Pete's Blog Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition Tinkering

[pete_c]

Started to Tinker with the Home Assistant Voice Preview edition. I am impressed.

A few months tinkered with the M5-Atom Echo. Tiny device. Worked fine.

Easy set up. Installed a voice template that works nicely with the PE device.

Voice - Weather Forecast - Local Assist Blueprint

Also using audio TTS output to bluetooth for MS SAPI speech and Home Assistant Speech.

Configured a few of the 433Mhz contact switches to doors and 433Mhz PIRs for TTS speech. Working well.

 

[George M]

Hey Pete. If you are interested in this stuff I suggest you check out the Sat1. I've read that the PE is lacking in many ways. This guy has been working with voice assist for quite a while and last fall started a company. I have one on order that is supposed to arrive this month. A very active and responsive discord. Here is the link to the website

FutureProofHomes

Private AI-powered voice control for the smart home.

futureproofhomes.net

 

[ano]

I think the more I'm in home automation, and I'm working on "version 5" in my home with Home Assistant and Hibitat, the less I care about using a voice assistant to turn on a light. In fact Alexa's are out-of-here, and I'm using Siri for what I use voice for, mainly to request music. On the other-hand, text-to-speech IS very important to me. Alexa is out, Sonos is in.

Certainly that is a great effort by FutureProofHomes, but the funny part is, its going back to where I was maybe 15 years ago, but with a better voice and recognition. I guess the difference is we all have smartphones now. A smarthome's job is to keep me informed of events, not for me to tell it every light to turn on. It should know that, besides, LED bulbs use so little power, what is the difference if one is on an extra 5 - 10 minutes? Who cares? Are you going.to really pay $1000's of dollars to save $0.05 in electricity?

 

[George M]

For me - both Alexa and Siri are a no go. Never used them and never will. Wont have them in my house (at least Alexa since I don't have any apple products I wouldn't have Siri any way). I do find voice control somewhat intriguing now, but it must be local for me to use it.

 

[ano]

Personally, I think the spying thing is overrated, as I can't imagine any Amazon or Apple employees would have the time to spy of people. I'm not sure they would hear much 99.9% of the time except maybe the TV. Apple does much processing locally, Amazon is going ALL remote. Having said that Amazon works better than Apple, but Apple's privacy policy has also delayed much of their AI rollout because AI locally is tough.

Amazon at one time was good, but slowly they have added more and more ads, and their home automation has gone downhill. Its only 80% functional at this point. I've had voice control working on Alexa and Siri for years. I may use a command once every 4 months, if that.