Hello, I hope I am posting this in the correct location.
I really need some help diagnosing why piper isn’t working correctly.
I posted in discord here is the thread link - Discord
TLDR; piper isn’t working via assist on the companion app, or through the voice assistant preview edition. I don’t hear it speak back and say things like “How can I assist?”, or “Sorry I couldn’t understand that”.
Assist is working fine, its just the TTS that isn’t.
Is this on esp device?
Watch the logs for the esp device. The response is generated so it’s the audio that is not being downloaded by device.
In esp device logs you can see the weblink for audio download. This is a link you can directly playback on your pc/phone
HA >> settings >> system >> network >> local network
The local network address will be used for audio file download link. It should be accessible be device.
Your first step is to access the esp device logs and generate a response so you may see the weblink and confirm it is created or if some error occur
Well the home assistant voice preview edition is but you can’t view the logs like an esp device without taking control of it.
The issue I am having is even on my android phone I don’t hear the responses. Upon looking into this at some point I noticed people talking about the network URLs and I made sure that the internal URL is set and it works. Do I need to forward ports? But even within my local network it still is not working.
Enable debug mode for the Piper server and check the logs.
All I see is -
DEBUG:wyoming_piper.handler:Sent info
Something very strange happened just now I took over the HAVPE and I don’t see much in the log, but now when asking it “test” it said “Sorry no devices playing”. Not “sorry I don’t understand that”. Then when I gave it a command it knows it just did it and made chimes not saying how can I help, or turned off the light etc.
When using media >> tts >> piper and selecting the speaker it plays fine. Yet I don’t hear it when I say okay nabu or using assist on my phone 
Are you using the latest version of Piper as an addon?
Version 2.1.1 straight from the add-on store.
Have you tried other TTS services to rule out the problem with other components?
What are the alternatives? That are local and open source.
For testing, this is the most user-friendly option.
And if you’re familiar with Python, or at least containers, then GitHub is full of different implementations of wyoming servers for a variety of TTS.
well you can now see logs in esphome builder.
what do they say?
anything else is a rabbit hole
also when you take over Im not sure what yaml/device config remain so you may need to update. but before that. Logs