I have built two speakers with voice assistant function using this manual.
Use as short wires as possible, if possible shielded or twisted pair to avoid crackling and interference. Don’t forget that this is a high frequency digital data bus.
As an enclosure it is good to use old computer speakers or from 5.1 systems
Thank you. The components are in house now. How to connect those components? Do you have a schema of this solution? The only thing I need to make it working
Sorry, no schema available, but you can use the pins named in my esphome yaml file for connecting those boards. Those 3 i2s wires in between (besides power and speaker) are all you need.
I bought the components, @gdschut mentioned, assembled it and tested it last week. I used the also the mentioned yaml-setup. The TTS is really working fine. But streaming media or a simple .wav of .mp3-file gives problems. The ESP gives some weird sounds and stops working. After reset I can play TTS without problems.
I tried serveral speakers, but no luck.
error message:
[11:52:35][W][component:214]: Component i2s_audio.media_player took a long time for an operation (0.54 s).
[11:52:35][W][component:215]: Components should block for at most 20-30ms.
Any suggestions how to get normal sound by streaming media?
ESPHome version 2024.2.2
I use this for playing mp3’s only, and not for streaming. First I had the same results, but after resampling the mp3’s to 32khz sample rate it sounds good enough for me. I was told this is caused by the limitations of the ESP-32 module. Using a more powerfull version of the ESP-32 should have better results, but I did not try that.
Good suggestion to check an other ESP-32 module. For my alarm speaker I changed the (alarm)sound file to a sample rate of 32khz. And it works! Thanks for the tip!
Hey folks. Stumbled upon this thread and actually I’m running a Crowd Funding campaign that is aimed (among other things) to be used as ESPHome-based Home Assistant integration. Just think some of you may find this interesting.
Also being a developer of mentioned devices, I’m really curious to hear community feedback, like the features you’re missing or ideas you’d like to propose
Very interesting, @anabolyc! The Louder ESParagus Media Center will be really a good solution for me, but the shipping costs and taxes are to high for me. Sorry.
Sure, I understand. I also did a few lightweight solutions in the past, essentially they were prototypes for the Esparagus boards. The ESP Audio Dock Solo and Duo are MAX98357 based solutions working with both ESP8266 and ESP32/S2/C3, and Louder-ESP32 is a TAS5805M-based one. I’m about to release Louder-ESP32 based on S3 also.
Point is, this is kind of my passion and I did more than one approach to the topic, as you can see 
Hi Andriy, I like the look of your products; great work !
My issue is that my primary use is a Voice Assistant, and thinking that my voice assistant includes a speaker and is already in the room … it should also be a music player.
My days of owning a hi-fi component system are long ago, as I simply don’t take time to sit and just listen to my music library (now digitised). I can of course run VLC on my computer, but it would be nice to have something playing in the background in the living room or kitchen. I do see the appeal of spotify and streaming music providers - but I prefer to listen to all those tracks i already have.
I currently use Raspberry Pis with reSpeaker HATs … but that is overkill in the price and CPU power areas … so at the moment I am waiting for Nabu Casa will release a decent ESP32 based voice assistant device, and hoping it includes a music player.
Hey @donburch888 thank for the kind feedback.
I’m currently working on the upgraded version of the ESP32 Solo dock. My idea is to add a couple of mics and a few less to the mono speaker, making it a full kit for a voice assistant, but still keeping the speaker as a main feature.
I think it may be quite close to what are you looking for.
I agree that Raspberry may be an overkill for just one purpose, I’m using that myself. It is sharing multiple purposes though, serving as a remote audio card for PC and speaker connected to HA/MA and Mopidy. It is also a part of a snapcast network allowing multi-room playback. So there is a place for Pi power in the home audio as well:)
I think there is market for
Personally I see myself in the middle category, connecting unpowered bookshelf speakers (why add an extra power adaptor). The problem I am experiencing is that it seems Voice Assist and music playing are currently mutually exclusive 
As you have probably seen at HA Voice Assist, they are looking at ESP32-S3 chip with PSRAM to do the voice wakeword detection locally.
