Chime TTS is a Home Assistant integration that eliminates the audio lag between playing a chime/notification sound effect before a TTS audio notification.
Home Assistant allows audio files and Text-To-Speech (TTS) audio messages to be played on speakers around your home. While TTS messages are a great way to provide real-time updates, by the time you realize a message is playing, you've missed the start of the message.
It makes sense to add a notification chime before the TTS audio, but in practice this introduces a delay between the two, caused by latency from network requests to the cloud TTS platform and latency from audio processing & networking before playback begins on the speakers.
Chime TTS is a custom Home Assistant integration that solves this issue by stitching these audio files together. Chime TTS generates a single audio file locally on your Home Assistant device, and plays it to your speakers in a single event, eliminating any lag.
Chime TTS offers various features that enhance TTS audio playback experience:
- No lag or timing issues: Precise timing between audio files without cloud TTS delays.
- Customizable audio cues: Play preset or custom audio before and after TTS messages.
- Flexible TTS platform selection: Supports various TTS platform integrations.
- Easy service invocation: Use the 'chime_tts.say' service in automations and scripts.
- Set media player notification volume: Restore volume after playback.
- Configurable TTS playback speed: Set the TTS audio speed anywhere from 100-200%.
- Configurable delay: Set custom delays between audio and TTS.
- Caching: Cache audio for faster playback.
- Speaker Groups: Group speakers for simultaneous playback.
Follow these easy steps to get started with Chime TTS:
- Installation - Quickly install Chime TTS via HACS or manually.
- Add the Integration - Add Chime TTS to your Home Assistant instance.
Chime TTS adds three new services to your Home Assistant instance: chime_tts.say, chime_tts.say_url and chime_tts.clear_cache. Discover how you can use these services and the features they offer:
- chime_tts.say: Play audio and TTS messages with various settings.
- chime_tts.say_url: Generates a publicly accessible URL to the MP3 file generated by
chime_tts.say. - chime_tts.clear_cache: Clear generated audio cache.
You can customise the following elements for the chime_tts.say and chime_tts.say_url services:
| Config Option | Description | Default Value |
|---|---|---|
| Timeout | Set the maximum number of seconds before the service call is terminated (useful if you have long TTS messages and don't want the service end prematurely) | 60 |
| Media Folder | Media Folder - Media folder for storing temporary files. | local |
| Temporary MP3 Folder | Temporary MP3 Folder - Path to the local folder where the generated mp3 files are saved. | /media/sounds/temp/chime_tts/ |
| Public MP3 Folder | Public MP3 Folder - Path to the publicly accessible folder used to store MP3 files generated by chime_tts.say_url service. |
/www/chime_tts/ |
For questions, suggestions, and community discussion about Chime TTS, visit our Community Forum.
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