I had a old google home that upset me so much that I took a Hammer to it and destoryed it. I am looking for a replacement and I keep hearing about Home Assistant. So before I start the dive in I wanted to check with everyone to see if it will do the following.
I used to tell Google to turn off the tv or the lamp and I also used to say Google watch me up at 7am and it would do that.
So will home assistant let me do that ? or do I need to deal with Google. Thanks for the advice.
The simple answer is yes, HA will pretty much do whatever you want. But it will take some learning and reading before it can do these things for you. It certainly won’t be as easy as using google. and it may not be as good at recognising voice commands as google or Alexa, but this will depend a lot on any hardware you choose to use.
I think it’s worth trying to understand a bit more what you are looking for. There are two aspects to Home Assistant relevant here (if not more). One is what it can do, as in functionality to control devices in your home. It’s very good at that, with lots of ways to do it depending on hardware, I doubt there is anything else that comes close.
The second is voice control, and that’s a different matter. If HA gets a 10 out of 10 on controlling automations, it’s probably in the 4-7 range for voice control of Home Assistant (and thus of your home). Maybe more, I won’t argue actual scale, but there are gaps.
One is that the google (and probably alexa) hardware and software is just plain better at understanding your voice. Home Assistant is getting better (and just saying that collects a bunch of related technology as to what “it” is), but I do not think it is there yet. It’s also in some ways off in a sideways dimension – it can simultaneously do more than Google, but in terms of hearing the command in a room full of noise and understanding it properly, not so much. Similarly, for small and cheap devices, the audio is not there yet.
The sort of reference standard at the moment for hardware is the Voice Preview Edition you can buy. Think of it as a google mini but connected to Home Assistant. It’s not expensive, but it’s not cheap; it’s also not all that good, but it’s not awful.
Then there are a ton of efforts usually by third parties to do better. Future Proof’s Satellite 1.1 is an example (I am not saying it is better than the VPE, just that they are trying). I personally rigged up a Seeed Studio reSpeaker XVF3800 (which has an excellent 4 microphone array) and a largish speaker and stand and used software (search formatBCE for the author’s code) and I think it’s pretty darn close to google, better in some ways (more sensitive, but less discriminating).
There are also some issues to work out on exactly what HA’s “pipeline” (what they call all these pieces) should do and how. It is a bit of a work in progress and it also offers you a lot of choices.
So short version of my take:
To replace Google Home as a control system for your home – absolutely, light years better.
To replace Google Assist as a voice interchange – it’s getting there, and how well it works is often a matter of your expectations and how much effort (and hardware dollars) you want to put into it. It’s definitely a work in progress.
I have always had issues with Google Home , it was really bad at understanding me. half the time I would be yelling at it to turn off the ******* light like 6 times in a row.
Like I said all I want is something that I can yell at to turn off the tv or turn off this light and hay wake me up at 7am for work. Nothing to specail.
So please let me know and thanks again for the help.
With me voice activation is OK, but there are far too many issues, background noise, someone else talking halfway through a command, not remembering what something is called. and an assistant thinking it heard something. All of these can happen with any voice assistant, be it google Alexa or HA assist. Changing your assistant is not going to fix those issues which ever one you choose.
I think Alexa as an example does try to distinguish direction and voice to filter out the „main speaker“.
At least it isn’t a problem to give commands while kids/family talks in the same room at the same time.
HA can’t do that so far. You have to wait for a moment without too much chatter, or it will not end listening while the kids are talking.
And everything of it will end up in a single STT input to the LLM for sure. .
So this is the only left problem with current integrations and hardware in HA compared to Alexa.
But it’s a small gripe compared to the things Alexa can’t do.
And with a prompting how to handle text that sound like background talk as a result from a wrong wake word detection, this is less of a problem for me now, as with the commercial Voice Assistants.
Something which others have not made clear - or not clear enough…
Alexa and Google devices work out of the box. With Home Assistant you have to make it work. This is part of the fun, but it can also be a long and frustrating process. The learning curve is steep, support (mostly from this forum) is… um… let’s say variable. You will certainly end up with something different from what you imagined (may be worse, may be much better).
If you have already taken a hammer to your Google devices I don’t rate the chances of HA very highly.
