Sep 27, 2020
Using Home Assistant TTS to Announce Your Arrival
The best thing about having smart speakers plumbed into your Home Automation ecosystem, is the ability to send messages depending on a trigger or situation. One thing that I think is fantastic, is announcing to the family that I’m home once I pull into the driveway. In this guide, we’ll look at creating an Automation that triggers on presence detection and then activates a TTS Script.
Getting Started
Previously, we looked at implementing Presence Tracking using NMAP, and it’s key that you have Presence Tracking set up using that, or an alternative method.
As we’re using an Automation to kick-off a Script, it makes sense to create the Script first (even though it’s counter-intuitive). The Script is simple, first we’re identifying the media_player to broadcast to (or all media players), and then using the TTS service to send the message over the speakers. Remember to give your Script a clear and meaningful name – I’ve called mine announce_arrival_marc.
Here is what this look like in YAML:
Making It Work
Now that we have a useful script, we can weave it into our Automation. First create the Automation with a helpful name and description. Then it’s time to set the Trigger – and we’ll use our Device Tracker’s status to set off the actions.
For the sequence, it’s a simple as using the script.turn_on service to activate our Announce Script.
This is what it looks like in YAML:
