Speak phrase

The Speak phrase action plays one of the Elk-M1 panel’s built-in phrases through its voice output.

This is useful when you want an automation to announce something out loud, for example a spoken alert or a status message.

This action does not support targets. In the UI, you are not prompted to choose an area, device, entity, or label. If you have more than one Elk-M1 panel, use the Prefix option to choose which panel speaks.

Using this action from the user interface

If you prefer building automations and scripts visually, Home Assistant walks you through this action step by step. You pick what to target, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To speak a phrase from an automation or a script:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation or script, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. If you’re setting up a new automation, add a trigger in the When section. Scripts don’t need a trigger. They run when something else calls them.
4. In the Then do section, select Add action.
5. From the search box, search for and select Elk-M1 Control: Speak phrase.
6. Enter the Phrase number to speak. If you have more than one panel, also enter the Prefix.
7. Select Save.

Options in the UI

Using this action in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required.

In YAML, refer to this action as elkm1.speak_phrase. A basic example looks like this:

action: elkm1.speak_phrase
data:
  number: 42

This speaks phrase number 42 on the panel.

Options in YAML

Good to know

• The list of available phrases is defined in the ElkM1 ASCII Protocol documentation.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Open Developer tools > Actions, search for this action, fill in the fields, and select Perform action. You see what happens on your actual entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more] without writing a line of YAML.

Still stuck?

The Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the action you’re calling and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.

Related actions

These actions work well alongside this one:

• Speak word: Speaks a predefined word on an Elk-M1 panel.

• Alarm display message: Displays a text message on the keypads of an Elk-M1 area.