I am looking for a Intel I3 9th gen with 16Gb ram and 125Gb ssd + 256Gb SATA SSD mini Pc for running HAOS as VM on Proxmox. Is it good enough for running local voice.
Hardware I found in local markets include Dell OptiPlex 7070, HP MP 9 G4 HP G800 G4 etc. Which one of these is recommended for local Voice.
For ZIGBEE I am using SLZB-06M.
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I have an Optiplex 7050 SFF with an i5 7500T CPU, running proxmox and HAOS. Mine is one of the low power, Small Form Factor models which are too small for any video card, "but HAOS runs headless so that's ideal" I thought. And then the voice processing wants more AI-style processing ... and then they added AI proper ...
I run Voice Assist with only one HA Voice PE, and I have opted for Home Assistant Cloud for the speech-to-text and text-to-speech - but that's because I didn't want to spend the time fiddling with all the local options. Mine rarely goes over 2% CPU utilisation, so I should revisit the local STT and TTS.
I suggest you get a PC with a case large enough for a full-size video card to give you the ability to upgrade to local AI in future.
The voice question is. What experience do you want.
Voice comes in multiple flavors.
Your box by itself will run HAOS fine.
If you want speech to phrase. It should work fine. Speech-to-Phrase brings voice home - Voice chapter 9 - Home Assistant
If you use cloud llm / cloud STT it will also be fine.
Local STT on CPU with Piper / ONNX is perfectly fine... (if you have enough Cpu cores / aren't overdriving your box)
BUT If you want locally driven LLM you. WILL (not optional) need an appropriate GPU or inference core.
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So you think this puts Beelink out of the running as a good option? Just curious
As long as the device you're looking at supports thunderbolt or occulink to hook up an EGPU later it's fine.
(that's a 5070ti mated to an Intel NUC14ai through thunderbolt, and what Friday runs in)
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Firstly, I defer to Nathan, especially when it comes to AI.
I'm not familair with Beelink - is it an intel micro PC or NUC, or an SBC (like Raspberry Pi) ? Doesn't matter.
Yousaf was talking about buying a mini PC and in hindsight my recommendation if he is thinking of AI in the future, is to go for one in a desktop or tower case that has space for a full-sized video card ... much easier to add a video card later. I am sure that Nathan wouldn't have mentioned the EGPU if it wasn't acceptable - but to me having it as an add-on looks awkward and more expensive.
Curious ... initially Raspberry Pi was the recommended hardware for Home Assistant (because it was cheap, low power and devices could connect direct to GPIO pins) ... then gradually HA evolved to become a server with devices connecting over LAN, still with low power as a feature ... and now the incorporation of AI with HA, we want a powerful GPU which means a high power PC.
Something has also happened to the price/performance value.
Initially RPi were superior in this, but RPi have become more expensive and miniPCs have become cheaper, so they are even or maybe MiniPCs are even a bit ahead today.
If it was me right now I would not be considering local AI, unless you want to be running na expensive and power hungry PC 24/7. Local Ai needs a lot of PC for not a lot of gain.
Actually, I just voice for replacing Alexa, not for AI. I just need to turn on the lights with a voice command.
So, something like this? Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition - Home Assistant
But voice processing will be happening on the HA server itself isn't it?