Continue Discussion 74 replies
October 2024

baudneo

Really appreciate you guys asking and being transparent.

October 2024

Lakini

Does this specifically improve the detection of “Okay Nabu”, or does the processing of the collected recordings allow for an “abstraction” to (potentially) improve the detection of self-chosen wakewords as well? (“This is how an “a”-sound changes when people are not talking directly to a microphone”, “This is how vowels get affected by background noise”, …)

And kind of related: is there a blogpost or a video somewhere to better understand the decision criteria that resulted in “Okay Nabu”?

2 replies
October 2024

dahamsta

I haven’t really been keeping up with the voice assistant, but I thought the wake word was going to be configurable. I was hoping to be able to say “ok [house]”. Is that not the case?

1 reply
October 2024

netmikey

Awesome, I’m always glad to help.

Quick feedback though: please let us listen to the recordings before submitting them. (Just one example: Sometimes my webcam mic has issues and I’d like to make sure not to transmit white noise or silence instead of what you guys were asking for.)

October 2024

Nick4 Regular

Glad to help: I just donated some free time and my voice!

October 2024

Mahko_Mahko

Thanks for asking.

A small and easy thing to give back.

October 2024

Hedda

Could there be an option to contribute anonymously? I like to contribute, but …

They say AI can now clone your voice with just 3-seconds of recording.

3 replies
October 2024

Hedda

FYI, indirectly asked the question recently when requested “Hey Assist” (same for “Home Assistant”) as additional default wake words included by default, so far only got an incomplete answer on that from Nabu Casa’s Mike Hansen here → [REQUEST] Official 'Okay Assist' and 'Hey Assist' included as wake words by default for ESPHome and Home Assistant? · Issue #11 · esphome/micro-wake-word-models · GitHub

PS: Also see this other related request → Official 'Home Assistant' wake word · Issue #8 · esphome/micro-wake-word-models · GitHub

1 reply
October 2024

Nick4 Regular

How would ‘they’ (abusers) link that voice to the real identity behind hedda?
There are so many voices that can be used from YT vids that are more interesting then these snippets from a virtual person with a nickname.

1 reply
October 2024

Hedda

Maybe not, still, I guess it could not hurt if the data was anonymized before it was published as public domain.

October 2024 ▶ Hedda

sparkydave Know-it-All

Don’t forget, you are only saying 2 specific (and short) words. I don’t think that’s enough to clone you voice.

October 2024

sparkydave Know-it-All

Hopefully this will improve it’s ability to understand us Aussies. :laughing:

October 2024

tobol

Sorry, but this wake word isn’t gonna succeed. Nabu isn’t brand that people want to mention dozens of times every day. I won’t put my 2c into making it one. I want some generic term like “computer”, “house”. Alternatively “Alfred” or “Jarvis” (so I can feel like a batman or iron man). I don’t want to explain to my guests what “nabu” means.

4 replies
October 2024

sparkydave Know-it-All

All of which is already possible.

2 replies
October 2024 ▶ tobol

Nick4 Regular

Since you’re seem to be using HA for some time, you might know that you get a lot of freedom to set up your system the way you want.
Helping with this request will not imply that you have to use that wakeword in the future and I guess they are asking to use the same words since that’s probably the best way to train this.

October 2024 ▶ sparkydave

Lakini

It is, but as long as it’s not clear if this is an effort to specifically improve this one wake word, or if this helps with setting up any kind of wake word as well, then i see it as valuable feedback when people see reasons why “okay nabu” might from a “usability” perspective not the best choice.

October 2024

Hedda

@synesthesiam Can I suggest that you take this opportunity to also ask the same people to also say "Home Assistant", “Okey Assist”, and “Okey Jarvis” to help train such models as well so they could be included as alternative models for optional wake words than any user can chance to without too much effort?

By popular demand, it would be awesome if you could include these too as optional standards by default:

As requested in repo for community Home Assistant Wake Word Collection (for openWakeWord):

PS: Don’t think it is a good idea to include “Alexa” or “Siri” due to possible copyright infringement concerns.

October 2024

donburch888

Do you think “Alexa” and “Siri” were in response to millions of people already begging to say these names ? The brand recognition came from the names being used.

