Sonos Text to speach

#1

I know there have been a few questions around this, and was just wondering if anyone had a definitive answer.

I’ve just purchased a second play 5 (gen 1), added it to the system but cant get the text to speech from webcore to work. My other sonos speakers work fine.

Once added, I tried changing to the original DH as used by the others, and although this then lets the speaker be added to webcore, the speech does not work. I tried a test piston for it, there are no errors and it executes fine for one of the existing speakers.

If I compare the devices in the IDE the data & status sections fro the old & new device look very different.

Is there any way to get this to work, before I use the nodejs solution on the raspbery pi?

#2

I have sonos speakers around the house but not play 5.
Text to speech can be problematic. My pistons sometimes worked some times didn’t for no apparent reason.
Finally my best solution was (100% sucess rate) using play track.
Creating an mp3 of the sentence I want (http://www.fromtexttospeech.com - DAISY) and uploading them onto a website.

not an answer to your question but just wanted so share my solution to the problem.

#3

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I’ve used a play 5 (gen1) and play 1’s ok, the only issue is resume doesn’t seem to work, but not too big an issue for me.

The nodejs app works very well, but its more trouble to code (separate put requests per speaker) and relies on the app running on the rasp pi. I suspect this is the way I’ll need to go though.

As an aside, I’m not happy with sonos dropping support for the play 5’s in May. They’re rather expensive high end speakers & amp to be made end of life. I have other amp/speakers way older that work & sound great.

#4

Agreed.
When I bought them Echo Speak wasn’t around (or I wasn’t aware). If I were to start now I would stay away from sonos not for quality reasons but we should get better support and St home integration for the price point.