LANnouncer

★★★★★ Smart companion A great companion to Smartthings.

★★★★★ Excellent addition to a SmartThings security system. I use it for chiming when a door is opened and to alarm (in addition to louder zigbee/z-wave sirens). I also use it to issue voice alerts about intrusions, AC turned off, and even to announce when I've arrived home--my kids like to swarm on me when I open the door. Setup is relatively easy but does require the SmartThings IDE and either some programming knowledge or the ability to follow directions very carefully. You can send commands to LANnouncer in many ways, such as using CORE, but I simply write my own scripts in the SmartThings IDE. I like this so much that I went ahead and donated $10 to the developer. Great work! Understandably, the developer does not make this app professionally, so in the year or more that I've used it I haven't seen added features or anything like that. But I know how much time it takes to update an app like this--I've done it myself--so I don't expect anything more than for it to keep working. And, in fact, it has always continued to work very reliably. One last thing: You need at least Android 5.0 lollipop for this to work. I bought a cheap Android tablet that I have mounted on the wall.

★★★★★ Takes a little work setting it up with Big Talker and Smartthings but definitely worth the effort. I had trouble setting it up initially because Bluhell was blocking me from adding my Smartthings hub. I have and old Tegra Note 7 tablet that announces when outside does open and close. It even works if the screen is not on just make sure the WiFi is set to stay on and don't doze the apps.

★★☆☆☆ The tool crashes if installed on a device with no Bluetooth, even though Bluetooth is not a requirement. The ADB log message is "java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.keybounce.lannouncer/com.keybounce.LANnouncer.ServiceActivity}: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'java.lang.String android.bluetooth.BluetoothAdapter.getName()' on a null object reference" I have the full stack trace if the developer is interested in fixing.

★★☆☆☆ Instructions are as clear as pig crap and do not seem to work or correspond with any options shown on the website. What a waste of my time, yours too if you try and use this.

★★☆☆☆ Have to restart the service frequently

★★☆☆☆ Can't get it to work. Keep getting an error 5, and since I can't find any error documentation it's impossible to know what to do. Sigh.