A name/word that will not be used in ordinary conversation is desirable. While talking to “computer” is popular (especially for Trekers), “Computer” or “House” would create too many false positives in many homes (especially while TV/radio news is in the background). In fact existing brand recognition would be a problem as it increases the chance of false positives.

I do agree with Hedda that Assist should provide a choice of several well-developed wake words, though I suggest a bit more discussion on which phrases would be best.

1 reply
October 2024

pove

I tried several options in my m5 Atom Echo. Sadly, the only wake word my family remember (specially kids) is “Alexa”. :weary:

They use it in other kids houses and in my fathers in law’s.

October 2024

Hedda

The point is that many of us Home Assistant entusiasts want ”Home Assistant” to become well known.

We want “Home Assistant” to become a household name and become a brand people recognise.

We want to use “Home Assistant” as the wake word when others visit out homes so we can show it off.

We do not want to say “Hey Nabu”. Nabu is not the project we love.

Nabu Casa is the company that many Home Assistant developers work, but “Nabu” does not represent all Home Assistant developers or the Home Assistant as a whole. Nabu still only represent the company Nabu Casa.

Why not instead use “Okay Assist” and “Hey Assist” as wake words if “Home Assistant” is not unique?

Here with “Assist” I am referring to Home Assistant’s Assist for default conversation agent standard Assist pipeline in Home Assistant:

The integration is also called Assist Satellite

and so is the Assist satellite entity

After all, Home Assistant’s official voice assistant is called “Assist”, and there are even official logos and branding for that name.

Would be great with option to set simply ‘Home Assistant’ as default wake word as a way to show off and help add brand recognition for Home Assistant.

Even on Nabu Casa’s website it says that “Assist” is the official name that the voice assistant, so makes no sence “Nabu” being default?

image

Assist is also what is described on the main Home Assistant webpage:

Are there any reason why not included “Home Assistant” as a standard wakeword phrase by default?

October 2024

synesthesiam

Just to highlight, there are several microWakeWord options currently available (Okay Nabu, Hey Jarvis, Hey Mycroft), with more coming. We want to use the Wake Word Collective tool to improve other wake words eventually; it just takes time and lots of samples to train good models. Trust us, this is just the start!

We are also interested in allowing language communities to pick wake words that work for them and build models around those. Keep an eye on our socials for when we open the tool for other wake words.

For those interested in making their own wake word, it is possible today with microWakeWord but requires a good GPU and expertise to tune it correctly. We think microWakeWord is the best option for fast on-device waking, but if you really want to make your own wake word it’s possible with openWakeWord (which doesn’t run on-device, but instead is run on your Home Assistant OS) Create your own wake word - Home Assistant


Answering questions that have been asked above (paraphrasing):

Why “Okay Nabu” and not “Hey Home Assistant” or something else?

Ideally, a wake word should not be something you expect to hear often in conversation by people in the home or via media (music, TV). “Nabu” is a fairly unique word, as opposed to “home”, “assistant”, and “assist”. The microWakeWord models are performing really well, and we like “Okay Nabu” :slightly_smiling_face:

In time, I expect the training process for microWakeWord to be simplified and for a community collection of wake words to start forming like openWakeWord has.

Does this just improve “Okay Nabu” or also future wake words?

For now, mostly just “Okay Nabu”. However, any audio data for one wake word can be used as “negative” samples for a different one, so it helps other wake words in that sense.

Keep in mind too that this data will be made publicly available under a CC0 license, so it will hopefully help in the development of future wake word systems. This is similar to how we’ve published our text-to-speech datasets in the hope that they will aid the development of future text-to-speech systems.

2 replies
October 2024 ▶ synesthesiam

templeton_nash

Hi @synesthesiam

I’ve used the above link to submit samples as I think it’s the least I can do to support a fantastic project.

But, I’d really like to be able to use something other than okay nabu in my production environment. I just can’t see my household members adopting it easily.