Im far enough along with zenos on capabilities I 1000% agree. Yes getting them may require some. DIy as RefKing says But. Capabilities aren’t the issue anymore (well except timers timers still blow. But it’s on roadmap)
Good hardware, timers, and dupe lockout are really my only last gripes.
Assume if HA supports XYZ hardware, (Govee, Generic Zigbee, Generic ZWave, etc, etc). all ^^^ Whatever is supported in HA (simple lights and switching is cake btw, base media handling, temperatures - there’s actually quite a bit.) that just works.
SO instead you need to go find out to ensure HA supports your hardware. (yes Govee has a few paths to connect to HA)
Hey Nathan, I don’t have any hardware I would be starting from scrash. So I guess I would need to see if I have a spare computer laying around that I could use.
Before starting I would suggest asking yourself a few questions:
How much time do you want to put into researching / implementing your smart home.
What is the scope of your project?
What functionality do you need?
How much maintenance are you prepared to do on an ongoing basis?
These points are related - the larger the scope/functionality you want, the more time you will likely need to invest. Additionally if you are not prepared to commit enough time to HA it may not be the best product for you - you may be better off with an off the shelf solution.
Just to give you a rough idea, in my case:
I have probably committed 40-80 hours into the research/configuration of my setup. **
I limited my scope to lighting and climate control (AC + Fans).
I don’t care about voice control, I don’t mind hitting a few buttons for major items (get up/ leave the house, go to sleep, …) but generally I want the system to operate automatically - turn on lights when I enter a room.
I can deal with about 1 hour a month to fix stuff - in practice it has been a lot less than that.
** - The setup was incremental - adding new features as I needed them, but I don’t really consider that “maintenance” tasks (like changing dead batteries).
I will offer the short answer that Google right now is your better choice.
Most of what you can read about here will be how local LLM’s make a replacement work better at complicated request (Hey Mycroft, I’m cold and it’s dark in here) and have it figure out all the stuff to do to bring up the lights near you (meaning knowing where you are) and turn up the heat. And of course they are local and are not telling google every time you turn on a light (if you care).
But in terms of raw voice recognition, in an arbitrary room with background noise, it is VERY hard to get any devices today to rival what Google can do.
My own experience I now have one that is far more sensitive than google (hear me from further away), but is still less good and filtering out competing noise (TV is the worst case with voices there) from my own.
So no, today, I would not change to make it understand voices better. Today. Ask again in a year.
Totally agree Linwood on state of gear.
Don’t get me wrong I love my VPEs but. Yeah they’re first attempt and the whole idea behind ‘preview’ they really need way better far field mics with better noise canceling. (yes btw L you can fight a lot of that by training your own wake word in your environment… Makes a huge difference on accuracy btw - see taters stuff there.)
IMHO this year will be all about mics and speed of voice. I think we got the functionality parts basically licked.(well ok except timers, still need a bit o work there.)
Thanks Everyone for the advice , I guess my other “issue” is that I rent so some things I am just not allowed to do. If I owned a house then I think making a plan a figuring out what could be done and such.
So I guess for now its off to best buy to buy another google speaker. I will contuine to do some research and maybe in the furture I will come back around and start seeing things up.
Wonder if there is a way to make the blinds open and close at a certain time. hhmmm
@StarTrek133 I think you are describing three separate problems there:
Should you migrate from an “Off the shelf system” to Home Assistant.
How to plan an implementation for a house you own vs rent.
How to schedule an event to occur at a specific time.
The first is what this thread has been discussing, so I won’t rehash it here.
You typically have additional restrictions when renting (some things may not be possible without breaching the lease), however sometimes you can use a work around restrictions, for example you probably can’t replace the light switches or wiring, but you can use smart bulbs and simply leave the existing switches on all the time, it’s also worth looking into devices that send IR as that can be used for turning things on an off (when you cant change the underlying device). Obviously smart plugs can be used for simple devices that only require power to be cut/turned on.
Scheduling is trivial in Home Assistant, however it’s a feature that should** be common to most off the shelf products, so I wouldn’t let that one point sway your decision too much.
** - I have never really used off the shelf home automation, before I found HA, I “assembled” my own - I didn’t really do anything with hardware, but I joined a mishmash of tech together with my own code.
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