Way to get more than 5 tones?

edgebinary · February 21, 2016, 5:30pm

I searched the forum on this topic before I made this post, and I know it was requested before. Is there any plan on adding a few more tones? 5 is nice, but 10 would be perfect.

I’m aware that there is a ‘Sounds’ option, but that seems to be a little buggy at the moment. (e.g.: I can add sounds, but not delete them. Once they are added, I lose TTS functionality, etc). I tried this on my S3 and S6, both had the same issue.

Thanks.

RichardTSchaefer · February 21, 2016, 6:17pm

You should be able to embed a sound in the middle of a message that is spoken with TTS

edgebinary · February 21, 2016, 11:07pm

Do you have a link for the syntax for that? I’m assuming I first need to upload the .mp3 or .wav file using the ‘Sounds’ selection on the Vera Alert App?

RichardTSchaefer · February 22, 2016, 6:15pm

This is called an earcon
From the docs:

The following are supported message string options:
{tone:N} where N is 1 thru 5. Specifies the alert level 1 thru 5 respectively.
For backwards compatibility we still support the plain string: AlertToneN
{tone:tts} indicates the notification message should be spoken.
{tone:none} indicates the notification is only to be stored in db. No Sound, No TTS … can’t be overridden.
<> If XXX is a number than embed a pause of XXX milliseconds in the TTS message. Otherwise it is take and an Earcon name and the associated earcon is played at this point in the message.
{timestamp} to use the time stamp that the notification was sent, as opposed to the timestamp when the notification was received on the Android client.
{BGColor:XXXX} where XXXX can be one of the named colors or xRRGGBB hex encoding for the background color. This only affects the background color of the Alert Level field.
{FGColor:XXXX} same encoding as BGColor. This specifies the foreground color for the message. All fields are affected.
{Picture(DeviceID)} Send a snapshot of the camera identified by DeviceID and associate it with the alert.
{Video(DeviceID,NumSeconds)} Send a short video clip of the camera identified by DeviceID and associate it with the alert.
Note you can run Vera out of memory quickly … I recommend you keep these short.
{YourTag:YourTagValue} a user defined tag. Can be used to store additional information with the message. If you have multiple Veras, you can use this to indicate which Vera sent the notification message. You can also sort by these tag fields and values.

edgebinary · February 26, 2016, 2:10pm

Thank you, Richard.

I have read that page very closely, but I have an unfortunate combination of bad luck and possessing the IQ of a grapefruit.

I’ve tried this:
<> Welcome home, X.

And this:
Blah blah blah <> Welcome home, X.

Where ‘SoundName1’ would be a sound I’ve uploaded to the VeraAlerts phone app and renamed it to that variable name.
I couldn’t get this working.

Also, to complicate matters, once I’ve uploaded a sound and done this, it no longer does TTS. It just plays my default tone. I’ve noticed (on two different devices) that I then can’t delete any sound files I’ve uploaded within the app. I had to reset the app itself from application manager to return to a normal state.