Is Home Assistant Voice PE the FUTURE of Smart Homes?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

So, what do you think about the Voice PE? Let me know in the comments!

[@MrDenisJoshua]

I think that the volume is not satisfy me... is too low. I don't know what is the hardware that use, but I think that Onju Voice (Google Nest Mini + personalized PCB) have a more better experience on volume. Maybe the next hardware will be better.

[@captain_loeffel]

I think it sounds very interesting, but it is still first generation, so there will be many bugs and some might be a no go. OpenAI sounds cool, but in the end those "AI's" are nothing else than very good defined search engines. No intelligence involved, but nevertheless it creates new possibilities. On the other side, it is extremely slow and it is just as its counterparts it depends on the internet and a running connection. As I live in a country where internet is quite good in use but badly established (I live in Germany and my internet connection drops far too often. Several times a month for several minutes up to an hour is normal.) this solution is as bad as its counterparts. What I was missing in your presentation was you mentioning that there is a fallback option, where the whole system would drop AI but would be still operating locally with the normal commands. So why exchanging a running system against another system without a real reason? Why taking the costs for that? Don't misunderstand me, I like that they create another option away from those giants, but it is somehow still the same solution, just worse as it is just starting. My main goal with Home Assistant is to provide a functionality that also works if internet is gone. I can't see that here. That was the reason why I banned all Wifi lights and so on as they depend on Tuya or even worse an closed solution that might not run when they say they don't want third party interference (just thinking about Haier). Local Tuya was my first way, but it is totally unstable and devices tend to go offline. From the remaining Tuya devices I had two the went offline and there was no way to make them working online again, except via Tuya itself. Even deleting them and reintegrate them failed as they were only online for a few hours or days. So i switch to ZigBee. That was a pain as it was an expensive choice, but ZigBee is running without problems.

[@ErikGeurts]

Personally, I am not interested at all in voice. I don't want to speak to my home, and I don't want my home to speak to me. I want home automation to be silent and invisible as much as possible.

[@nunyabiznes80085]

Would you consider doing a tutorial for a local LLM that can handle home automation commands? I think there is a market for cloudless voice commands and Willow didn't write cut it at this point in time.

[@Gooney79]

Tries his best to not say "Okay nabu" the entire video, but ends with "Alexa" in the end... Thx, man! lol :D

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Hahaha. I wasn't aware that saying Alexa triggers the Alexa. I obviously do not have an Alexa speaker myself. 🙃

[@captain_loeffel]

Who uses Alexa with the activation command Alexa? That makes sure everyone can activates it, when you chat with them. ;)

[@michaelmcalceet]

I just ordered mine yesterday! Fun fact: if you integrate a service like ElevenLabs, you can easily recreate SpongeBob-or any character you can think of-as your personal assistant.

[@donpowers6033]

Curious if you can add more than one of these devices to your smart home? I have 10 HomePods (Gen 2) and HomePod Minis scattered throughout my house. Can I do the same with the HAV PE?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes sure, you can use multiple in your home.

[@kaandurgut]

Hey friend, I send my regards from Turkey for the truly unbiased review.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thanks!

[@raghu9270]

Your videos are great. I regularly watch and believe me they are very informative and fun to watch. Thanks once again for putting it out there. I am particularly interested in projects using deepsleep functionalities of esp32. I am trying to build a capacitive touch switch and house it in a case powered by AAA bateries. So it has to be set to deepsleep to conserve the batteries. Can you do a video on how and also share the code if possible. The only component is a TTP223, on an ESP32. The ESP should waveup when the touch switch is active send its state for further automation and then go back to sleep. I am unable to resolve the issues with using the same pin for as the touch sensor and the wakeup sensor.

[@DavidL-DaKing]

@SmartHomeJunkie Does the PE support other Wake words created in HA?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes it does.

[@DavidL-DaKing]

@SmartHomeJunkie Thank You, I don't use AI, maybe one day but did finally get me an ESP32-S3-Box, only like voice assist for lights/fans, also have a couple Atoms too, so gotta try the PE now...

[@DavidL-DaKing]

@@SmartHomeJunkie one more question, how are the mic(s) compared to the S3? How close do you have to be for the PE to pick up your voice? Also, how is it with background noise? Thank for your Reviews and Setups, they Rock!!!

[@DavidL-DaKing]

Just ordered one, out of stock everywhere, hope it don't take 6 months like the ESP32-S3-BOX did...

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

When I sit on my couch that is approximately 4 meters away from the Voice PE, it understands me loud and clearly.

[@Danskulainen]

Thanks for the video, always enjoy your content.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thank you 🙏🏻

[@tasi]

Will HA Blue be powerful enough to run voice locally, if not is the only option upgrading the HA device to one with a Intel N100 or equivalent processor, or is there an option to run voice processing on a seperate device and link it to HA? Thanks for the wonderful unbias review.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I am using Nabu Casa because that speeds it up a lot. I didn't test it on my Blue.

