Sorry for the very basic question below but Im totally confused.
I decided to jump into voice assistant. I purchased a $5 usb microphone dongle. I plugged it into my machine (not directly into ha). When I click on assistant icon then click the microphone I can say turn x on and it works perfrectly
I used my Android phone (turning google off) and it also worked fine. Getting very excited I decided it would be good to say to my computer something like “hey computer turn x on”. This I could not get to work.
After reading lots of doc I have ended up with assistants working with Wake word installed and I believe configured correctly.
In addons I have installed Assist Microphone (openWakeWord, Whisper, Piper) and I have nabu casa cloud connection.
Is it possible to use a usb microphone on my pc (linux) to connect to my HA instance (vmware) or I missing the point … sorry
I’m a tinker who thought I could replace Alexa/Google Home but evidently we’re not there yet, even with a >$100 Home Assistant Green. It took me a lot of effort to realize it’s a bug and not a mistake on my part. I’d feel a lot better if they’d just acknowledge this, I don’t get it. I have about 3 weeks before I can’t return it anymore
Hi Peter,
I am puzzled because you start saying that “When I click on assistant icon then click the microphone I can say turn x on and it works perfrectly” and “I used my Android phone (turning google off) and it also worked fine”. So far so good ?
But then you got rather vague about what is not working.
Was it on one of the working systems you just mentioned before ? If so, did you setup the wakeword “hey computer” ? Did you get the feedback to indicate it had recognised the wakeword ? What error was in the log ? What is your configuration file ?
Is your HA instance running in vmware on your linux pc which you have connected the USB microphone to ?
I believe that passing a USB device through to a virtual machine (or a docker container) can be tricky … so would suggest that you first try to test your mic using arecord and aplay in the Virtual machine.
But more I would recommend that you use a separate machine for your voice assistant; both because HA seems to expect to be run on a server tucked away in a back cupboard with devices connecting via LAN; and because you are sure to want to give voice commands in more than one room anyway, so will soon want multiple satellites
And yes, I am currently successfully using a RasPi 3B with a USB mic as my HA Voice Assist satellite testbench.
Possibly your mistake was forgetting that this is an Open Source project; and that “the team” do not get paid to play 20 questions trying to work out what the poster was actually trying to ask/say. And before you have a go at me, i am a user like you and almost everyone here.
Personally I see we’re getting closer, but still a way to go to compete with Alexa/Google Home quality and price wise. But the objective is to run locally without sending every sound in your house to a multi-national to do what they will. Not sure what Home Assistant Green has to do with voice assistant though … unless you’re not actually interested in Home Assistant.
