Any thoughts on whether this component will work?
We have the HA Preview Edition retailing at £56 in the UK so if the M5Stack at £7.50 will do the job that will be a much more economic option if I’m looking at having 5 units.
Thanks for all advice.
Hi, does this device have any advantages compared to using an Atom Echo which is supported?
The M5Stack ASR looks like it might have more internal voice processing (PS I’m not technical, I am just reading the description notes!), and costs less than the Atom Echo. It would be nice if if did work satisfactorily.
The product comes pre-configured with 42 English wake-up words and feedback command words.
Totally useless for the Home Assistant.
That was my idea as well but wanted to be sure.
I even wonder if you can get it working anyway.
@papasierra: of course buying multiple VPE’s will bu more expensive but be aware that those have some interesting advantages over the M5stack devices.
Just saying and you have to experience it.
You do not have to buy a VPE outright. There is a gradation of available sattelite solutions at different price points.
- Esp32 - the chip used in Atom Echo, but twice cheaper. Great for tests.
- Esp32s3+PSRAM - functional analog of the chip from VPE, but without XMOS module. A good option for quiet rooms.
- Respeaker lite - analog of VPE, but without housing and some controls.
Satellite can also be run as a service on any Linux machine that has audio interfaces.
Instructions for assembly and configuration are available on youtube and thematic sites.
Thank you for the addional advice. With a spare Pi 3 available, would you think this would provide sufficient processing power to do the speech to text internally (ie not using the Nabu Casa cloud) and if so, would you be able to advise what I could use as the satellite?
Cloud-based solutions will still be the best speech recognition solution for you.
Satellites are the endpoint of user interaction and are for audio transmission only.
Installation on Pi 3 has been discussed in the threads about Wyoming Satellite, search for it
Just out of curiosity, what about:
- extended use of timers
- starting a conversation
- and what else that seems to be exclusively for the VPE
VPE is still a project for ESPhome. Some features haven’t been added yet because the developers don’t have the task to rush it. If someone had the need and skills, start_conversation could be added today even for atom echo.
The main advantage of VPE is that it is an off-the-shelf device that has official support.
Thank you, I will check this out.