The problem I have is that I can’t get microWakeWord to accept anything other than okay nabu when I want to use hey jarvis

I select hey jarvis in the pipeline and I still have to use okay nabu

1 reply
October 2024 ▶ templeton_nash

synesthesiam

Thanks for contributing! Sorry for the confusion: the wake word selected in the pipeline is only for streaming wake word engines. Since microWakeWord is on-device, we have a different mechanism coming in the next release. We plan to adjust the pipeline dialog accordingly :+1:

2 replies
October 2024 ▶ synesthesiam

templeton_nash

Thanks, @synesthesiam . I’ll look forward to this.

October 2024 ▶ sparkydave

Fyrhtu

… On esp32 devices without a headache for novice users?
Currently, the “OK Nabu” wake word is simple to setup… And annoying.
If I could figure out how to litter my home with esp32 devices that would actually respond to “Computer,” I’d love it.

October 2024 ▶ synesthesiam

pove

I have this on Assist configuration:

And this on the m5 Atom Echo (flashed with esphome ready-made project for voice assistant):

I am not using microWakeWord? Am I streaming voice all time?

I’m confused.

Edit: I answer myself. I am not using microWakeWord. Ready-Made project for Voice Assistant is not using microWakeWord component.

October 2024 ▶ dahamsta

samuelthng

Yeah I’m really hoping for this, because “Nabu” happens to be a swear word where I’m from. :sob:

1 reply
October 2024

nickrout Solution Institution

As I read it, the data will also be available to commercial, closed source developers.

Although I’d rather be proved wrong.

1 reply
October 2024

Kiesel

Could you add the opportunity to also collect data for other wake words?

October 2024

JasonBSteele

So it doesn’t seem to be working for me. Even though I get the indicator in the address bar that is telling me the site is accessing my mic there is a red error box saying it can’t.

1 reply
October 2024

Jonah1970

I would love to help out but unfortunately my Voice Assistant has been borked since the last major espHome update and nothing I have tried will bring it back to life (even a clean build fails). Several people have reported the same issue but this has been closed by the dev’s.

2 replies
October 2024 ▶ Jonah1970

petro Great contributor

The issue is closed because it’s been fixed.

Have you read any of the comments on that issue? Your config is wrong (see your error):

  [mode] is an invalid option for [speaker.i2s_audio]. Did you mean [i2s_mode]?
  mode: mono

and 8 comments up from your config is the answer to fix the problem.

change it to read channel: mono and click SAVE

i.e. change

mode: mono
to
channel: mono

1 reply
October 2024 ▶ JasonBSteele

MrDarrenGriffin

Hi Jason,

I worked on the revamp of this site and would love to figure this issue out with you. Did you ever get it sorted in the end?

If not I would love to get to the bottom of it. If you could raise an issue on the GitHub repo, I will gladly help! Issues · OHF-Voice/wake-word-collective · GitHub

October 2024

sparkydave Know-it-All

Except you don’t need ESPhome to do this procedure…

October 2024 ▶ petro

Jonah1970

Thanks for the response @petro.

Yes, I have read through the comments and tried including the following to override what is included within the package but I still get the same error when attempting a clean build.

speaker:
  - platform: i2s_audio
    id: echo_speaker
    i2s_dout_pin: GPIO22
    dac_type: external
    channel: mono

I have also tried installing the project directly from Ready-Made Projects — ESPHome as suggested in another comment and this also fails.

The issue was closed on 19-Sep and scanning through the comments I count at least 7 people including myself who say that the problem persisted after this.

1 reply
October 2024 ▶ Jonah1970

petro Great contributor

All the comments point to the same error, people using an old configuration.

[mode] is an invalid option for [speaker.i2s_audio]. Did you mean [i2s_mode]?
mode: mono

Everyone that posted that “they got it working” is using channel: mono. The files contain channel: mono as well.

How are you applying this change? Your error in that issue specifically points to you using the wrong key mode: mono and mode: mono not present on any of the current m5stack-atom-echo files. Which means you’re doing something wrong to update the configuration. So, I urge you to try again.

If you have further questions, please create a new post in ESPHome, this blog is not a place for support. When you do create a post, make sure you show new logs and explain which example you decided to try. And remember, if you get the same error about mode: mono, you’ve done something wrong because those keys are not present in the example files.

1 reply
October 2024

stevemann

And that would be where?
(When Chevrolet introduces the Nova, no one told them that that means “no go” in Spanish.)

