WTH: Home Assistant Voice

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

WTH doesn’t the Home Assistant Voice have a proper speaker base and a battery base.

Understand it is a preview Edition and an enormous amount of incredible work has been done.

Not everyone has speakers laying around. I have bought an HA Voice and the speaker just cannot compete with a Google Nest Mini can do. It needs a speaker base that is up to standard to be able to fill a room with the voice response (don’t need another music device)

Need an optional add on battery base so it can be used in a covered outdoor space. Here is an example https://www.ggmm.com/

Thankyou for reading

2

Adding a better speaker means that the case must be bigger (someone else will complain about that). The case must be heftier to absorb vibration. This and the cost of a good speaker will atleast triple the cost. And then even more people will complain.

About the battery.
What prevent you to 3D print that youself. It has a battery connector. The design files are there.

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3

Because a lot of us in the community, whilst exceedingly enthusiastic with HA, do not have the equipment to do it. We want a commercially available solution even if it costs a bit more.

As for the speaker look at the smaller Google and Alexa devices, I know they have huge budgets for R&D but they can do it.

4

While you may order things at ebay so why not just order your design at a 3D printing service.it is not expensive.

Ps, this isn’t ment personal
In general I find it hard that people complain about hard work of others but themself aren’t willing to learn something or just try it themself.
Even doing simple things seems to be to much.

5

The google devices are heavy and made of metal not plastic to keep them open source. Also the numbers at which google home pods are produced makes them more affortable. However even google loosing money on their sales. They hoped to make a profit with the provided services

6

Sounds very personal, some things aren’t in people’s wheelhouse.

Whilst you say use a 3D printing service you may be in a country that is economical to do that not so for everyone. Besides 3D printing most often looks awful even from printing services.

By the way I am doing my research on 3D printers.

People are willing to help themselves and I find that comment very disrespectful

Just because you can do it does not mean everyone has the same advantages, stop judging people based on your situation

7

Better stopping this conversation before nasty things are said.

But one tip for your 3D print reseach. Have a look at resin prints. Excellent results, smooth and even print services abroard aren’t expensive.

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This is WHY. Nabu does NOT have huge budgets.

They came out with exactly what they thought they needed to progress to the next steps in thier goals. They cannot possibly make everyone happy and I for one am happy with this price point. Invariably more speakers more battery more… Whatever means more cost. They came up with least common denominator.

At least unlike (insert smart speaker vendor here) they pointed out exactly where the knockout plug for expansion is on the bottom of the device. Those other guys would have charged for it…

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9

Thanks Nathan, just my opinion, I mentioned a separate base and willing to pay more.

Despite the limitations I bought one just like I subscribe to NabuCasa

I thought that was WTH was all about ideas.

I believe the knockout is for a grove card

Also a MVP as a commercial product needs to match others in the market.

10

The knockout is for the Grove interface which is more than a card and I’m not here to argue.

They came out with exactly what they thought they needed to get. To the next step.

Im personally not happy I can’t change my wake word - yet. - Jarvis is overused and I hate Nabu. but that’s why this is PE. And why it’s not the release edition Voice device. We can armchair qb all day long. If you don’t like it there are already others popping up.

This device to me is like the Surface. It demonstrates what can be - hopefully prompting others to step up. If. You’re expecting finished complete device at this point you will be woefully dissatisfied.

11

The difference is you only get to get the hardware right once. Software you can iterate.

This is the dark side of this community. There are always critics of opinions instead of letting ideas flow.

Like others have said they should have put the design ideas out to the community like WTH.

12

This is the Preview Edition I get that. But I would love another option in the future with a speaker that’s worth a damn. The only reason I own Alexa smart speakers is because of the multi-room audio and the occasional voice command.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect the PE to do this, but it would be REALLY cool to see in the future.