Not sure if this is where to have a discussion on the topic of moving from Alexa to HA, now that Alexa will probably become a GPT-like AI and of course add a subscription charge to it.
I have a lot of plugs controlled by Alexa, but I have set up a Tuya Developer Account and started add the plugs to Tuya HA Integration, This worked pretty well and at the end all the Alexa controlled plug become HA controlled plugs. Not sure ALL smart plug will with with this, but mine did.
The biggest hole left without Alexa is the Voice capabilities of an Echo or Dot. I have set up the Voice Pipeline coming from the Year of the Voice and made it work with a little M5. It kind of worked. Wake word was marginal, understanding the command was marginal and the speaker was of low quality and poor volume, Not bad at this point of Voice development. And many thanks to the team for all the incredible work that was done.
So my question is if there is any effort to either find commercially available hardware that would improve quality and reliability, or any hardware development underway that can be tested. And in particular perhaps a way to hack an Echo or Dot to use for HA or at least the parts.
I have seen a couple YouTubes on building such a thing, But things are still a bit buggy and one-off mostly. I think I heard on the last State of HA that some hardware development was in progress. Not sure if it covers this area of concern.
Having a place to compile options that work could help a lot.
Does such a forum exist?
Thanks