Get Home Assistant talking through Sonos speaker using Googles Text-To-Speech service

In our house we have different automations that use our Sonos speakers to say something. For example if Aurora (our daughter) opens her window, the speaker in the kitchen tells us. Our alarm also warns us if any intrusion is registred at night when we are sleeping.

To do this a TTS (Text-To-Speech) service is required. Home Assistant have integrations for different TTS services.

Setup TTS service

I have chosen Googles TTS (Text-To-Speech) service to convert text to speech. It’s quick and works quite good in Danish. It’s also the same voice used as on our Google Hubs, so I secure a look-a-like environment for our kids and my wife.

I have setup the service by adding the following line to my configuration.yaml:

tts: !include src/apps/tts.yaml

1	tts: !include src/apps/tts.yaml

Furthermore my src/apps/tts.yaml file contains the following:

- platform: google_translate
  language: "da"
  service_name: google_say
  cache: true
  cache_dir: /tmp/tts
  time_memory: 57600

- platform: google_translate

language: "da"

service_name: google_say

cache: true

cache_dir: /tmp/tts

time_memory: 57600

You can find more information in the Home Assistant documentation for the TTS integration.

Creating a “Sonos Say” script

We use our Sonos speakers a lot. We love music, so they are running almost the whole time playing our favorite music. This also means I had a challenge when wanting Home Assistant to talk to us. I don’t want the music to stop completely, and I don’t want the volume to change.

I searched the Home Assistant forums to look if someone else had the same challenge. I found a script created by Dominik Lenarczyk (find the post here) that does what I want, so I used it and modified it a little bit (mostly around the delays to make it fit).

With this script I can simply just call it with different variabels from my automations, and then it stops playing the current playlist, turns up the volume, speak my selected text, and then starts playing my playlist from where it stopped.

I created my script file in src/scripts/sonos_say_tts.yaml – it looks like this:

sonos_say:
  alias: "Sonos Say (TTS)"
  sequence:
    - service: sonos.snapshot
      data_template:
        entity_id: "{{ player }}"
    - service: media_player.media_stop
      data_template:
        entity_id: "{{ player }}"
    - delay:
        seconds: 1
    - service: media_player.volume_set
      data_template:
        entity_id: "{{ player }}"
      data:
        volume_level: "{{ volumelevel }}"
    - service: tts.google_say
      data_template:
        entity_id: "{{ player }}"
        message: "{{ message_to_say }}"
    - delay:
        seconds: 1
    - delay: >-
        {% set duration = state_attr(player, 'media_duration') %}
        {% if duration > 0 %}
          {% set duration = duration - 1 %}
        {% endif %}
        {% set seconds = duration % 60 %}
        {% set minutes = (duration / 60)|int % 60 %}
        {% set hours = (duration / 3600)|int %}
        {{ [hours, minutes, seconds]|join(':') }}
    - delay:
        milliseconds: 500
    - service: sonos.restore
      data_template:
        entity_id: "{{ player }}"

sonos_say:

alias: "Sonos Say (TTS)"

sequence:

- service: sonos.snapshot

data_template:

entity_id: "{{ player }}"

- service: media_player.media_stop

data_template:

entity_id: "{{ player }}"

- delay:

seconds: 1

- service: media_player.volume_set

data_template:

entity_id: "{{ player }}"

data:

volume_level: "{{ volumelevel }}"

- service: tts.google_say

data_template:

entity_id: "{{ player }}"

message: "{{ message_to_say }}"

- delay:

seconds: 1

- delay: >-

{% set duration = state_attr(player, 'media_duration') %}

{% if duration > 0 %}

{% set duration = duration - 1 %}

{% endif %}

{% set seconds = duration % 60 %}

{% set minutes = (duration / 60)|int % 60 %}

{% set hours = (duration / 3600)|int %}

- delay:

milliseconds: 500

- service: sonos.restore

data_template:

entity_id: "{{ player }}"

Using my script in an automation

As an example on how we use it, I show the YAML configuration / code for when Aurora opens her window.

- alias: "Auroras Room: When the windows opens"
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: binary_sensor.aurorasroom_window
      from: "off"
      to: "on"
  condition:
    - condition: state
      entity_id: input_boolean.childsafety
      state: "on"
  action:
    - service: script.turn_on
      entity_id: script.sonos_say
      data:
        variables:
          player: "media_player.kitchen_sonos_play3"
          message_to_say: "Auroras vindue er blevet åbnet."
          volumelevel: 0.6

- alias: "Auroras Room: When the windows opens"

trigger:

- platform: state

entity_id: binary_sensor.aurorasroom_window

from: "off"

to: "on"

condition:

- condition: state

entity_id: input_boolean.childsafety

state: "on"

action:

- service: script.turn_on

entity_id: script.sonos_say

data:

variables:

player: "media_player.kitchen_sonos_play3"

message_to_say: "Auroras vindue er blevet åbnet."

volumelevel: 0.6

This above automations uses our Sonos Play3 in our kitchen to say on danish that “Auroras windows has been opened”.

Try it out – it’s quite useful for a lot of different scenarios and automations, and the script make is quite easy to use again and again.

3 thoughts on “Get Home Assistant talking through Sonos speaker using Googles Text-To-Speech service”

James says:

April 16, 2023 at 08:46

This is super-useful – thanks for sharing!

Rob says:

September 18, 2023 at 05:47

Have you found a way to use this with more than one Sonos speaker grouped together? I have three different sonos players in the primary bedroom, for example. I would like the TTS announcement to play on all three, synchronized, not as three separate announcements.

1. kef says:
  
  September 18, 2023 at 06:08
  
  Hi Rob,
  
  I haven’t got that scenario, but I assume you can find the answer to your issue here:
  
  https://community.home-assistant.io/t/automation-play-radio-to-a-sonos-speaker-group/440662
  
  Hope it works 🙂
  
  Best regards,
  Kristian

Setup TTS service

Creating a “Sonos Say” script

Using my script in an automation

Share this post:

3 thoughts on “Get Home Assistant talking through Sonos speaker using Googles Text-To-Speech service”

Leave a Reply to James Cancel reply