Home Assistant Voice - Aux speaker

Hardware
1

I purchased the Home Assistant Voice preview and have been attempting to figure out an aux speaker to enhance the sound and give it some personality.

I noticed when I plug in a non-powered speaker to the Aux the sound is great. If I plug in a self-powered speaker, a speaker that has it’s own power supply, I can hear some static, baseline static when the Voice Assistant is idle.

Non-powered speaker, a CB aux speaker off amazon.

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Self-Power speaker - works but static, while the assistant is idle.

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I tried another self-powered speaker that did the same thing.

I did noticed that they have two different Aux cord types.

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I’m not sure if it’s the core type or that the speaker has it’s own power.

Any suggestions are appreciated. I think it brings some fun personality to have the BearBrick speaker for the Assistant.

2

Feedback from poor grounding.
Does it occur with other devices?

Can you try another power plug for voice PE

Mono on left
Stereo on right

Example
Sorry. Only found eBay photo

3

Here is the one that currently works the best:

Here’s another one I tried that also had some static when the Voice PE was idle:

The BearBrick is used but seems to work fine with my android phone.

4

Apart from the ground loops mentioned above, your powered speakers are expecting a line level input. However the Voice PE outputs a low power speaker drive level which expects a low impedance load. The powered speaker is a high impedance load. This causes the input to the powered speaker to be a lot larger than required. The noise floor when idle will also be higher. Try turning the voice PE volume down very low and your powered speaker volume up.

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5

I started tinkering with it and changing volumne like you suggested. With the Bearbrick speaker, I didn’t plug in it’s USB power cord. It works. Seems it’s now just pulling power from the Voice PB. I believe it was just overpowering it like you indicated.

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