Readers will learn how to enable mFi alarm notifications (sound, notifications) on a Linux-based controller. If all goes well your mFi controller with speakers plugged in should say aloud rule names of your choice for an almost instant alert or notification. Currently I have this running on a 12.04 Ubuntu system. Below is done with a live terminal window or with SSH using PuTTY.
Step 1 install php5
sudo apt-get install php5
Step 2 install espeak
sudo apt-get install espeak
Step 3 Permit the PHP web server to use espeak (this adds webserver to audio group and restarts webserver)
sudo usermod -G audio www-data sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Step 4 Create a PHP script and save it in /var/www (for an example ) name it speak.php
The code needed , copy and paste.
<?php
system("espeak '".$_POST["rule"]."'");
?>
Step 5 Make or modify a rule and add a url post as an action.
Note: I have _: between ( Water Alert ) that tells Espeak to pause for a second or so between words.
If your php and espeak are installed on the same computer as the mFi controller you can also use 127.0.0.1 for the IP address.