I found the Amazon Echo 4 to be a relatively cheap smart speaker. Is it possible to integrate them into home assistant and run them completely locally, i.e., without any connection to the Amazon cloud/ AWS? I would like to have access to the speaker, microphone, and sensors and also use it as a Thread border router.
I have no need for Alexa, I’d rather use a voice assistant in Home Assistant celebrating the “Year of the Voice”
I guess I’d run the Media Assistant integration although I haven’t installed it yet. How good do/would both play together? Has anyone been successfully running such a setup?
I have found topics here asking similar things, but none have had an answer. Also searching via Google, etc. has not been successful. If you think there already is an answer, please provide a link!
I wouldn’t call it an Amazon limitation. They keep the price low by exporting all the smarts to AWS. All the Echo device does is to listen for a wake-up word then send whatever follows that to ASW.
Yes, same. These devices are relatively “inexpensive” because the provider (at least they intended to) use them to gather their own meta data. Pretty much all the smart speakers (amazon, google, apple) fall into this category. I have heard it said “you are not the customer, you are the product”. There is still hope however with year of the voice.
True - I meant that as It was meant to be that the reason comes from Amazon not reading anything else because yes - you are absolutely the product here. Bezos was just never able to capitalize on it.
We’ll see what Panos Panoy does with the device org. I strongly suspect there’s a series of microservices coming to ‘add capabilities’ to Alexa. People will complain about paying for these but will have to be reminded the alternative is ‘free but you’re the product.’
Nevertheless I like the devices being equipped with more than just a speaker and microphone but with some additional sensors. I’d like to see a more open product which offers these entities in home assistant. And best case, it should also have a good built quality and look nice
I’d also built it myself, but right now I’m lacking the skills, I’m afraid since there are so many things to know about. And I haven’t found an a example or tutorial of someone showing this online until now. That’s why I asked if someone more knowledgeable had some input but so far there was no answer.