I read on a google add that HA could replace Alexa, but I don’t see how it can. I would hope so as I use alexa to turn on lights etc.
It does seem a bit dubious to me, unless anyone know different of course
It totally depends on what you mean by “replace Alexa” and how much time, effort, and money you are willing to put into it.
Well to be clear I mean to use HA instead of Alexa to control lights etc. I do have a fair amount of time, but depending on how it can be done I am sure about effort.
Thanks
Do you mean voice control, or automations?
The answer is yes if you buy the right hardware and setup the right software. But turning lights on is easy.
Ok so what is the right hardware to setup what software. Can you be a bit more specific.
I’ve just found that I can add Alexa to HA, but it needs OTP of my Amazon account, which I don’t have.
thanks
Alexa, how many seconds from now until midnight at the start of Christmas Day 2039 ?
Alexa, switch off the Christmas tree lights for five seconds at the start of Christmas Day 2039, then switch them back on again. I reckon that subcontracting voice control so that voice isn’t necessarily the problem of Home Assistant is sensible. I’d also prefer that electrical switching is better left with Home Assistant. I want it that if the commercial owners of Alexa decided to insert paywalls several years from now, you’d lose a voice recognition assistant but you’d not lose control of your own smart plugs on the Christmas lights or wherever else you’d put them. Boo nay! to one brand of omniswitcher which nothing works without.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at there, but trying to add Alexa to HA didn’t work out due to invalid authentication. I’ve tried various OTP’s and codes from Amazon, but still same error. I don’t know what HA wants now.
If I sort that out I’ll try again
Yes, but you will need Wyoming satellites to replace the Alexa boxes and a server with a GPU for LLM/Whisper/Piper processing.
I recently did this and it works well but you need to be VERY technical.
I’m in the UK so Wyoming satellites won’t reach here.
Err, GPU is Grahics Proccessing unit or do you mean something different, and what is this: LLM/Whisper/Piper processing.
I think I’ve been put off trying to get Alexa integrated in HA.
Thanks anyway and I’ll stick with what works for me
I’m also in he UK. Wyoming sats are the name given to devices running the Wyoming protocol see - GitHub - rhasspy/wyoming-satellite: Remote voice satellite using Wyoming protocol
But yes, I think for you sticking with Alexa would be best.
In theory, home assistant can replace alexa for the smarthome control knobs (so lights on/ off, but not the backend interconnects to other webservices (wikipedia, news sites, etc.), but in practice the devil is in the details. For decent voice recognition, you need good voice recordings (microphone arrays with echo cancellation and good filtering, a simple diy esp32-s3+max98357a+inmp441 does not make the cut), a well trained voice model for your language and pretty capable GPU hardware with lots of video RAM to process the voice recognition (and relatively high (idle- and active) power draw).
If you approach it as a starter set, with cheap (diy’ish) hardware, haos-typical low-power servers (without special GPU) and more or less a default setup (meaning without taking a deep dive into LLM land), you can see that it’s almost working - but the abysmal voice recognition makes it totally impractical.
We’ll have to see how this story pans out over the next couple of years, to give us hardware that can do this for cheap and with low power requirements. We’re almost there, you can see the finish line, but in practice it just doesn’t work out. If you now complain about alexa not understanding you, you wouldn’t like the current state of local voice recognition in home assistant at all.
Ok., thanks all for the comments, and as I said I’ll just stick with Alexa for now.
I only really asked because of the ridiculous ads on google about HA doing such a good job of replacing this that and the other
If you use Nabu cloud for voice assistant I feel it is pretty equal to alexa for basic home control
Music Assistant has bridged a lot of gap with music. I this point I call it good enough. Multiple device music sync is about 6 months out.
You can attach to LLM and get the whole enchilada. asking really anything but I dont think that is goal and if you plan to do that I would suggest stick with Alexa
Local voice using speech to phrase is extremly accurate. Problem is from my use it needs louder input voice so range is reduced. at 3’ it works well but at 7’ not so much.
SUMMARY: I think you can replace alexa with esp device and Nabu cloud and get sound and functional quality of maybe gen 2 alexa. If you want 2024 Alexa quailty give it til summer, I think it will be there by then.
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Always astonished that people even in 2025 still surf the web without ad blocker. 
Feel free to make us a screenshot and post it here for some retro vibes 
Probably my hardware (Spotpear Ball v1 && diy esp32-s3+max98357a (no mic) with esphome) is part of the problem (you need to start somewhere, preferably cheap), but my experiences with local voice recognition (no local LLM/ gpu, just a Celeron J4125 with 4 GB RAM) are really abysmal. It works, but only once in 5+ tries (much worse in German than in English). I’m talking about just recognizing “okay Nabu, turn on the lights” (wakeword detected reliably, let’s forget about the actual command)… I have not tried cloud assistance, as that’s not interesting to me (I want to go local-only, without subscription fees).
For me, basic commands (lights, querying sensor state (temperature sensor)) are the must-have functionality - and as it failed at that, I never moved towards integrating music assistant (welcome functionality, but only after the basics are set) - also because esp32-s3+max98357a just don’t suffice for me (volume too low (that could be helped with an amp) and shifting sound quality (read this as bad, really bad, not meeting expectations set by an FM kitchen radio or radio alarm clock; HiFi not needed, just ‘good’ enough to listen to)).
I can see where it’s going - and I’d be all onboard if what I can see, would actually work, reliably. But from my testing, it’s still too far away from that.
Unfortunately I can’t take a screenshot as the google ad was on my phone and it’s gone now.
Very sad! Woud really(!) love to have seen this! 
Is nabu casa/open home foundation really throwing money at google? What a waste of resources! 
In case you have at least limited ownership over the phone you paid for a combination of Firefox and ublock origin is usually enough to don’t end up as the product 
IF? Haven’t you been receiving endless “suggestions” that you try Alexa Plus? It’s only a matter of when that we will lose the abilities we have now.
I rather doubt it. I have seen Google ads pop up on my phone on other sites. But I am old fashioned, I guess since my phone is primarily a phone.
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Go simple. Subscribe to Nabu Casa.
Not exactly ditching Alexa as you asked, but if it is the integration you are having trouble with: I ditched Google integration and switched to Matter Hub. It exposes all devices that you select as Matter devices to Google Nest hub. I believe the same can be done with Alexa.