Assigning audible alerts among co-located appliances

A computer program product comprising a non-volatile computer readable medium and non-transitory program instructions embodied therein, the program instructions being configured to be executable by a processor to cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

• establishing network communication with a plurality of appliances over a local area network, wherein each appliance is a smart appliance including a processor, memory, a network interface, and a data storage device with capacity to store a plurality of soundfiles;
• accessing a sound palette including a plurality of soundfile groups, each soundfile group including a plurality of soundfiles;
• wherein each soundfile within the sound palette has a first common set of sound attributes;
• wherein, for each of the soundfile groups within the sound palette, each soundfile within the soundfile group has a second common set of sound attributes;
• wherein, for each of the soundfile groups within the sound palette, each soundfile within the soundfile group has a variation of the second common set of sound attributes that is unique among the plurality of soundfile groups within the sound palette;
• and
• wherein each soundfile within a soundfile group has a unique variation of a third common set of sound attributes;
• assigning, for each of the appliances, one of the soundfile groups to the appliance, wherein each soundfile group is assigned to only one appliance;
• assigning, for each of the assigned soundfile groups, one of the soundfiles of the soundfile group to an alert type, wherein each soundfile is assigned to only one alert type;
• and
• sending, for each of the appliances, the assigned soundfile group to the appliance with identification, for each soundfile within the assigned soundfile group, of the alert type to which the soundfile is assigned.