So I just bought the following.
Home assistant Green.
ESP32-S3-BOX-3(B)
ATOM Echo.
Though the setup was easy, and it detected all my home devices just fine.
The ability for the ESP devices to understand what I was saying is terrible.
After looking into the HA web site more I was very shocked there is not some BT recommended mic and speaker to use with it.
IMHO the whole point to use HA would be to replace Alexa in all my rooms. Without this feature there is no point to this as I can control all my devices with my phone just like HA does.
Am i missing something here ?
I was looking at getting this to put in the rooms, but as I have already spent so much money I am leery on spending more as a gamble.
One thing not mentioned there, is that HA is coming out with their own voice satellite hardware soon. Search the forum and you’ll find mention of it.
That isn’t going to work (at least not plug and play like you’re wanting).
Others can give you more pointers/info as I don’t use voice commands at all.
HA’s voice is still very much in its early days, and will still get better as time goes on.
The S3 box is not a home assistant developed hardware, so there will be issues getting it working with HA. There are rumours of Nabu casa developed hardware which may solve some issues.
HA voice is not intended to replace Alexa, it may do in the future but I am not really sure its needs the full abilities of ALexa or google home.
HA is a home automation platform, shouting at a voice assistant is not automation. Yes its nice to have for those occasions it might be useful, but its not essential.
If you already have an S3 Box you might experiment with Willow, for which there is an add-on - I find speech recognition to be comparable with Alexa. I have used it to replace all my Echo dots (you’re right, it’s damned expensive).
You can use any speaker, provided there is an integration for it (I use Sonos). You have to write your own sentences, though.
As @brooksben11 says, this is not out of the box stuff. To be honest, that goes for about 75% of Home Assistant…
You’re never going to get a replacement for Alexa, which after all draws on the power of massive server farms all over the world. But nobody uses all of Alexa’s features - with a bit of work you may be able to build a reasonable substitute for the features you actually use.
Let’s start with expectations. What is your expectation. If it’s a fully completed plug and play voice assistant? Stop now you WILL be disappointed.
You will need to DIY the equipment. And the spec is in flux. As someone else mentioned Nabu Casa is indeed working on some dedicated hardware but if it hasn’t shown on the market yet, I do t expect it before Christmas.
The the system while it does a decent job with basic on off you’ll quickly get into scripts for anything remotely complex. As folks have said Amazon you’re building on years of thier system development and cloud processing. Here you’re barely a year into open source development and occasionally run into issues as stuff gets worked out.
Now adding LLMs like Openai in my experience makes assist 1000% more usable and friendly but it doesn’t change that you are still building your own automations for most things a d will need to understand YAML and the construction of the HA voice pipeline.
So are you ok with doing all that. If not I’m sure some people may be interested in buying the Box3 it’s a decent little testbed.
Not being crude, I guess I just dont see the point of HA. I can already control all my devices through their own app. So why have another. Without voice control, who wants to pick up their phone every time they want to turn a device on and off.
The point to HA is that its an open source local system to manage all devices that are supported without the cloud requirement and requisite that Alexa, Google, Smartthings and Apple have where supported so that should your internet be down or the service that is cloud dependent is axed; you still can actually use your home setup.
There are many other ways to interact with your devices than just using voice or with the phone.
i.e I have a page on my streamdeck xl for my AC, light and Smart plug/board control when I need to manually toggle them whilst I am at the PC. I have a pressure mat tied to a aqara leak sensor set in occupancy mode to have certain automation’s disable and enable based on how long I am in the bed.
IMHO, voice is the last on my list of ways I would want to interact with systems as I am a quiet person anyways.
I agree, as I said earlier HA is a home automation platform, voice is just another switch. But less reliable than a real switch. The real point of HA is that you set it to do stuff automatically. From as simple as turn the lights on at sunset to track where you are in the house and what you are doing, then set the lights to suit the situation.
I have voice via assist and Google home yet I can’t remember the last time I asked a voice assistant to turn something on.
That’s where we think differently.
I do not want more apps, any purchase now needs to fit within my currently installed apps.
And even though I have Tuya, I would never buy it again. At least not wifi.
I usually limit myself to DIY in ESP-Home or ZigBee. Both very easily integrated in HA directly without any apps.
Voice is the least preferred way to interact. I usually use displays, knobs, switches and remotes because that can be used without using my phone and are all physical.
Voice is just hard and frustrating since a good portion of the commands are not correct.
With HomeAssistant you can combine all apps in one, so instead of having one app for your heating, another for your lights and yet another for your something else, I just use one…HA
I have Google home which can control any device in HA. But that is besides the point. As someone mentioned before, using voice control is NOT automation.
Many off my devices are ran by automation without any intervention
When I enter my bathroom, the light goes on automatically (and turns off again when I leave)
When the sun sets, my outdoor lights go on (and off again when the sun rises)
When all mobiles are more than 200 meters away from home, my burglar alarm turns on and all non-essential devices turn off, when I return it goes off again.
At 7:15 am my sonos asks google what the weather will be today (so this is automated voice operation )
etc…etc…etc
it’s a decent little testbed.
)