delay. I will fix.
Thanks Richard. As always, great support.
I tried the same test on my phone (Galaxy Note 2) and I am ASTOUNDED by the difference in the interface and performance between the two phones. On my Note 2 the sounds interface is actually readable and usable! On the Vera Alerts phone, not so much. Basically adding a sound sucks. Setting a name works about 1 in 10 times. Maybe. Then playing the sound only works if it’s less than maybe 10 seconds. There are no other alerts coinciding with the sounds I’m trying to play. In any way at all. The house Vera Alerts phone is running 2.3.4. Is there something there? Is the version too old? If so I’m going to have to look for a different solution to whole house TTS as I don’t want to spend a few hundred $ on a used craigslist phone to make the house talk.
@RTS,
Have you thought about making a Windows client for Vera Alerts? Could be LAN only but maybe in these fledgling days of Windows 8 someone out there might be wanting Vera Alerts for W8. I have a PC running WHS 2011 up all the time which could benefit from this greatly. The catch is it would need to run as a service. I suppose if it couldn’t I could fire up a VM of something else and give it a sound card and keep it logged in all the time. I’m not a fan of leaving a system logged in all the time though.
[quote=“S-F, post:6, topic:179870”]@RTS,
Have you thought about making a Windows client for Vera Alerts? Could be LAN only but maybe in these fledgling days of Windows 8 someone out there might be wanting Vera Alerts for W8. I have a PC running WHS 2011 up all the time which could benefit from this greatly. The catch is it would need to run as a service. I suppose if it couldn’t I could fire up a VM of something else and give it a sound card and keep it logged in all the time. I’m not a fan of leaving a system logged in all the time though.[/quote]
Two and a half years later and no one’s replied to this or made any effort to set this up? Guess we can kiss that idea goodbye. It makes a lot more sense to me to have Vera send TTS to your main computer to broadcast messages over your amplifier speakers and have other apps on your personal phone notify you with sounds. Personally, I wouldn’t want my phone yelling out that my “back door was violated” while I sit on the bus. 
However it would be useful to have the capability of sending TTS to my amp when the status of certain lights change or a motion sensor on my back porch is triggered. I tried DNLA, but that was a total fail when it came to TTS.
Not sure about announcing events over your amp… also you could easily create scenes that use the sonos controller likely.
as for a windows client, I use Push A lot on my PC and Windows PHone… and then Vera Alerts to drive the messages. works great.
I will have a Windows 10 App coming out soon …
It is a combo of Vera Alerts Client (i.e. TTS announcements) and integration with Cortona (Voice control) with a command set simmilar to Hal (my android app that does Voice control).
[quote=“RichardTSchaefer”]I will have a Windows 10 App coming out soon …
It is a combo of Vera Alerts Client (i.e. TTS announcements) and integration with Cortona (Voice control) with a command set simmilar to Hal (my android app that does Voice control).[/quote]
That will be awesome Richard.
Looking forward to seeing it.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:9, topic:179870”]I will have a Windows 10 App coming out soon …
It is a combo of Vera Alerts Client (i.e. TTS announcements) and integration with Cortona (Voice control) with a command set simmilar to Hal (my android app that does Voice control).[/quote]
That does sound awesome. I guess I should have upgraded to Windows 10 after all. Still creeped out by all the spying though. I decided to stick with 8.1 for now until DirectX 12 games start coming out and I have a good enough reason to switch and be watched constantly by Microsoft.
As a Microsoft employee, I salute you!
I’m sure you’re a great person and a productive member of society, so when I say that Microsoft is a pile of $#!t built on sketchy business practices, I really don’t mean to infer that you as an individual are also scum.
It’s unfortunate that your bosses have lead you guys in a direction that degrades the entire company. I still remember using DOS as a kid and then DOS Shell, both which grew in popularity mostly because of piracy, and then screwed the “hacker” crowd over out of the blue. Meanwhile, Linux fell behind because most “gamers” became reliant on Winblows. Now they’ve decided to track our every move… and I thought Google was bad!! Next thing you know I won’t be able to take a $#!t without Micro$oft knowing about it and possibly finding a way to beam ads to me at the same time, maybe even charge me for something meanwhile.
Thankfully in the last 4 years or so, Windows has actually achieved some semblance of stability. You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to commit a random act of violence because of that God damned OS. Particularly against my own computer. ← JOKE In actuality though, I did once throw my computer off of my second floor balcony because of that crappy OS. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced. I even went down and finished the job with my boots.
I still aspire to switching to Linux 100% one day. Maybe when I stop playing video games altogether.
That would be really cool if Microsoft targeted ADs on your toilet paper in the bathroom 
Maybe you could launch a Kickstarter campaign for OLED toilet paper.
@Quixote, wow… five years on this forum… never felt an attach like that. Hope it was cathartic for you.
I don’t understand how that was an attack on you. Unless of course you consider your identity to be intertwined with Microsoft and Windows somehow.