Yes indeed I am using the timers offered by the July release
The thing is that if I have multiple timers running in forget which one are running. I could give them a name to start with but I like to see how much time each one has left and to add/subtract time or even cancel the right one. For that I like to have an overview in HA. I could make text sensors as 10 placeholder but I was hoping to do that a bit more dynamically based on the timer.size() call.
As far as what’s displayed in HA this can be done with conditions when creating the HA dashboard. You could create 10 text sensors than only have active ones show up in the HA dashboard. See the below where he has the dashboard update dynamically to the room he’s in using a condition based on the esprense location and has some other examples like the garage door status only showing when it’s open since it’s closed most of the time. If your main goal is not to have 10 text sensors showing up when only one timer is running in the HA dashboard this should accomplish that. This way you can show no timers or just active ones.
This is t needed if the above accomplishes what you need but just wanted to point out you can make HA service calls from within ESPHome. I’m also wondering if you could simply duplicate it in HA using a timer helper (helpers are under devices, then right icon at the bottom) and make a home assistant service calls from ESPHome although since I don’t have native timers setup so I can’t test and there could be a few issues with this method. Like adding time. That an duplicate timers existing but you could have the helper just for display reasons. I do know helpers or entities can’t be created dynamically in HA, the entity has to exist so you would have to create a helper named something like timer.timer_1, timer.timer_2, ect. Then use conditions to only show active timer in the HA dashboard. Below is my current solution using a timer helper. Probably not ideal but just a thought.
Regardless to make HA service calls you have to go to settings, devices, then ESPHome (top part), then configure and check the checkbox. For example, I own a korvo-1 as my.voive assistant and it makes a popping sound on voice reply’s so I just ended up sending all audio output to a smart speaker. There may be a better HA service to call from ESPHome also. If you go to developer tools in HA, then services, you will see all the different services you could use. You could also send a notification to your phone when a timer finishes as another example. I do this but via automations. Waiting on my m5stack core3 before switching to native timers.
In order to do this you must enable your voice assistant to HA make service calls to HA as stated above. No one told me this when I first read about it and I got somewhat"frustrated" the first time I attempted this until I learned this requirement.
Thank you for the detailed reply. I will definitely try your suggestions.
Yesterday I made a few long running timers (10h +) om the ESP. This morning the where not available anymore on the ESP. Probably due to some connection problems, a restart or what else. I didn’t look into that yet. But to my surprise I noticed that these timers where still running in HA. For that i opened Assist and ask for “Timer Status”. It told me that 3 timers where running and gave details of the one with the shortest time left. In HA I wasn’t able to trace these timers. I used dev tool for it but they didn’t show up. I may be overlooking here something.
Based on the documentation they are supposed to run completely on the voice assistant. If they are created in HA anywhere they would be found under developer tools, probably the timer domain which is what helpers create. If it’s not there then it’s not stored in HA, at least not visibly unless you store them in a text sensor like you are already doing but may be a way to do the same thing to a timer. HA usually just doesn’t create things without the users knowledge like entities. Some things can only be created through helpers, or are easiest to like virtual switches which is just a bool value. With that said I haven’t used them yet so I could be mistaken but developer tools would be the place to find them if they do exist.
Timers are supposed to survive reboots, at least when do e through an automation using HA but not sure about native ESPHome voice timers. Really not a lot of information out there besides the announcement at the beginning of July and some scattered threads here. I’m sure you could also have ESPHome announce when the timer is done over a smart speaker. Below is what I got for audio output when a timer ends but through automations. It’s fun to freak people out with sentence/response automations because if you go to services and choose the below it will show you entities, usually smart speakers like Chromecast/Sonos, and have it reply however you want but you can’t send it to a voice assistant, at least not yet. I think there is a local TTS service that works just as good also.
FYI, the newly announced ”ReSpeaker Lite" (ReSpeaker Lite board only) and “ReSpeaker Lite Voice Assistant Kit” (ReSpeaker Lite board with onboard ESP32) products.
