Hi there. New to HA but am IT literate. I’ve always wanted to play but never got round to it. Recently retired so decided to take the step.
Bought a small Nuc and installed HA. No issues and I had bought a few items, light switches, temp sensors, heat alarm, contacts and Voice Assistant Voice PE.
Started with the sensors was impressed with how easy it was to add and recognise them. Added a light switch and heat alarm. All went OK. I then came to Voice PE.
The instructions are simple enough. I don’t like the cloud so assistants like Amazon, Google, etc do not exists and I don’t have a smart phone. So I started install from the HA panel. All went well until it finished the firmware upgrade when it came up with Entity not found.
Now it must be something I have done or not done because if this was an issue more would have hit it and I can’t find it on the forum or searching the web.
Is this entity expected to be set up prior to installing Voice PE. As I have made no mods but install a few devices I have configured nothing else.
Any ideas and/or pointers to something that can help a newbie. In the meantime I’m installing more sensors and controls. Thank you in advance.
It’s been about a year since I first installed Voice PE so my memory is a little fuzzy on the exact steps.
I did not use a phone to install it either, I installed it from HA as you described. I had to re-enable Bluetooth integration (I had disabled it at some point). Does your HA have bluetooth?
Yes. I then entered the WiFi and all the way through setup 6 until it updated my firmware then it hit the error. Although I wasn’t using a phone the steps look the same.
I cleared it from HA and reset the device and did it again. Still exactly the same except this time it just checked the firmware and then hit the error.
??? What “different protocols” are you referring to?
To clarfiy what I was asking…
Is the wifi network where you connected the PE on the SAME network subnet as your HA server?
If you provide more info on your HA setup, the community can provide more help. For example, how did you install HA on your NUC? Bare metal or VM, etc? What version of HA?
Understand. The protocols I am referring to are TCP/IP which is what my HA server is connected to on the network via a Cat 6 cable. The PE is connected wirelessly via Bluetooth I believe and part of the setup then enables WiFi on the PE. The WiFi network is on the same network as the HA server. The PE responds to the HA server during set up and when I press the button to acknowldge the HA system sees it and moves on. So comms are there.
Bare Metal install using the latest HA build at the time and subsequently upgraded to version 2026.4.2.
I installed in on the Nuc. Rebooted and it worked fine. I have done no mods to the config yet and simply installed a few basic sensors and switches to verify functionality. This is the most complicated component so far.
I have not come from a Alexa, Google etc. background and so there have been no other modifications since install bar following the instructions on the HA page.
My thoughts are that moving from Alexa, for example, would already have entities set up and because I am coming in cold I don’t have that.
It initially connects via Bluetooth, specifically through “Improv via BLE”
to setup wifi on the PE. After that, Bluetooth is no longer needed & the PE is just a device on your wifi.
No. The Voice PE (via the ESPHome integration) will install its own entities during setup.
Just noticed in your screenshot, you’re accessing HA from a 172.x.x.x:8123 IP address. I would expect to see a local 192.168.x.x:8123 IP address. I think 172.x.x.x is an internal address inside the HA Docker container.
I would check the IP address of the Voice PE on your wifi. That IP address and your HA server need to be in the same subnet. For me, and from what I see here in the forums, that’s usually 192.168.x.x.
Not sure where that 172.x.x.x came from…is that the ip that HA assigned to your HA server? Maybe a more experienced member will chime in to help. But, you can always change the server ip in the HA settings. I also recommend setting it as a static address (I did that in my router) so it never changes.
The default in most documents for internal IPs is 192… but there are several options available in the IP address space and I decided to make mine a non standard one 172… to make things a little more complicated for hackers. Not much but every bit helps.
I added in whisper and piper and reset the PE and installed again. Exactly the same issue. The IP for the PE was 172.29.66.245 which is on the same subnet as the HA server.
So back where I started. Is there a support contact in Home Assistant?
OK. When I installed Voice PE, HA auto discovery detected it, and asked me to add it. ESPHome, Whisper, and Piper were automatically installed when I clicked to add. Took less than 5 minutes and my PE was up and running. If you’re using 172.x.x.x for your HA server, then I would think the PE needs to be in that same subnet with a 172.x.x.x. ip (or, like I did when I first added my PE to my IoT VLAN, firewall rules to allow the PE to access the HA server on my main network). I later learned that HA expects a flat network, so I moved my PEs into the main network. HA server and IoT devices on different subnets/firewall zones - #3 by Sir_Goodenough
Sorry you’re having so much trouble installing the PE. As I mentioned, my install took less than 5 minutes and everything was auto-discovered by HA.
From what you describe, the only difference for my install & yours is that I use the 192 network. I understand your desire to use 172, and sounds like it should work since your PE is in the same network…but HA itself and the add-ons (now called apps) run in docker containers that use 172 addresses. I have very little docker experience…so not sure if there’s some IP conflicts there. Hoping a more experienced member will eventually pop in.
These things happen. I have a non standard system and must expect a few issues when not using things straight out of the box.
I have Docker and Incus installed on my network. Both use IPs in the 172 range as well. HA is in a separate Nuc and TBH I could set it to 192 and see if it works. If it does that answers one question but then I would be unable to integrate my printers and I would have two WiFi networks. One just for Voice PE. I’ll try logging it with Nabu Casa as the next step. Worth a go.
OK. I logged the issue with Nabu Casa so thank you for the pointer. Max, from Nabu Casa, gave me some instructions to manually install the Voice PE.
Basically
Manually set up Piper and Whisper. HA recognised them under devices and installed them to the Wyoming protocol.
Modified ESPHome and input the IP of the Voice PE. Ticked the box to allow HA actions.
Modified the Voice Assistant config and added faster-whisper and piper in the drop down boxes.
Voice PE then responded to the wake words ‘Okay Nabu’ and it was working.
Call out to Max who seems to be online 24/7. Sure hope he isn’t an AI. LOL. If he is I’m pretty impressed.
Sadly, these are reserved IP ranges in networking with special attributes (non routable see RFC-1918), hence probably seriously contributing to your difficulties
You probably hacked yourself!
Agree this is the issue there is underlying weirdness. Only 172.16 - 172-32 are private and usually reserved for the docker networks inside HA I’m almost positive it’s causing routing issues and why the device didn’t register.
You said ‘it’s the ip of my ha box’ you sure it’s the public ip of ha? There’s at least one other on a 172 if your haos.
Basically. You’re in for more problems in the future if you choose to stay configured that way. just sayin. You can’t pick arbitrary ip ranges without understanding how they’re used. Ha does a great job in standard expected consumer network. Start going rogue and weirdness will happen nobody can help you with.