1 reply
October 2024 ▶ petro

Jonah1970

Ok I will progress this in the correct place, many thanks for the help and suggestions.

October 2024

Pkkrusty

My biggest issue with “OK Nabu” is the length. Alexa, Computer, Hey Google, all have three syllables. That’s 25% shorter than 4, and significantly easier to say. I’m surprised more people aren’t bothered by that.

1 reply
October 2024

kristofferR

Am I supposed to say “Okay Nabu”, “Okey Nabu” or “OK Nabu”? Those have totally different pronunciations in Norwegian/by Norwegians.

Should it be said as English with Norwegian pronunciation or as Norwegian?

1 reply
October 2024

MrDarrenGriffin

Good question. We had a few floating variations but have now ensured that the phrase we ask for is “Okay Nabu” in English.

October 2024 ▶ Pkkrusty

Lakini

And besides the length: i find it also kind of “bumpy” to pronounce. Not sure what the correct linguistic (?) term for it is, but something like the “usual suspects” wake words have a better “flow”. At least for me as a German pronouncing it in English.

October 2024

rct

Happy to help. Some more suggestions for those who are willing to contribute more time might be beneficial:

Thanks

1 reply
October 2024

rct

Two things that could be done to improve the web app for mobile

1 reply
October 2024

MrDarrenGriffin

I’d happily answer these for you.

Preferred recording device(s):
Any mobile device (all that you listed) using the built-in mic. Don’t use desktops or laptops (laptop mics can be really bad). Feel free to contribute from a range of devices you have in your home

Alternate microphones
I’d prefer if people kept to built-in mics. Bluetooth mics are usually designed for enhancing voice to sound clearer and closer to a device, we’re aiming for samples that come from various distances

Background noise
I spoke to Mike on our team about this. He said “Anything is fine as long as it’s not overwhelming the person speaking. Fans, etc. are fine, and work well for testing the robustness of the model.”

Hopefully this helps you (and others) a bit more

October 2024

MrDarrenGriffin

Great suggestions.

I have created 2 issues in the GitHub repo and will take a look at them when I get a moment.

The only problem I see with the latter one is that if we make an audible noise, we need to ensure it doesn’t get included in the recording via an echo in the room, for example. The first point however, is easily doable.

October 2024

craig59

I have found the Voice unable to recognise my Australian accent, and have given up tryuing to integrate it into HA. So anything that improves recognition is a good thing.

October 2024

SpencerDub

If these samples are human-reviewed, I hope the reviewer enjoys hearing my toddler say “Okay Nabu” in a couple of them. :laughing:

November 2024

gertst

I’m using the latest Chrome, on an up to date windows 11, but I got this:

It first asks for permission to use the mike, but once I accept, I got the above error “There was an issue accessing your microphone. Please check your browser permissions and try again”

I found out that my mike access was turned off in Windows settings. I did not even know of this setting… See screenshot below. Once I turned it on, all worked as inspected.

1 reply
November 2024

synesthesiam

Yes, the CC0 license doesn’t restrict the use of the data. I’m not worried about that personally, as I doubt many companies will find “okay nabu” samples to be commercially useful :smile:

2 replies
November 2024 ▶ gertst

MrDarrenGriffin

Hey @gertst, I’d love to look into this for you.

If you are able, could you either:

November 2024 ▶ synesthesiam

Merc

Judging by some of the comments on “okay nabu” in this thread, I think this is a fair asassment.

1 reply
November 2024 ▶ Merc

sparkydave Know-it-All

Yeah, I’d actually rather “Hey Bubu” so it seemed like a Flintstones reference

November 2024

nickrout Solution Institution

When you get sick of tripping over things in the dark you may want “Jaysus turn on the lights”

1 reply
November 2024 ▶ nickrout

Merc

A simple “let there be light” does the job in my kitchen. Well established and still working :joy:

November 2024 ▶ tobol

IanBJ

I agree with @tobol . I’d never choose to use “Okay Nabu”. I’d much rather use my own choice of wakeword(s).
MUCH better to ask for effort to improve the whole voice recognition environment across multiple words, languages and accents. That I’d happily support and contribute my time to. But “Okay Nabu” - no thanks.