So that same webpage offers different models, with one being a 2-Mic Array board model that combines ESP32-S3 ESPHome support + a XMOS XU-316 chip for advanced audio processing, and a second model that is a DIY-varient that is only a 2-Mic Array board model with just the XMOS XU-316 chip that you can use with your own compute solution (thus you need to add your own MCU board or a SBC/computer such as a the Raspberry Pi) and connect it via I2S or USB.
@synesthesiam The former full kit solution sound similar to the hardware specification mentioned for the upcoming voice-kit development platform that Nabu Casa members said that they are working on, or? …though looks like the ReSpeaker Lite Voice Assistant Kit is missing expansion ports and if so will not allow for additional hardware addons?
Looks interesting, and am particularly pleased to see that their demonstration video is using Home Assistant with ESPHome and wyoming For anyone else interested, the product page has price USD$26.91 for full kit with an enclosure. More info in the Wiki.
They state Onboard AI Algorithms … the kit includes Automatic Speech Recognition algorithms for Interference Cancellation (IC) , Acoustic Echo Cancellation, Noise Suppression, Voice-to-Noise Ratio (VNR), and Automatic Gain Control (AGC), enabling high quality voice capture.
I found a firmware file, but so small that I guess most of the algorithms are closed source hardcoded on-chip.
Personally I don’t see seeed as being interested in supplying hardware and support to end users - and wouldn’t want a repeat of their “support” for the reSpeaker 2-mic HAT for Raspberry Pi.
WOOT! Stumbled on this new “voice-kit” GitHub repository where ESPHome developers are developing new or improved components for I2S audio (XMOS) support and media playback support for FLAC, etc. for the upcoming voice-kit hardware platform from Nabu Casa:
I have to agree a little. This is clearly geared towards ESPHome but they will probably put out one config example and never update it for a voice assistant in ESPHome. Also, after looking at the XNOS datasheet, Seeed doesn’t specify the exact model and there are 10 or so with different capabilities, some supporting external LDDR1 RAM. On the summer release video when they briefly discussed the hardware, one of them sade the XMOS chip had 16 cores so I’m 99% sure it’s this model, but the numbers after make a difference.
If the firmware is closed source in the XMOS chip then it can’t be an ESPHome ready device like Nabus will be. It will be up to the community to tweak any YAML for this thing although I do expect it to sell well. Also, it looks rushed, the full kit is just the board in an acrylic case sitting on the speaker. It’s essentially a respeaker 2 hat with an XMOS chip and an ESP32-S3. Not sure why anyone would try to use anything but a XIAO on it.
Seeed is invested in ESPHome/Nabu now though. They are a reseller of nvidias Jetson compute modules and someone from Seeed started the post to get a local LLM working though and HA devs and Nvidia devs have made a lot of effort to port stuff. They are just interested in selling hardware but after it’s in your hands don’t expect anything else from them. There is nothing wrong with that approach but if they just made it open source (and it may be) I would have more faith in long term support. While I expect Nabus voice assistant too more expensive, you know it will just work and continue to be supported for at least 2 years, probably more
I would.like to know the exact model that’s in this and what will be in Nabus version but they obviously haven’t released hardware specifications yet.
It certainly seem to be taking ESPHome and Nabu Casa seriously, which is great to see !
Agree. I believe seeed and Espressif want to sell chips to companies who will develop products - not to directly support every hobbyist’s one-off project … hence the lack of ongoing support.
Sometimes they have to drum up interest (particularly in newer technologies), and so make small runs of “development kits” (probably at a loss) to show off the potential to developers.
Once interested, the developer will invest in learning the chip, developing their own product, selling and supporting their product … while buying lots of chips
Exactly !!! It seems Nabu Casa will use XMOS chips, and Nabu will do the bulk of the work to bring a user-friendly product to market, including providing support and (presumably) Open Source.
