Hello all, I am attempting to get my Home Assistant Voice Preview to correctly run an automation via a sentence trigger. However, when I speak the sentence trigger to Voice, it doesnt use the sentence trigger and instead defaults to a looking for a device.
Explanation:
I have an automation setup to turn off my TV. Running the automation directly works properly, so my steps are correct.
When typing the command to HA Assist, it will run the automation properly.
When speaking the command to HA Voice, it will state “Sorry, I am not aware of any device called TV” and not run the automation. I have repeated myself multiple times to it, so I don’t think it is mishearing me.
I am assuming this is occurring because HA Voice is using the phrase directly and not using the sentence trigger I setup for it. It is defaulting to looking for a device due to the wording in the sentence.
I have tried:
Exposing the conversation.home_assistant entity in settings>voice assistant>expose
Adding similar sentence triggers (i.e. removing “the” from the command)
Making sure everything is properly exposed to the assistant (since the text method to the assistant works, I am not thinking this is an issue)
I am currently using the faster-whisper STT provider and poper for TTS. Typing “Turn on the TV” to the sentence parser in Dev tools matches to the trigger:
The automation trigger’s are “Turn on the TV” and “Turn on TV”. When triggered, it has my Logitech harmony send a command to turn on the TV and set the input. From testing with text commands and manually triggering the automation, everything works as expected. The only issue arises when utilizing the HA Voice to try triggering this automation.
I have tested multiple times with the aforementioned phrases on the HA Voice, and each time it provides the same “Sorry, I am not aware of any device called TV”. I can 100% confirm that it is not a clarity issue or an incorrectly said command unfortunately. The language I am using is English for the commands.
how? You may speak the words clearly but STT can still mess it up.
Whisper shows the text it captured in its logs. I use docker and access logs in portainer but not sure how you access with HAOS. I think you will be able to see STT received in HAVPE logs inside esphome device builder as well. You cannot presume it properly understood you so you need to see what STT puts out since its clear the automation and trigger work.
There was arecent change in 2026.1.2 to VAD so if you have not updated to latest version HA that may help.
I still believe it is missing part of the sentence. Sentence is exact match so maybe try below making “turn” and “the” optional. just as a test.
[turn] on [the] TV
also try [turn] on [the] television
It occurred to me the “TV” may be heard as “T” “V” or TB or teebee. basically these things are idiots and lack context so expect dumb things youd never expect
Well I think you are spot on. I was able to view the STT logs by going to Settings → System → Logs → dropdown menu “Whisper”. In the logs, I found that it was inserting a space in between T and V.
“INFO:wyoming_faster_whisper.sherpa_handler: Turn on the T V”
My first guess at a workaround would be to have another sentence trigger for “Turn on the T V” in addition to the other sentence. I will give this a test later today and update this post with my findings. Thank you for your insight!
Confirmed that HA Voice now runs the automation “Turn on the T V” without failing. T B is a good fallback, but looking at my logs seems to be un-necessary for my setup as it always picks up T V from my voice. Other voices or pronunciations may find this useful though.
