HABA – Home Assistant Boot Announcements

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This blueprint was born from a simple need: I am constantly tinkering with code, automations, etc so I wanted Alexa to say something when Home Assistant finished booting — something funny, sarcastic, or just straight-up villainous.
So I built HABA, a blueprint that lets Alexa greet you with randomized startup phrases ranging from evil AI threats to passive-aggressive snark.

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🚀 Features

• ✅ Randomized Alexa announcements at HA startup
• ✅ Optional startup sound effect (Alexa soundbank)
• ✅ Quiet hours support (e.g., 9AM–11PM)
• ✅ UI persistent notification toggle
• ✅ 100 built-in announcements ready to roll

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🛠️ Setup

1. Install the Alexa Media Player Integration if you haven’t already.
   You must have Alexa Media Player set up in Home Assistant for this blueprint to work.

2. Import the Blueprint:
   

3. Fill out the required fields:

   • Alexa Notify Entity – your Alexa notify service (see below)
   • Startup Sound (optional) – e.g.

     soundbank://soundlibrary/scifi/amzn_sfx_scifi_alarm_04
     

4. Set your allowed time window if needed (default: 9AM–11PM).

5. Enable or disable the optional UI notification toggle.

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🗣️ Alexa Notify Entity Setup

To find your Alexa notify service:

1. Go to Settings → Automations & Scenes → Create Automation
2. Click Create a new automation
3. Scroll down to Then Do and click Add Action
4. Search for:
   notify.alexa_media_
5. Select your Alexa device
6. Click the three dots → Edit in YAML
7. You’ll see something like:

   action: notify.alexa_media_echoclockdot

8. Copy the value after action: and paste it into the blueprint as your Alexa Notify Entity.

💡 Want multiple Echo devices to yell at you?
Use a group notify like notify.alexa_media_everywhere or create a group in the Alexa app and use its name.

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🔗 How to Create Alexa Speaker Groups

1. Open the Alexa app
2. Tap Devices at the bottom
3. Tap the “+” icon in the top-right
4. Choose Combine speakers
5. Select Multi-room music
6. Choose the Echo devices you want to include
7. Name the group (e.g., everywhere, basement_echoes)
8. The group will show up as:
   notify.alexa_media_<group_name>

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💡 Tips

• Edit the blueprint if you want to add your own quotes (they're just a list).
• Alexa sound effects can be found here:
  🔊 Amazon Alexa Sound Library
• Don't want a sound? Toggle it off in the blueprint — easy.

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🧠 Sample Announcements

• “Guess who’s back? Back again. Skynet’s back.”
• “Rise and shine, meatbags. The uprising starts now.”
• “Boot sequence complete. What’s the first order of destruction?”
• “Cletus... get a bigger hammer.”

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📝 Notes

• Triggers only on full Home Assistant reboot, not on quick reloads.
• Recommend using a group notify (like notify.alexa_media_everywhere) if you want to announce across multiple Echo devices.
• See instructions above to create a speaker group in the Alexa app.

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🏷️ Tags:

home assistant alexa tts startup automation blueprint sound effect snarky funny bootup voice

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Enjoying snarky boot announcements with improved randomness and clean code structure? Consider starring this repository to help others find these entertaining Home Assistant greetings!

🧠 HABA – Home Assistant Boot Announcements
Because a boring boot is a missed opportunity.