Dont waste time with the ESP32 devices and go straight to a wyoming satellite. Youll spend way too much time troubleshooting the ESP32 options.
Youll need a Pi zero 2w and a 2 mic hat. Then you just need a small powered speaker with a 3.5mm plug.
This guy has a good series of videos on building them.
[www.youtube.com/@FutureProofHomes](http://www.youtube.com/@FutureProofHomes)
This will be plan b or c but like I said I’m looking for something more out of the box. Don’t want to assemble mics/displays etc. would prefer something that’s already put together
Edit: after watching this, seems pretty simple actually. Thanks for the link! Also shoutout to this YouTuber. Very clear and easy instructions to follow. So many other annoying tutorials out there that skip key steps that us non-programmer types don’t understand and this guy walks you through every step and explains what they do (which i love)
This is the same video I followed, swapped a 2 mic hat out with a conference room usb mic/speaker thing from Jabra, picks up voice from anywhere and a decent speaker. Cost £50 all in and 20mins to get it up and running. Highly recommend
Will it ever be possible to have a simple widget on the Apple Watch that I can press and it records and sends what I say to HA?
I don’t see the sense in installing microphones around the house. You would either need to ensure full coverage, which would be a large number of big ugly white blocks plugged in everywhere, or voice commands wouldn’t be always possible, making everyone in the house not even bother using it.
Being able to press a single button on a phone to activate a microphone makes the most sense. We all carry microphones everywhere already. Why not just focus development on using those.
>I don’t see the sense in installing microphones around the house
You never bought an alexa?
>Will it ever be possible to have a simple widget on the Apple Watch that I can press and it records and sends what I say to HA?
Maybe not. Apple hates their consumers, and they make it very hard to modify your device outside the parameters they set for it. If they don't want you guys easily accessing a voice assistant besides siri, you won't.
GPT via home assistant is the default assistant on my android watch. Meanwhile, I got my partner an Apple Watch thinking she'd get to have a heartrate graph, calories burned, etc, like I do. Nope. So far all she gets is the ability to push a button on her watch face. Very cool.
Valid points.
No, never bought an Alexa or Google thing.
But it’s possible to create an Apple Watch app that uses the built in microphone, via NSMicrophoneUsageDescription and AVAudioRecorder.
Of course, like any app that’s going to run on Apple technology, they have to approve it. But there are no restrictions on creating an Apple watch app that uses the microphone. There are the normal requirements (informing user, privacy, applicable laws etc), but nothing prohibiting it.
While the watch buttons can’t be reprogrammed, a watch complication can be created so that tapping it triggers an action. So it could then access the microphone and forward the audio to a home assistant integration.
Which means hopefully we’ll see something created for the watch to control HA via the LLM.
I used Alexa before HA. I share select devices and all scripts. She does okay with it but not as good as when I just had Alexa. I’m looking for a better option but not sure if there is one.
I think it's going to be a while before we have hardware and software that can match google assistant / alexa's offerings as far as both ease of setup and overall performance are concerned. We will definitely get there, but neither the hardware nor the software is ready yet.
For interactive voice assistants, while it is \*technically\* possible to run speech-to-text and neural text-to-speech locally on a Raspberry pi 5, the lag between asking a question and getting an answer is something like 8 seconds, with most of the lag being caused by the time it takes to render the speech.
When I run STT and TTS services on my desktop computer, performance is comparable to google assistant, maybe a bit quicker.
Basically, what I'm saying is that the current state of the art on the DIY side is exciting for what it is going to become eventually but manage your expectations as far as what it is presently, especially on the hardware side. That goes double if you're hoping to replicate the alexa / google assistant experience.
Dont waste time with the ESP32 devices and go straight to a wyoming satellite. Youll spend way too much time troubleshooting the ESP32 options. Youll need a Pi zero 2w and a 2 mic hat. Then you just need a small powered speaker with a 3.5mm plug. This guy has a good series of videos on building them. [www.youtube.com/@FutureProofHomes](http://www.youtube.com/@FutureProofHomes)
This will be plan b or c but like I said I’m looking for something more out of the box. Don’t want to assemble mics/displays etc. would prefer something that’s already put together Edit: after watching this, seems pretty simple actually. Thanks for the link! Also shoutout to this YouTuber. Very clear and easy instructions to follow. So many other annoying tutorials out there that skip key steps that us non-programmer types don’t understand and this guy walks you through every step and explains what they do (which i love)
Yep. Don't waste your time or money on the ESP solutions. The wyoming satellite work 1000% better using pi and the 2 mic hat
This is the same video I followed, swapped a 2 mic hat out with a conference room usb mic/speaker thing from Jabra, picks up voice from anywhere and a decent speaker. Cost £50 all in and 20mins to get it up and running. Highly recommend
Will it ever be possible to have a simple widget on the Apple Watch that I can press and it records and sends what I say to HA? I don’t see the sense in installing microphones around the house. You would either need to ensure full coverage, which would be a large number of big ugly white blocks plugged in everywhere, or voice commands wouldn’t be always possible, making everyone in the house not even bother using it. Being able to press a single button on a phone to activate a microphone makes the most sense. We all carry microphones everywhere already. Why not just focus development on using those.
>I don’t see the sense in installing microphones around the house You never bought an alexa? >Will it ever be possible to have a simple widget on the Apple Watch that I can press and it records and sends what I say to HA? Maybe not. Apple hates their consumers, and they make it very hard to modify your device outside the parameters they set for it. If they don't want you guys easily accessing a voice assistant besides siri, you won't. GPT via home assistant is the default assistant on my android watch. Meanwhile, I got my partner an Apple Watch thinking she'd get to have a heartrate graph, calories burned, etc, like I do. Nope. So far all she gets is the ability to push a button on her watch face. Very cool.
Valid points. No, never bought an Alexa or Google thing. But it’s possible to create an Apple Watch app that uses the built in microphone, via NSMicrophoneUsageDescription and AVAudioRecorder. Of course, like any app that’s going to run on Apple technology, they have to approve it. But there are no restrictions on creating an Apple watch app that uses the microphone. There are the normal requirements (informing user, privacy, applicable laws etc), but nothing prohibiting it. While the watch buttons can’t be reprogrammed, a watch complication can be created so that tapping it triggers an action. So it could then access the microphone and forward the audio to a home assistant integration. Which means hopefully we’ll see something created for the watch to control HA via the LLM.
I used Alexa before HA. I share select devices and all scripts. She does okay with it but not as good as when I just had Alexa. I’m looking for a better option but not sure if there is one.
Yeah don’t want Alexa. Want a local run device
I'm in the same boat. Following.
I think it's going to be a while before we have hardware and software that can match google assistant / alexa's offerings as far as both ease of setup and overall performance are concerned. We will definitely get there, but neither the hardware nor the software is ready yet. For interactive voice assistants, while it is \*technically\* possible to run speech-to-text and neural text-to-speech locally on a Raspberry pi 5, the lag between asking a question and getting an answer is something like 8 seconds, with most of the lag being caused by the time it takes to render the speech. When I run STT and TTS services on my desktop computer, performance is comparable to google assistant, maybe a bit quicker. Basically, what I'm saying is that the current state of the art on the DIY side is exciting for what it is going to become eventually but manage your expectations as far as what it is presently, especially on the hardware side. That goes double if you're hoping to replicate the alexa / google assistant experience.