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UpstateMike
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| Posted: March 18 2006 at 10:16 | IP Logged
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I noticed recently that you can get a USB attached sound card device such as this one:
Turtle Beach Amigo
pretty cheaply and I was thinking that it might be a good way to do zoned announcements. If you had several of these connected and could designate which device(s) to use in playing a TTS message or wav file, you would effectively have zoned announcements. In theory you could even have the system speaking different things in different places at the same time.
Does this seem like something that could work?
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dhoward
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| Posted: March 19 2006 at 02:06 | IP Logged
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Mike,
It might work...but I would have to see if the Microsoft TTS has a way to choose the sound card that it uses. I believe that it only sends speech to the default sound card, but I will look into it.
Another way to do zoned TTS (very shortly) will be with the next DCC release. The Distributed Control Client will support TTS shortly and you'll be able to trigger TTS from within PowerHome. With multiple machines on a network, this should work nicely.
I'll do some studying and let you know.
Dave.
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UpstateMike
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| Posted: March 19 2006 at 11:53 | IP Logged
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After doing some more reading it looks like you can't do multiple sound cards very easily in a Microsoft OS because the device drivers usually don't allow for multiple instances of the same sound card hardware. Some people have got it working by mixing different brands of sound cards but that is not the reliable solid solution I was looking for.
DCC sounds cool but I'm not sure how many complete PCs I want to have running 24/7 to support core automation stuff. Maybe I should start researching some sort of small fanless, diskless, PC that could work as a DCC appliance.
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TonyNo
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| Posted: March 19 2006 at 17:16 | IP Logged
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Great news Dave! 
I plan on using the new DCC on my kids PC's as additional zones (I need to maintain them anyway). Also, I'll use it on my touch screen; instant addition of a foyer zone!
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dhoward
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| Posted: March 20 2006 at 02:04 | IP Logged
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Thats good news Tony. I'll be working on bringing the DCC up to date real soon and will keep you posted.
Dave.
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PowerHome Messageboard : PowerHome Feature Requests
Topic: Multiple Sound Card Support
