Hi everyone,
I'm trying to set up voice recognition and wake word detection on my ESPHome satellite, but I'm running into an issue where the wake word and word recognition simply aren't working. I'd appreciate any pointers!
Setup:
- Hardware: ESP32-C3 (no PSRAM) running ESPHome 2026.6.4, configured as a Voice Assistant satellite (INMP441 mic + MAX98357A amp. Both are working correctly — hitting the manual "Start Assistant" button triggers a full working Assist Pipeline run every time).
- Software: Home Assistant 2026.7.1, openWakeWord add-on installed (core_openwakeword, v2.1.0). The state shows started, and network port 10400 is open and reachable (confirmed via nc -zv <addon_ip> 10400 → succeeded).
The Problem:
The main issue is that there is absolutely no word recognition or wake word functionality. - The "Wake word" field on the ESPHome voice assistant satellite device is entirely greyed out / unavailable.
- The openwakeword entity in HA stays permanently in an "Unknown" state.
- When I try to (re)add the Wyoming Protocol integration manually using the add-on's internal IP and port 10400, it fails with "Failed to connect", even though the port is confirmed open from the HA terminal.
What I've already tried: - Restarting the openWakeWord add-on (stop → start, not just "restart").
- Full Home Assistant "Restart System" (not just Restart HA Core).
- Reloading the Wyoming integration.
- Deleting and re-adding the Wyoming/openWakeWord integration manually (fails to connect despite nc confirming the port is open).
- Checked the add-on logs: I found repeated ConnectionResetError: Connection lost in the wyoming_openwakeword handler, seemingly triggered by the ESP32 client disconnecting/reconnecting abruptly (from unrelated testing). The add-on itself recovers and logs "Successfully sent discovery information to Home Assistant" after a restart.
- Confirmed via ha addons info core_openwakeword that the add-on is healthy, state: started, with the correct IP/port.
- I also tried on-device wake word detection via ESPHome's micro_wake_word component (with the "okay_nabu" model) as an alternative. This loaded and ran successfully while idle ("Inference task is running", DETECTING_WAKE_WORD state), but the ESP32-C3 crashed and triggered an automatic OTA rollback (safe_mode) the moment I actually spoke the wake word. This is likely due to insufficient RAM (no PSRAM on the C3) for the TFLite Micro inference under real audio load.
My Question:
What else can cause the Wyoming integration to fail to connect to a healthy, reachable openWakeWord add-on, ultimately preventing any wake word or voice recognition functionality? Is there a way to check the actual HA Core-side connection error rather than just the add-on log?
Thanks in advance!