I am using seeed reSpeaker HAT boards, but seeed stopped supporting the drivers 5 years ago and the drivers never supported any of the Digital Signal Processing magic to make use of the extra microphones. My understanding is that everyone who has developed these DSP algorithms to a useful level has chosen to make them proprietary (and I can’t entirely blame them). I would not bother with multiple mics until the software is available for them (and by then there will probably be newer ESP chips to handle the extra load).
I will be looking forward to release of your upgraded ESP32 Solo dock.
I agree, I want to start from a basic mono model and move forward from there as long as there is a demand. I know that currently, the Voice Assistant setup in the ESP32 is cumbersome and full of pitfalls, but I believe in the power of community and trust it to get better soon, including the usage of 2 mics. And yes, the new solo is based on S3+PSRAM, so it should be supported right away.
Also afaik you can train your own models for custom wake words, I didn’t try it myself though. Should be fun to play with anyway.
Hey folks. Following the discussion above, I have the first samples of the Esparagus Echo devices which are in few lines
I did some basic testing myself, but also looking for beta testers in the community. For anyone keen to try it out and provide honest and usage-based feedback, please reach out for a free sample.
More details in the github repo
Andriy, I just found this thread while searching for a new solution to an issue I’ve been dealing with: I can’t hear my doorbell from certain parts of my apartment, and since it’s a rental, my options are limited.
Previously, I used a workaround by attaching a vibration sensor to the doorbell and having a USB speaker connected to my Raspberry Pi 4 play a recorded doorbell sound whenever HA detected the vibration. It worked, but I’m moving my HA server to another room, so I need a better solution.
I’m now looking for a way to play short audio clips (and possibly spoken notifications in the future) in areas of my apartment without Ethernet. I came across your ESP32-based devices, which look great, by the way!
Could you clarify what kind of speakers I can connect to the Echo Solo? Do they need external power? Or can I connect a USB speaker too? I’m aiming for something compact and durable, as it will be placed near my kitchen, which gets greasy and dusty. Ideally, it would be something like the HomePod Mini, but without the delay I experienced when using it with HA—it takes a second or two to wake up, which makes it too slow for my doorbell use case, where timing is crucial. I don’t really care about audio quality, as my primary use case for this wireless smart speaker is playing a doorbell sound.
Thanks!
Hey @aleco . Thanks for sharing your use case.
Both boards use MAX98357 DAC, so you can use pretty much any passive speaker above 4 Ohms and expect up to 3-5W on it at full volume. It will only need 5V granted by USB-C, up to 1A extra per channel at full power, but you can use much less for your purpose.
Thanks for the information. I‘ve just spent a few minutes searching, but it seems that all tiny speakers in the <20 EUR range have USB or 3.5mm headphone connectors. If you happen to have a specific suggestion, please let me know. I will continue my search. Thanks!
@aleco my personal favorite is a set of second-hand PC speakers from a good brand, that will set you back $5-$10 depending on the state. You need passive speakers, so those with USB ports are probably active ones. 3.5mm headphone connector is a weird choice for speaker connection, but I’d guess they are passives as well.
Thanks for your suggestion. Browsing Amazon only shows 3.5mm passive speakers. Frequently they are stereo, which is useless for me. I’m hoping for a compact solution, but as it’s not easy to find passive speakers with the port you require plus the esp32 device plus a power adapter, this is not as ideal as I am hoping for. Do you plan to create a device that has a built-in speaker?
I’ve recently completed my DIY HA Media Player speaker, it’s just for voice announcements to avoid using the Alexa Media Player third party integration.
It uses a ESP32, a UDA1334A and a PAM8302A
[Ditched Alexia Media Player for a DIY Media Player for fully local voice announcements](Thread in Share your Projects!)
