And this is my personal feedback on the commercial product made by NC that I purchased with real money, not ‘preview’ money. My initial comment, and still my focus, is on finding a software solution. However, the discussion seems to have shifted toward the usual ‘preview’ aka ‘beta’ narrative that’s commonly brought up on this forum.
You can impose constraints in the prompt words, such as not saying too much nonsense
Come on, I am not going to relisten to podcasts transscribe them for you, so you can either go listen to them yourself or not. If you really care and are not just here to whine then search for ”paulus schoutsen podcast” for the last few months as there are more than just one. → Google Search
Did you even read the the later sections in the full announcement where this again is also explained if you understand all what they wrote there? → The era of open voice assistants has arrived - Home Assistant
Anyway the gist is that this project follows the open-designs movement and to ignite that they more or less released this as a fully open design with a reference model under a open-source hardware license and open-source firmware because they want others to improve on it. See → Open-design movement - Wikipedia
It is the same concept as with RepRap 3D-printers (which as you probably know has blown up because of this idea of being fully open-source and community-driven) → RepRap - Wikipedia
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I don’t have OCD to collect junk and electronic waste. Hopefully, you can read the screenshot, if you understand what’s written, as well as read transcript from the release video yourself.
I prefer being realistic over blind cheering and expect to get what was promised for my money.
That says today, (implied: under the applied constraints).
Very obviously one could do better hardware for a higher price even today.
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@Molodax Just sell the one you bought on eBay or some other marketplace for used stuff. They are sold out everywhere so you should not have any issues with selling it to someone else who was not fast enough to buy one from the first batch and are now eagerly waiting for the next batch to be manufactured.
If want citations then start with the FAQ on the product page at https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/ as here are just a few quotes that should not be open to open to your interpretation of that this product is intended to be and not be:
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“Why is this called the Preview Edition?: It is our vision to make open, local, and private voice assistants a reality in any language. While we have made great strides in realizing this, it is such a massive undertaking that we need our worldwide community to participate in its development. An essential ingredient for the community to drive the project forward is a standardized hardware platform for voice, built for Home Assistant from the ground up: Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition." While for some, the current state of our voice assistant may be all they need, we think there is still more to do before it is ready for every home in every country, and until then, we’ll be selling this Preview of the future of voice assistants. Taking back our privacy isn’t for everyone - it’s a journey - and we want as many people as possible to join us and make it better.”
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“Can I play music on this device?: Yes, if you plug an external speaker into the 3.5mm audio port. The built-in speaker is meant for voice feedback and is not optimized for listening to music, but the included DAC is capable of playing lossless audio on a suitable external speaker. We recommend using Music Assistant to control music playback.”
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“Can this replace my Google Mini, Apple HomePod, Amazon Echo, or other Big Tech devices?: In the future, we intend to match and then surpass the Big Tech voice assistants, but for now, this Preview Edition can not yet do everything those devices can. For some, the current capabilities of our voice assistant will be all they need; especially those who just want to set timers, manage their shopping list, and control their most used devices. For others, we understand they want to ask their voice assistant to make whale sounds or to tell them how tall Taylor Swift is - our voice assistant doesn’t do those things… yet.”
And again, the two main announcements also have loads of not-so-subtle sentences that try to conway what they want to achieve by releasing a preview edition of this new open-source hardware in order to start a new open-design movement. I will quote a few of them from https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/12/19/voice-preview-edition-the-era-of-open-voice/ and https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/12/19/voice-chapter-8-assist-in-the-home/**.:
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“Since we began developing our open-source voice assistant for Home Assistant, one key element has been missing - great hardware that’s simple to set up and use. Hardware that hears you, gives you clear feedback, and seamlessly fits into the home. Affordable and high-quality voice hardware will let more people join in on its development and allow anyone to preview the future of voice assistants today. Setting a standard for the next several years to base our development around.”
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“The era of open, private voice assistants begins now, and we’d love for you to be part of it.”
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“Our main goal with Voice Preview Edition was to make the best hardware to get started with Assist, Home Assistant’s built-in voice assistant. If you’re already using other third-party hardware to run Assist, this will be a big upgrade. We prioritized its ability to hear commands, giving it an industry-leading dedicated audio processor and dual microphones”
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Why Preview Edition: For some, our voice assistant is all they need; they just want to say a couple of commands, set timers, manage their shopping list, and control their most used devices. For others, we understand they want to ask their voice assistant to make whale sounds or to tell them how tall Taylor Swift is - this voice assistant doesn’t entirely do those things (yet). We think there is still more we can do before this is ready for every home, and until then, we’ll be selling this Preview of the future of voice assistants. We’ve built the best hardware on the market, and set a new standard for the coming years, allowing us to focus our development as we prepare our voice assistant for every home. Taking back our privacy isn’t for everyone - it’s a journey - and we want as many people as possible to join us early and make it better.
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"Fully open and customizable: We’re not just launching a new product, we’re open sourcing all of it. We built this for the Home Assistant community. Our community doesn’t want a single voice assistant, they want the one that works for them – they want choice. Creating a voice assistant is hard, and until now, parts of the solution were locked behind expensive licenses and proprietary software. With Voice Preview Edition being open source, we hope to bootstrap an ecosystem of voice assistants. We tried to make every aspect of Voice Preview Edition customizable, which is actually pretty easy when you’re working hand-in-hand with ESPHome and Home Assistant. "
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“We also made the hardware easy to modify, inside and out. For instance, the included speaker is for alerts and voice prompts, but if you want to use it as a media player, connect a speaker to the included 3.5mm headphone jack and control it with software like Music Assistant. The included DAC is very clean and capable of streaming lossless audio.”
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“Community-driven: The beauty of Home Assistant and ESPHome is that you are never alone when fixing an issue or adding a feature. We made this device so the community could start working more closely together on voice; we even considered calling it the Community edition. Ultimately, it is the community driving forward voice - either by taking part in its development or supporting its development by buying official hardware or Home Assistant Cloud. So much has already been done for voice, and **I can’t wait to see the advancements we make together.”
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“Conclusion: So many new innovations and improvements for Assist have happened in the past couple of months, and this speaks to the power of having good hardware to build our software on. Voice Preview Edition is the best open voice hardware available today, and even with it only in the hands of a couple of hundred people today, it’s making a noticeable difference. Whether that’s writing code, improving language support, making blueprints, or even just reporting bugs.The momentum we will build having this in the hands of thousands will be game-changing - it’s why we’ve declared that the era of open voice assistants has arrived.”
PS: Now I will ignore your future posts since to me you simply look to only be whining after buying a product without even reading the announcement or the product page which made you have very unrealistic expectations that you now seem to have a personal problem making an effort to understand and deal with this situation (and hopefully you will grow to grasp and accept that this is an inexpensive product as the $59 US-dollar price is not a lot today because the global economy is currently in a downturn due to the post-pandemic inflation and concurrent chip shortages + shipping crisis that has caused prices to been driven at a sharp rise in prices compared to pre-COVID19).
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If you like tinkering, you can use the grove port on the bottom to connect an I2S DAC and amplifier for a speaker. If you want a finished product, you’ll just have to be patient.
EDIT:
Someone with 3D CAD skills, please create a base for the Voice PE to sit on that has a spot for a big ol’ speaker. That would be sweet