Command to stop announcement

Home Automation Integration
1

Hi,

I am using my AmpliPi to play various MP3s when my alarm system is armed, disarmed, or triggered.

I want to play a subtle “chirp” when the alarm is first armed and the exit delay is counting down, so you have an audible confirmation the alarm is arming itself. Likewise when you come home and trip the alarm, I want the same “chirp” to play while the entry delay is counting down, prior to sounding the full scale alarm siren. This alerts the person entering the house that the alarm is set and they need to disarm or get out!

I have a 60 second MP3 which plays a repeating “chirp” and I can trigger this to be played throughout the house via the AmpliPi when the alarm is armed or tripped. However I want the chirp to stop when the exit/entry delays expire, or someone disarms the alarm.

I am able to trap all these events from my alarm system, but I can’t find a way to stop a playing announcement on the AmpliPi. Is this possible? And if not, is it something that could be added?

I realise it is probably related to Announcement api calls - #2 by linknum23.

Hoping someone has already figured this out or has a clever suggestion!

Cheers,
Ben

2

Something like this will have to wait until we make an asynchronous version of the announcement/PA interface. Make announcements asynchronous · Issue #421 · micro-nova/AmpliPi · GitHub

You may be able to abuse the interface to make this work thouugh. If you knew which source was doing the announcing (default source id is 3) you could probable set that sources input to “” and it might stop the announcement.

curl -X PATCH "http://amplipi.local/api/sources/3" \
 -H "Accept: application/json" \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
 -d '{"input":""}'

Try it out and see it if works for you.

3

I am also struggling with this ad need more refined way of doing announcements. Right now it’s a patch. In a idéal situation the Amplipi would save current config volumes sources etc pause send an ack then play the sound send ack then restore and in the mean time keep track also to changes made while it’s doing that like if the user changes volume or muting or stopping while in the process of making the announcement. Also maybe a more interesting second option would be to lower the volume of what is playing even if it’s not playing and superpose the announcement over it with a set volume via api. Anyways says this out load seems alot of work but would make the whole amp more automation friendly. I am not an expert in python or any language for that matter but I made a script to do the queue management already for openhab in JavaScript still trying to decipher how the volumes muting is managed. Maybe I will try also the lms …

4

I tested your method of “abuse” and it appears to be working. Will implement this in my NodeRED flows and see how it works out. Thanks for the tip!

1 Like
5

I understand. We definitely need to implement an asynchronous version of announcements that can handle some of these cases. We will try to make this a priority soon.

1 Like