Im not sure if this is what would qualify for the voice assistant contest. I didnt even know about the contest until well after I started this.
I took a $15 Bluetooth speaker from Wal Mart and made it into a voice assistant. Total cost was under $30
It has a small 4ohm speaker that pairs nicely with the Max98357.
Youll have to remove the battery and a PCB board. This will make room for the components. The board that has the USB input will stay as it has a nice 5v output right on top. You can just plug a USB-C right into the side as designed.
Build Video:
It really looks nice. But I am a bit disappointed about the whole DIY requirements regarding making Assist into a speaker.
There are decent Bluetooth speakers with a built in microphone as well, like the Bose SoundLink Mini II. They can be used for phone calls, but HA is generally lacking any support for Bluetooth speakers and microphones.
Wouldn’t be easier if you could just pair a bluetooth speaker to HA and use it for Assist?
I agree, a bluetooth solution would be optimal. That would take someone much smarter than me to figure out.
That bose speaker is $150 though…You could make 5 of these for less than that.
Indeed, it is expensive. But that Mini speaker sounds like a concert hall.
When I first heard one playing music, I didn’t know where it is coming from until the owner of it showed me that it is his speaker. It has amazing sound. Reusing one if you own one would be great.
If you see it in a shop on display, just give it a try. Maybe with a 2001: A Space Odyssey Main Theme / Also Sprach Zarathustra from Richard Strauss. You will definitely understand immediately what I am talking about.
I own a Sony XRS-B100, that is 55 euros and it has nice sound and a microphone. Never tried to connect it to HA though… Wouldn’t know what is needed for that.
I may misunderstand your thoughts on this but being a Bluetooth speaker alone is not enough for defining a voice assistant because a voice assistant requires more than just the ability to output sound or listen with a mic.
And which part of that Home Assistant would not be able to do?
Now we are feeding the recording of the mic and the voice assistant’s output into a ESP32 to send it to Home Assistant. Why the voice from the mic cannot be directly processed on Home Assistant and directly transmitted through bluetooth?
Maybe you meant the LED feedback when it listens…
For me the question is: is it possible for HA to directly (through a auxiliary device) rread the audio coming from a Bluetooth microphone, and send audio to a Bluetooth speaker? If not, what would be needed to make that possible?
If that would be possible it might open up a lot of possibilities to create affordable high quality voice assistants. It would still require programming the actual voice assistant of course, but the hardware would be readily available.
You may be able to use the Assist Microphone addon if you can successfully pair the Bluetooth Speaker with whatever is running Home Assistant by selecting the input and output devices in the addon settings.
