Speak word

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

This is useful when you want an automation to say a single word out loud, or to build up a spoken message one word at a time.

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 word 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 word.
6. Enter the Word 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_word. A basic example looks like this:

action: elkm1.speak_word
data:
  number: 142

This speaks word number 142 on the panel.

Options in YAML

Good to know

• The list of available words 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 phrase: Speaks a predefined phrase on an Elk-M1 panel.

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