[@mephitstophilis]

Jeff Geerling did some testing between a CM4 and a CM5 in his HA Yellow, and found a marked improvement in local voice processing on the more powerful CM5. It went from 3-4 seconds per command to 1-2 seconds per.

[@mkpears]

good review ! ...one question -- does this device also work to play sounds as a response to automations ? Like for example, I have a device I use to have HA automations play a sound to it when the automation is triggered, like when Alarmo is activated, or when the garage door opens... etc. Earlier Voice assistants (like the Raspiaudio speaker) could be setup to do either voice Assist, or sound notification playback, but not both without having to change the Yaml configuration for some reason. Does the ReSpeaker do both with the same yaml configuration ? Cheers!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes sure, it's a media player, so you can send audio or tts messages to it.

[@mkpears]

@@SmartHomeJunkie great ! and Thank you fro the reply !

[@TheDiabeticWay]

can it be used through Cloudflare and not Nabu? thanks again for your video!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes, but you'll need to use the whisper and piper addons locally. They are slower than Nabu Casa cloud though.

[@mikesmods317]

Thanks for the video! How is the sound quality? Sounds like it has no bass?

[@formatBCE]

The speaker is weak. If you want music, use external speaker with audio jack.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

The speaker is loud, but has little bass indeed. You can attach an external speaker using the jack plug.

[@major_west]

The small speaker sounds so tinny. I'd like to support Nabu Casa on this, but will have to wait till they improve the hardware to something closer to my Amazon Alexa.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yeah, it's still radio quality, but it's much louder than all the other initiatives.

[@bonelifer]

He failed to mention the 3.5mm jack beside the usb-c.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Not true. I mention the jack in the beginning of the video.

[@xbox360benji]

Looks cool is there an option to stop it repeating what you ask it to do out of curiosity ?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I'm not sure what you mean by "repeating what you ask"

[@xbox360benji]

I mean if you ask to " switch on bedroom lights " it will switch them on and reply back " bedroom lights switched on " just wondering if there is any options to just play an acknowledgement tone instead but I don't think my google home does that either...

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I did not find an option for that yet

[@raymondggoldstein]

How does the initial discovery from Home Assistant work? Looks like it’s Bluetooth? My HA Odroid is in my basement and I don’t have a Bluetooth adapter installed. Will I need to add Bluetooth to set this up? And possibly a Bluetooth Proxy for certain areas of my house?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Good question. I hope someone else can answer this.

[@JonBoy-c8p]

You don’t need Bluetooth on your ODROID, but it helps to use Bluetooth on your MOBILE, when initially installing.

[@raymondggoldstein]

@@JonBoy-c8p Thank you!

[@MrCardeso]

Hmm... I am currently heavily invested in Alexa (almost one Echo device per room). It will have to be pretty miraculous for me to add this. However, I keep an open mind and my eyes peeled for new developments. Thanks for the review!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thanks for your kind words!

[@formatBCE]

@@MrCardeso well, you're not the target audience. I had bunch of Echoes. 7 months ago I ditched all of them and started working on fully local voice solution. Alexa is nightmare. :)

[@TheDanielsherer]

That's fine, I love my all my Alexas too (5 so far), but don't forget, they're only free while Amazon allows it. Amazon recently confessed that they "made a mistake" with Alexa's by thinking things like adding to a shopping list would translate into people BUYING from Amazon. Also, all the traffic for turning lights on/off, etc doesn't generate any revenue. So, at any time, they could make that a subscription service. Then, all of us who are "heavily invested" in Alexa will either pony-up or need local alternatives. Personally, I'm going to support development of those services so they'll be ready should I ever want to completely switch.

[@Matt_UKTX]

I'd really like to see a comparison video between this and the S3 Box. What are the pros and cons of each?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

The biggest difference is the loudness of the speaker.

[@clairerovic]

Thanks heaps, that was so fast 😂😅 was still watching HA.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Hope you enjoyed it!

[@Kalween8326]

Will it work with local Ollama?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes

[@JonBoy-c8p]

How well does it work locally with HA BLUE?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I did not test that.

[@JonBoy-c8p]

@ Thank you for your reply. I’ve ordered one to try a few ideas, but wondered how well it works with my HA Blue. I have access whilst away from home, but haven’t tried NABU CASA. I want to investigate the functionality of the device, & anticipate enjoying learning.

[@claudiudane6364]

From personal experience recommend home assistant voice preview edition or esp 32 s3 box 3 ? Thank you

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Home Assistant Voice PE for sure.

[@claudiudane6364]

Thank you!

