Control4 Text to Speech
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This Text to Speech driver lets you send announcements around your Control4 system with a few taps!
You can use our built in web interface to type your own message, use our Control4 “Listen” service to type in a message right from your Control4 app, or use Composer programming to execute announcements when you want!
This driver also comes with the ability to play an announcement in different rooms or groups of rooms (See Multi Room Support tab). You can also use the web interface to submit voice messages from any modern browser as announcements.
- Media service integration
- Submit announcements to different rooms (Multi Room Support)
- Voice Messages (PA system)
- Web interface
- Use variables in programming
- Inject variables within typed text
- Google Cloud & VoiceRSS Text to Speech Engines
- Modify speed & language for TTS Engines
- %date% and %time% values manipulated
- Last message variable
- Simple Mode
Composer 2.10+ required. OS3 Compatible.
This driver uses the official VoiceRSS and Google Cloud Text to Speech API.
You can view a PDF of the driver documentation using the button below.
View Documentation PDFYou can view our Google Cloud Key Step by Step guide by using the button below.
Google cloud key step by step setup guideSetup
- Install BlackWire Driver Manager and set it up as per the documentation.
- Add this driver to your project and insert your BlackWire License key to activate the driver.
- Setup an API key for a Text to Speech Engine (see below for comparisons) and select which one you are using in the driver properties after entering the API key.
- Go to Agents – Announcements and create a new announcement with the rooms you want the announcement to play in.
- Check Play Audio File and for the audio file select the audio file which is shown in the driver properties.
- Go to Programming and find the driver event for Audio File Updated. When this event occurs, execute the announcement you just created.
If you want to make use of the custom buttons to allow for multi room support look at the Multi Room Support section in this documentation file.
Starting with Version 4, this driver has built in Multi Room Support for announcements sent via the media service. Version 7 added support for using these custom buttons via the web interface and composer programming actions.
Please refer to our documentation to learn more about this feature.
Example Custom Button Properties
Example Programming
Each of the above announcements must be set to play the audio file shown in the driver properties.
Result
Use Cases
You can make use of our Google Calendar driver or Outlook Calendar driver to announce events X minutes before they start. The driver comes with the ability to trigger a Control4 programming event X minutes before an event starts. You can then use variables included with the driver to announce the title of an event before it occurs.
First you need to get the Proxy ID of the Calendar driver, which you can do by hovering over it in System Design.
In this case, the Proxy ID is 1210. You should then go to the “Event Notification” event under the Calendar programming events. You can use the NOTIFIED_EVENT_ variables to get information about the event you are being notified about and then use this information in a Text to Speech announcement using the Concatenate Variable to Text to Speech programming command.
Your final programming for the “Event Notification” may look like:
You can use the custom buttons support to create a button which sends out a custom push notification.
Create a notification and use the Add Variable button to show the Last Message variable for the TTS driver.
In the TTS programming for “When Announcement Audio Has Been Updated” you can conditionally check the custom button type.
BlackWire Driver Manager
This driver requires BlackWire Driver Manager and OS 2.10+ to work.
Download Link
Release Notes
- Happy 2020!
- Minor Updates
- Fix bug where on navigators, if a custom button had a & sign in it then the screen wouldn't load.
- Optimised loading for navigator screens
- Navigator announcement executed popup improved
- BlackWire Driver Manager is now required for better licensing and to allow for auto updates
- Added ability to announce voice messages through all modern browsers
- Added a Simple Mode property for simplifying the Media Service user interface
- Last Announcement Type variable added - value will either be Text or Voice
Be sure to read the documentation when installing this version to ensure you setup licensing correctly.
Version 7 - (July 07, 2019)- Updated documentation
- Added multi room support to web interface and composer programming actions
- Fixes versioning issue
- Added Multi Room Support
- Added voice gender option for Google Cloud TTS Engine
- Added ability to inject variables into typed text with { ProxyID::Variable Name } syntax
- Fixed icon issue with media service
- Better error handling for invalid Google Cloud API Key
- Added settings screen to media service
- Added settings page on web interface
- Updated documentation
Initial release
We have been Control4 dealers for over 10 years and have now started driver development after working with customers who seemed to be after the same sort of functionality which wasn’t available.