Home Showcase Demo - Can ELK Gold Do This...?

Ed Nelson

Member
I am working on the following automation scenarios and would like to know if anyone has had success in this area, of particular concern is the ability to get the Elk Unit to announce actions through the Nuvo Whole House Audio:

1. Every (X) interval, initiate the following
* All announcements should be directed over Nuvo Grand Concerto System

a. Announce: Good [Morning/Afternoon/Evening] - Based on time of day
b. Announce: Welcome to the 2007 Parade Of Homes. You are touring 111 Mockingbird Lane
c. Announce: The time is now: [Time Of Day]
d. Announce: Home Automation can offer greater comfort, improved safety and energy efficiency. Please note a brief demonstration of Home Automation Available Today .... First; allow me to adjust the shades.

2. Close Shades

3. [If any door/window open]
a. Announce: Currently, the following doors or windows are unsecured:
Set x = [number of secured zones]
[Repeat until x = 0
If Zone(x) = Open:
Announce [Zone(x)] is currently unsecured
x=(x-1)
End]

4. Announce: Current Temperature is [Weather Channel Current Temp] degrees
5. Announce: If Rain were in the forecast, Watering would be suspended
6. Announce: Finally, if you would direct your attention to the patio fans. On the patio, the temperature is currently
[Patio Sensor] degrees. I will activate the patio fans.
7. Activate Patio Fan1
8. Activate Patio Fan2

9. Announce: This completes our brief demonstration of the current possibilities of Home Automation. To get more
information pick up a brochure at the Kitchen Peninsula.

[Ongoing announcement of secure/not secure state changes of security zones:
If Security Zone(x) Changes state
Announce: Zone(x) is now [Secure/Un Secured]
 
So, you're doing a demo. The nice thing about demo's is that they aren't real. My thought:

1) Elk has plenty of vocabulary, but not that much.
2) Burn a CD (or use an MP3) for words that Elk can't speak or for long, non-parameterized sounds. eg: Track 1 is "Home automation can offer ..." Track 2 is "This completes our brief demonstration..."
-- When necessary, just have the Audio system play the required track.
3) Elk speaker output to whole-house audio input. Elk controls which source the whole-hosue audio is playing (eg: Elk Speaker or CD track)
 
The short answer, because I'm tired, is the Elk can only speak the words in its built in vocabulary. In order to speak other things like "Welcome to the 2007 parade of homes..." you would either have to do custom voice slots, or add on other equipment to download .wav files from a pc so the Elk could call it. If you have alot of custom or variable data, perhaps you are better off using a pc and TTS. As far as the Nuvo GC, you should be able to play these thru the paging input (Source 6). I should have a better feel for how well that works in a few weeks.
 
Thanks Guys for the feedback thus far. Looks like I will have to dust off my 1990's (T)ext (T)o (S)peech programming skills. This may change what device is the source to resolve dynamic parameters (e. g. TIme of Day, Current Temp) and as such only use the ELK as a Command/Control element. I look forward to more feedback and will post my final solution here once it is complete.
 
I am working on a program for the ELK Demo House that does pretty much what you want. The program runs on a PC using XML files and sends commands to speak .WAV files and sends ASCII commands to the M1 to control lights, blinds, etc. The .WAV file output can be directed to any audio system.

We plan to make the program available when it is finished.
 
Now that I'm more awake... You have several possible options as outlined above - it just really depends on what you are trying to accomplish, how much time, effort and expense you want to invest and what is your return? You can do all the basic stuff as-is in the Elk, as far as Good Morning, temp (not from weather channel), zones, etc. For the fancier words you either need to do TTS or some external .wav or mp3s as mentioned in previous posts. If the demo is going to be totally static and your audience will be doing similar, then the fixed file approach is ok. Imho, you will have alot more flexibility using TTS because if you want to change or add anything, its as easy as typing the word. You could even pass info from the Elk on to another system so all the speech is the same.

Right now my system is Elk and CQC. I have all the basic zone messages, alarms, etc coming from Elk. Caller ID and any other type of messages come from the TTS in CQC using the NeoSpeech Kate voice. At some point I may look at redirecting the Elk messages to CQC and have them all Kate. I think others are looking at this now. I have a Grand Concerto on order and my plan is to take the CQC PC output and the Elk output (converted to line level) and put them into an inexpensive mixer, then into the GC source six. I will control the paging zones, volumes, etc via CQC.

Of course you can use other less expensive software like Homeseer if all you want is TTS for Elk and don't care about the 'full system' (touch screens, music, etc).
 
Thank you guys very much!!!
The NeoSpeech Site is exactly what I was looking for. I will leverage
CQC to drive the dynamic info and create separate .wave files. Also, I have finalized my demo message. If you would like to hear it, go to NeoSpeech(Thanks Steve) and insert the following. We are going with "PAUL" for voice. (Note: All items in Red will be pulled in as parameters and the complete text will be broken into separate files which will follow ELK based actions. By the way, the wife suggested "Jeeves...")

Good Afternoon.
My name is Jeeves.
Welcome to the 2007 Parade Of Homes.
You are touring 100 Mockingbird.
The current time is 7:19.
Home Automation can offer greater comfort, improved safety and energy efficiency.
Please note a brief demonstration of Home Automation Available Today.
First; allow me to adjust the shades.
Much better.
.
We are having another sunny day here in Egypt.
However, if Rain were in the forecast, your drip systems would be automatically cancelled for today.
Now; if you would direct your attention to the patio fans.
On the patio, the temperature is currently 48 degrees.
I will now activate the patio fans.
These are just a few examples of Home Automation available today.
With several options to choose from, Home Automation can be affordably tailored to meet your specific needs.
To get more information, pick up a brochure at the Kitchen Peninsula.
 
Hey WayneW; Thanks for the reply. I am gonna check out CQC to create canned text files to feed into NeoSpeech before I invest in the ELK voice modules. But again... thanks dude.

- Ed
 
Steve said:
I have a Grand Concerto on order and my plan is to take the CQC PC output and the Elk output (converted to line level) and put them into an inexpensive mixer, then into the GC source six. I will control the paging zones, volumes, etc via CQC.
I've been looking for an inexpensive mixer, do you have one in mind?
 
If you need any help setting up CQC to do this, stop by the chatroom (or forum, obviously). We've even got a gotomeeting account that we can use at will to help, just used it tonight to debug some Insteon issues someone was having.
 
Ed Nelson said:
Hey WayneW; Thanks for the reply. I am gonna check out CQC to create canned text files to feed into NeoSpeech before I invest in the ELK voice modules. But again... thanks dude.

- Ed
Ed,

Inasmuch as I use and love CQC myself, I think it is waaaay overkill to just create .wav files. You should be able to do that with just the OS and maybe a freeware app. And the Elk specific modules are also going to be alot more inexpensive than CQC. Of course if you are planning on building custom user interfaces at some point, then by all means look at CQC.
 
johnnynine said:
Steve said:
I have a Grand Concerto on order and my plan is to take the CQC PC output and the Elk output (converted to line level) and put them into an inexpensive mixer, then into the GC source six. I will control the paging zones, volumes, etc via CQC.
I've been looking for an inexpensive mixer, do you have one in mind?
No, not yet. But that is coming up shortly on my list. I was also toying with the idea of just using a plain Y-cable. After all, there really is no such thing as mixing announcements, if they talk at the same time it is garbage anyway.
 
I believe NeoSpeech comes with tools to let you generate those TTS based wav files, but I would have to find my CD again to confirm this.
 
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