Speaking a sound at a specific time | Home Assistant | Page 1

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 2:41 AM

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How do I speak a sound at a specific time, such as when I have a calendar event coming up? I would prefer to use the text-to-speech feature in Home Assistant to generate the sound, rather than having to record it myself.

This is probably a super easy task with some YAML, but the UI is not at all obvious.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 4:11 AM

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what are you outputting to?

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 4:15 AM

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Voice PE

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 4:19 AM

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#

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something like that should do it

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 4:20 AM

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I managed to get that working with a trivial trigger (timer), but a more complex trigger (Google Calendar) doesn’t work.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 4:21 AM

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ah so its the trigger rather than the tts

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 4:21 AM

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It was the TTS before I figured out that I needed to select a device.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 4:22 AM

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you use the calandar trigger no?

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 4:22 AM

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Yes

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It appears that the calendar does not refresh very frequently and is often out of date by a few minutes.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 4:34 AM

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what is your actual use case here? are you using google calandar to trigger stuff rapidly?

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 4:36 AM

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I want the assistant to remind me whenever an event is about to happen, so that I don’t forget stuff or miss appointments.

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Also, it is far, far harder to test something if I can’t trigger it on demand. The message uses a custom template so triggering the event manually doesn’t work.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 4:42 AM

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can you show the yaml of your trigger?

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 4:59 AM

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alias: New automation
description: Calendar reminder
triggers:
  - trigger: calendar
    entity_id: 'calendar.<redacted>'
    event: start
    offset: "-0:15:0"
    id: Test 3
  - trigger: calendar
    entity_id: 'calendar.<redacted>'
    event: start
    offset: "-0:30:0"
    enabled: true
    id: Test 2
  - trigger: calendar
    entity_id: calendar.test_calendar
    event: start
    offset: "-0:0:0"
    enabled: true
    id: Test 1
actions:
  - action: assist_satellite.announce
    metadata: {}
    data:
      message: >-
        {% if True %}{{trigger.calendar_event.summary}}, described as
        {{trigger.calendar_event.description}}, {% if trigger.offset.seconds > 0
        -%} {{trigger.calendar_event.offset}}s in {{trigger.offset.seconds/60}}
        minutes {%- elif trigger.offset.seconds < 0 -%} {{trigger.event}}ed
        {{trigger.offset.seconds/60}} minutes ago {%- else -%}
        {{trigger.event}}s now {%- endif -%}{%else%} Testing testing testing!!!
        {%endif%}
    target:
      device_id: 3200fca8f520e20745f45d6560b7473c
mode: queued
max: 100

Is my template wrong?

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 5:09 AM

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can you see the traces: does the trigger fire but fail or does it not fire at all?

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 5:41 AM

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Does not fire

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Update: Trigger fires, but no trace.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 5:43 AM

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if it fires there should be something in the trace log

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should show if there are any errors

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 5:46 AM

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The UI for “this trigger fires” is displayed, but there are no trace logs.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 5:48 AM

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what shows when you open the traces for the automations

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 5:49 AM

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Only old events

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I do, however, get the attached error when restarting HA core.

📎 message.txt

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 5:51 AM

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oh thats odd

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i think the calandar triggers only scans new events every 15 minutes (or it did at one point) so if your test event is 2 minutes ahead it might not be gettring recognised correctly

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 5:53 AM

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What is the reason for this? Known limitation?

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 5:54 AM

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i do not know

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 5:54 AM

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I expected triggers to be fully event-driven, with a timer wheel (or similar) updated whenever the calendar is modified.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 5:57 AM

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its been quite a while since i did much with calandars and i dont really automate off them that much. it may be different now from the last time i looked at it tbh.

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 6:01 AM

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How likely is this to be a HA bug?

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 6:03 AM

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i am not sure, hopefully someone else can jump in that knows a little more then me

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 6:31 AM

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I got almost everything working, except for one thing: {{ trigger.calendar_event.seconds / 60}} renders as the number of seconds (wrong), not the number of minutes (correct). It seems the division is ignored.

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 6:33 AM

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{{ ((trigger.calendar_event.seconds|float) / 60) }}

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i am sure there is a better way of doing that but i cant think of it right now

runic parrot Mar 12, 2025, 6:38 AM

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Why the extra parentheses?

desert pelican Mar 12, 2025, 6:39 AM

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just habbit shouldnt need them

#Speaking a sound at a specific time