I also agree with @Hedda that voice contributions, if being made public, should be truely anonymous.
Otherwise you’re going against the HA personal privacy principle in essence, even if you’ve asked and got permission.

November 2024

ut666

Appreciate all the hard work thats going into this. And I get it "Okay Nabu” is a distinct enough phrase for detection. But for the love of god, please lets drop this as the default intent. Especially with the rumored voice devices coming out. Its truly an awful choice, with all due respect :slight_smile:
And you guys just seem to be going down hard in the rabbit hole here to double down on this as the default choice.

November 2024

infinitebagel

It feels strange to me that the first wakeword to be crowd-sourced is one that is associated with the for-profit entity, rather than the Open Home Foundation or Home Assistant. It feels like the priority is being placed in the wrong place and it sends the wrong message.

1 reply
November 2024 ▶ infinitebagel

petro Great contributor

would you rather have “Okay Open Home Foundation” instead?

2 replies
November 2024 ▶ petro

carolinasnowbird

I’d rather have had a vote on it

November 2024

nickrout Solution Institution

@ut666 @carolinasnowbird @infinitebagel you guys should read the entire thread, in particular this post Help us make voice better in under a minute - #22 by synesthesiam

1 reply
November 2024 ▶ petro

nickrout Solution Institution

Personally I favour “hey f***wit, turn on the lights”

But I suspect I’ll have to train that one myself.

November 2024

nickrout Solution Institution

Until of course home assistant achieves world domination, and the commercial players want to emulate it. “Buy our product and get all the advantages of home assistant, plus these added features, on a simple monthly subscription”

November 2024 ▶ nickrout

carolinasnowbird

Oh damn that’s cool thank you!

November 2024

monoboy-hh

1st: big thank you for the efforts

FWIW: Nabu == Germany’s biggest and oldest NGO. Continuously present in media, I doubt German users want to call their HASS “Nabu” Wir über uns - NABU

+1 for custom wake words. No worries training it myself as it only has to listen to me and my family as opposed to a trillon different accents and dialects. In fact, I want HASS to only listen to me and my family … just my 2ct

2 replies
November 2024 ▶ monoboy-hh

Merc

I have no issue with Nabu, despite a German background.
I don’t understand the whole fuss anyhow.

1 reply
November 2024 ▶ Merc

Nick4 Regular

It’s a human thing (and seems to become even worse as we are ‘evolving’): complaining, criticizing, …
In this case also: they probably didn’t read the relevant postings…

November 2024 ▶ monoboy-hh

ShadowFist Regular

Calling your voice assistant with the same name as an environmental association is a boss move.

Both are looking out for the environment - one of them takes care of the nature around you, while the other takes care of the environment by making sure you’re not wasting electricity because you don’t want to get up to flip a switch :wink:

November 2024 ▶ stevemann

samuelthng

From a dialect we speak in Singapore (originates from China and Taiwan) called Hokkien.

November 2024

Hedda

What is the status on adding an all-in-one training notebook for microWakeWord (mWW) model training so that we can more easily can train our our own microWakeWord models?

PS: For the openWakeWord model training there is a fully scripted and automated Google Codelab notebook but I understand that might not work for microWakeWord (mWW) model training which takes longer and require more resources?

1 reply
November 2024 ▶ Hedda

NathanCu

Indeed thanks for pointing this out Hedda. I was not aware it’s a different wake word model. This has suddenly become a very high priority ask.

November 2024

Hedda

FYI, some/most posts that questioned the choice of default wake-word on official Home Assistant voice hardware where moved to a new thread seperating that discussion (though it still a very much on-topic here), see:

November 2024

pove

@synesthesiam, I think I understand it now! So microWakeWord already has “okay nabu”, “hey Jarvis” and “Alexa” models. But from the three, “okay nabu” has the worst false-accept/false-reject rate, so this is to have a dataset big enough to improve the model. Am I right?

If it’s that simple, I can see the benefit and the choiceability here. Thanks!

January 24

bbrendon

Hm. That web interface for training only seems to work if I’m in good range of my phone. If not, well, it doesn’t recognize me. Seems to me it would be more useful to collect less distinct phrases.