Yes, Nabu Casa’s VoiceKit will cost more than the XMOS development kit - but I trust Nabu Casa to put a fair price on their VoiceKit (though surely plenty will expect to price match with Google/Amazon’s deep pockets). I hope they allow an option for us to 3D print our own enclosures; and maybe the reSpeaker Lite is so close to Nabu Casa’s target design that we might also have an option to buy a reSpeaker Lite clone, assemble ourselves, and add ESPHome. I can’t wait to see what Nabu Casa come out with.
The future is looking very bright
Time for me to start saving my pension
@donburch888@ginandbacon if want deeper discussions regarding that ReSpeaker Lite product specifically that only applies to it then suggest that you post to the separate thread that instead, see:
Yes it is interesting, showing a wider interest in better cheaper voice assistant devices … but unless Mike says that this is the hardware in Nabu Casa’s VoiceKit I will just wait for Nabu Casa VoiceKit.
FYI, FutureProofHomes has now also announced a similar XMOS and ESP32-based two-board Voice Satellite hardware development kit for Home Assistant that he is call ”Satellite1 PCB Dev Kit”
The Satellite1 PCB Dev Kit contains the two PCBs necessary to build your own completely private voice assistant & multi-sensor with XMOS advanced audio processing & music playback. Add your own speaker and power supplies.
Satellite1 HAT Board:
This board features 4 PDM microphones, 12 NeoPixel LEDs, humidity/temp/lux sensors, 4 buttons (volume up/down, action button & hardware mute), plus the XMOS audio processing chip and a power DAC with for amplified speaker-out connection or 3.5mm headphone connection. All remaining GPIOs are also exposed.
The Satellite1 Hat connects easily to the Sat1 Core Board but can also be paired with a Raspberry Pi or a PC/Mac via USB! Perfect for all your voice assistant and audio projects!
Satellite1 Core Board:
The Satellite1 Core Board contains the ESP32-S3 n16r8, USB-C Power Delivery and 40-pin connection. This board attaches to the companion Sat1 HAT Board.
Looks like he has posted a future roadmap showing that he working on a a nice enclosure and more:
Noticed that @FutureProofHomes had a preview video on YouTube mentioning this project as “HomeX” 4-months ago (but at that time he had based the prototype on the wyoming-satellite platform running on a Raspberry Pi instead of using Nabu Casa’s upcoming ESPHome-based voice-kit hardware platform that runs on ESP32-S3 and using an XMOS xCORE chip for audio processing):
PS: The new design reminds me of the “Onju Voice” PCB replacement for the Google Nest Mini (2nd gen), which is a open-source hardware project that I hope someone else will pick up and update now:
Thanks for sharing out @Hedda! Happy to answer any questions you guys may have. Ask away.
We’re aiming to launch before Christmas and detailed documentation is coming. Hit me up if you want to help the core-team and have extensive hardware/firmware skills. We’re excited to launch!
And also wondering if your PBC(s) will be open-source hardware and/or use OSH/OSHW design?
I just updated the repo to clarify a bit our open-source strategy. In a nutshell, upon launch all the firmware (ESP & XMOS) will be open source and all our hardware schematics will be published too. The KiCad proj. files will follow a delayed open source model (I’ll publish those dates for us), at which point we will then put out the proj. files too. Open to folks thoughts on this! And again, if you want to work closely with the core-team then please do ping me!
I read that Nabu Casa’s will have an audio output jack (3.5mm headphone jack) for connecting external speakars.
The Sat1 has this as well. You’ll be able to power a 25W speaker directly from the device OR plug-in an external amplified speakers via the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Oddly specific use-case question: do you think enabling the bluetooth_proxy feature on the Sat1 would lead to any performance degradation? I’m building out room presence detection in my home using Bermuda and would love for any ESP32-based satellite like this I use to also act as a proxy, but I’ve heard of other ESP32 devices becoming unreliable when tasked with music + satellite + Bluetooth.
That’s great news! You may very well have my dream voice assistant in the works; it’s like you built it with exactly my desired features in mind. Excited for your launch!
For anyone else interested, the 
