Chime TTS is a custom Home Assistant integration that eliminates the audio lag between playing a chime/notification sound effect before a TTS audio notification.
Home Assistant's Text-To-Speech (TTS) audio messages are a great way to provide real-time updates, but by the time you hear a message playing you've missed the start of the message! š
Adding a notification chime before the TTS makes sense, but in practice this introduces a delay between the two caused by the networking latency of cloud TTS platforms, audio processing, and a delay before playback begins on speakers.
Chime TTS solves this issue by stitching these audio files together as a single file locally on your Home Assistant device, and played 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' and 'chime_tts.say_url' services 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%.
- Multiple TTS Platforms in the same message: Generate TTS from multiple TTS platforms within the same audio announcement
- Configurable delay: Set custom delays between audio and TTS.
- Configurable overlay: Set custom overlay durations for 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 through the configuration page, located at:
Settings --> Devices & services --> Chime TTS --> CONFIGURE
| 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 |
| Downloaded Chimes Folder | Chime MP3 Folder - Path to the local folder where downloaded chime mp3 files are saved. | /media/sounds/temp/chime_tts/ |
| 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/ |
| Custom Chimes | Add the full file paths to your own custom chime audio files. Once added, you can select your custom chimes form the drop-down list UI in the chime_tts.say and chime_tts.say_url services. |
None |
For questions, suggestions, and community discussion about Chime TTS, visit our Community Forum.
