I come from the EQMOD world and I used to be able to assign sounds to actions

For exemple: park/unpark or change mode (sideral, lunar, etc)

Is it possible to choose sound files and assign them to different actions in Kstars/Ekos ? If not, I would like to suggest this as a new feature.

On the funny side, I spent some time with my 5yrs old daughter to make a library of recording of her saying "unpark" "slewing" etc... It's always fun to hear when I am alone in the cold and dark night

Please List all the conditions which warrant a sound notifications.

The rational for voice notification in my case is that I sometime use a gamepad to operate the mount and beeing away from my laptop it is nice to have a confirmation that the correct command has been issued or that something has started or stopped. Also, I am, like everyone else, sometime quite busy reading charts or doing some visual activities that having sound as well is a plus.

Personally I would like to be able to get voice notification in these situation:

-> start of slew to target
-> arrived on target
-> change of tracking mode (sideral, lunar,etc)
-> parking/unparking
-> change of speed rate
-> RA/DEC inversion
-> device disconnection (lost communication)
-> change in filter wheel
-> autofocus starting
-> start/end of capture sequence
-> dome operation (roof opening/closing)

I can think of a lot more but I hope this will give you an idea of what I mean.

From the list of Ekos 2017 stuff, I started working on the easiest to implement: sound notifications. There are already many events registered but I added a few more today. I'm thinking of including a list of sound files that records a human voice with the action. So any ideas? I guess a female voice is usually more preferable in such situations? But we can also settle for male voice. It obviously needs to be clear, and licensed so that it can be distributed freely using an appropriate Creative Commons license. It needs to be submitted as OGG preferably.

Here are the list of phrases:
# Autofocus started
#. Autofocus complete
# Autofocus failed
# Alignment started
# Alignment complete
# Alignment failed
# Guiding Calibration complete
# Guiding Calibration failed
# Autoguiding started
# Autoguiding failed
# Capture Started
# Capture Complete
# Capture Failed
# Weather Warning
# Weather Alert
# Observatory Startup
# Observatory Shutdown
# Scheduler Aborted
# Slew Started
# Slew Completed
# Parking Mount
# Parking Mount Complete
# Mount unparked
# Parking Dome
# Parking Dome Complete or Dome Parked?
# Unparking dome
# Unparking dome complete

I would think that having both male and female voice and be able to choose would make sens for most people. But if this is too complicated, providing a basic sound library and be able to associate different sound to different actions would also be enough. People could then record their own voice as I did.

If there are some sound professionals and voice actors here, why not make this an event ? "Become The Voice Of EKOS" has a pretty ring to it. I would help bring awarness to the project and be fun and could be advertise on different forums. A vote would be held to choose from different submission and the winnner be credited in EKOS.

This isn't specifically about sound, but could probably be implemented along side the changes to be made for sound notifications relatively easily while you're at it.
One of my 2017 suggestions was to add UDP notifications. All of the same events you want implement sound notifications for would also be appropriate UDP messages. And the nice thing is any networked device can receive these alerts with easily available applications.

Notifications are already handled by the KDE system. I am thinking of not using any sound files at all but some sort of voice generation as well. There would be option to use sound files and can be configured by the user in KDE Notification Settings.