Voice control outside US ? offline voice control?

[pescobar (Pablo Escobar Lopez)]

Hi all,

I am new to Home Assistant. I am planning to build my new house in coming months and the platform I liked the most for automation is HA so I have started to “research” what would be the best HA setup for me.

Something I would like to have is voice control but I have seen that by now only alexa and google home are supported and only in the US. Is there any other option for voice control which can be used outside the US ? and preferably offline? Please correct me if I am wrong but currently all the voice assistants need internet access to work, is that right?

I have found this topic that by now seems the best option but it would only work in my phone and not as a voice assistant to stay always in my living room:

Create your own personal assistent with Tasker (in multi language) + Google Now integration

This is a tutorial how you can control your devices by using your voice in your own language… All this can be also triggered by Google Now. Requirements: An android phone Tasker Autovoice Setup Tasker: Configuration File First I like to setup several thing, so I made a task, that I only need to run once… I’m putting my host, password and my devices in here. (When a device changes, then I only need to change it on 1 place, and all the other tasks will change as well). So a config task wou…

I have also found this project which is pretty similar to what I am looking for, based on open source and with focus on privacy but it won’t be distributed until end of 2018 (in theory) .
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-mark-ii-the-open-voice-assistant

Is there any other option around which can be used for voice control with home assistant which can stay in my living room like alexa or google home? Ideally I want something which is open so I can play with it and modify it, which takes privacy into account and which can be used outside the US.

I have also looked at homekit by apple but I don’t like it. Their products are too closed for me.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestion

regards,
Pablo.

[Bobby_Nobble]

@pescobar

alexa and google home are supported and only in the US.

You can use both anywhere and many do, it’s only the Alexa Smart Skill with the cloud component that is currently US only but there are plenty of other ways to interact with it…

Amazon Alexa

[Tinkerer (aka DubhAd on GitHub)]

@pescobar

preferably offline

If you were to have looked at the list of voice components then looked at each of them, you’d have found Snips:

It runs 100% on-device, and does not require an internet connection.

You’ll have to provide your own hardware.

[broesie (Ryoen Deprouw)]

In tasker and autovoice, it works outside the us. You can trigger your voice commands directly with autovoice, but you can also trigger it by Google Search and then it will redirect it to autovoice. Anyway, you have an option to choose, or use both.
I speak dutch, and I use it all the time… so I don’t have to speak english to my Google or Voice Assistant.
Voice Assistant can also be configured in your own language, and also support natural language speaking…

[pescobar (Pablo Escobar Lopez)]

thanks all for your help and suggestions.

@Tinkerer Snips is definitively what I want Thanks for the pointer. I was looking for a hardware device similar to alexa and I totally missed it. It would be really cool if the Snips guys would provide some certified hardware devices to run Snips similar to the Mycroft Mark devices but I guess that will come.

@broesie I will also try tasker. Thanks for the pointers.

[Tinkerer (aka DubhAd on GitHub)]

The Snips folks did a blog post where they reviewed a bunch of hardware devices that can be used with Snips.

[pescobar (Pablo Escobar Lopez)]

thanks @Tinkerer, I had seen that post while reviewing the hardware options. I have also seen this other related post

My “problem” is that I am really bad soldering and building DIY hardware projects, that’s why I would ideally prefer a ready to use device. Also I don’t think my wife likes having a rpi and an array mic laying around in the living room. Anyway I will explore the different possibilities.

Thanks!