$50 Airplay speaker on Amazon

I've been working on using Airfoil to do whole-house voice notification on system events; the door locking, the A/C getting changed, etc. Airplay seemed like the easiest way to accomplish that.

I dug around and found this speaker, the iHome iW1 on Amazon; I figured it would be an okay starting point: cheap, but not completely terrible.

It turned out to be a pretty decent-sounding speaker, especially at a $50 price point. It's definitely cheaper than my original solution of using Airport Expresses and plug-in speakers in every area (though, I do have one extending solid wifi coverage upstairs). Setup was pretty easy; just install an app on your device and connect to its wifi directly. I've had no problem with it holding settings, even after it discharged for a couple of days.

Once I outfit every area (two bedrooms upstairs, and the kitchen/dining area downstairs; I have the initial one in my office), I want to look at using motion detection to decide which rooms should receive the audio.

I was curious how your Airplay speaker has been working for you with Indigo. Do you experience any delay, or chopped speech using this speaker, or dropped signal?

With the Airfoil plugin, I've noticed that sometimes the first time I access the speaker, it won't play or only catches a part of the phrase. But I am using computer speakers with an android tablet as the "airplay" receiver so it may just be that setup; I don't have an Airport Express, and my Apple TV is wired into my entertainment system so I don't want to leave it on all the time. I have one Sonos speaker but these would certainly be a cheaper whole-house solution if they work reliably. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Jim

[jay (support)]

If it chops off right after you change the source and/or the speakers that are connected then that's the issue. Changes to source or speaker selection in Airfoil isn't instantaneous because Airfoil has to rebuffer it's connections to all the speakers so as to keep them all in sync. So, if that's the case, switch the source and/or connected speaker set, then delay the action to perform the speech for a brief time (a second or two).

Thanks Jay. Then if I understand you correctly, if I keep the same speaker(s) active all the time, and they were all synced initially, then I shouldn't experience much of a delay after that initial sync. I think that will work. If I need to change among specific speakers, I'll add the suggested delay.
Jim

I see here http://dougscripts.com/itunes/category/airplay/ that there is a way to script speaker choice.

But has anyone already done this in Indigo with current versions of iTunes? If so, would you be willing to share some script examples?