[@dnealuk]

Anybody want to buy a esp32 s3 box 3?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

🤣

[@Fr3dek85]

From what I understand it is just an ESP32 with mic and speaker and you have to connect it to anything else like i.e. local LLM in order to use it otherwise it it's pretty much useless? If that's the case I don't quite see how it is going to compete with Google Home, Siri or Alexa. I thought this device is going to have like an inbuild LLM model (which you could update etc.) and could work completely locally/independently but seems that's not the case and if that's really how it is, in my opinion it is not worth this money

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes, you need Home Assistant otherwise it won't function.

[@Big.Crimpin]

Once they process commands locally, I'd buy one. The lagg from command to implementation in the video kills me.

[@Sparky_D]

They do IF you stick to local control rather than using an online A.I. agent

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

You can already process locally only using Assist and even AI using Ollama for instance.

[@Big.Crimpin]

Thank you for the clarification ☺️

[@lisandroCT]

​@@Sparky_D You can also do local AI.

[@lmamakos]

It's not required that you use an AI, either a remote cloud based one (like ChatGPT, etc.) or a local instance (like Ollama) - you can rely on using only the Home Assistant conversation agent based on matching intents.. which is essentially what Alexa and other non-AI-based voice assistant platforms use. In fact, you can configure the voice pipeline in Home Assistant to try local intent processing first before falling back to using a LLM AI agent. This will likely be lower latency and you avoid the (small) API cost of using an LLM for the routine stuff. If these reviews were not do so far ahead of time, this latter fallback feature was released in the December Home Assistant version and is real handy.

[@GammelSurMand]

Does it support commands in your own language or english only?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes, in your own language as well.

[@sero9725]

Does it support data over USB-C or only Wifi?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

You can update it using USB-C if that's what you mean.

[@sero9725]

@ Sorry, I mean the connectivity to the network, as an Ethernet port alternative via USB-C. Not a big fan of Wifi

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I think only WiFi.

[@formatBCE]

@@sero9725 you definitely can make something like this, with Ethernet. FutureProofHomes will officially present their Satellite1 shortly, that thing has PoE as milestone.

[@peterrhodin8779]

Does is support languages as Swedish?

[@vulcan4d]

Big price, small box

[@mischadebrouwer9855]

Wouldn't you think that eventually this device should work with an upcoming 'local AI' instance in HA? From that moment onwards this may actually be great.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

That is already possible using Ollama for example.

[@truejarhead]

Highly doubt they are claiming it would make any other service obsolete… I would probably clarify and state that is your opinion

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

They are not claiming it and I do not say they do.

[@andlinux]

I will buy one of these if they are more "mature" ;)

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I think the maturity lies in the software and not in the hardware.

[@andlinux]

@@SmartHomeJunkie true

[@boorandras9723]

The whole voice command -thing is a "dead end" of smart home.. I hope the direction of improvements will turn as soon as it can..

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I couldn't agree more.

[@upsilondiesbackwards7360]

​@@SmartHomeJunkieSo what's the point of the video?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Did you watch my conclusion?

[@vector652]

I mean who want's to use open AI on this? It's extremely slow and what's about the privacy?

[@ArtherFocksake]

Got mine two days ago, it will be helpful when it comes to filling my bin with utter rubbish. It's junk.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Two days ago. That can't be true given the fact that it was released three days ago.

[@georgeboydratcliff1036]

All that tech AND a girlfriend? How do you do it? 😂

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Change girlfriends regularly 😜🤣

[@MarkSnop]

seems like it was pretty slow compared to Alexa.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

It is, but it will get better overtime. That is software related.

[@eM_Wu]

Swedish Bookstore...?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Ehm?

[@eM_Wu]

@SmartHomeJunkie 😂. Top Secret Swedish Bookstore. Thought you were old enough to remember

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

No sorry. I never heard of it.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I looked it up and get it now 😂😂😂

[@eM_Wu]

@@SmartHomeJunkie see...? 😉

[@geoffreycoan]

I’m not seeing the killer use case of these voice control devices. It’s neat, a techy gadget as you say, but other than turning lights on or off (and we don’t have any automated lights) or playing music through a smart speaker I’m not really seeing how it would make my life better. But clearly its a great achievement, the price is fair, and it will only continue to be developed and enhanced

[@SneakieGargamel]

Sorry but your downsides are about the voice engine. I think this is unrelated to the Home Assistant Voice PE, because your can use other engines as you know. I expected your opinion about the speaker quality or microphone quality.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

That is exactly what I'm saying that there have to be done software updates before this is ready for the average Joe. And I think I show how the hardware works and sounds in the demos. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@SneakieGargamel]

@@SmartHomeJunkie Dont get me wrong, I appreciate the video. I agree there have to be software updates, but these update are for the the engine, not to this device. You are reviewing the device but criticising the engine. What I mean is that the S3 Box 3 has the exact same downsides and every other voice device you connect to home assistant, because its unrelated to the device

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yes, you are absolutely correct!

[@kchiem]

ooh-va-heh-ho?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Yup, it's Okay Nabu running backwards.

[@formatBCE]

To be frank, all that complains about not understanding are related to the pipeline (basically, software on HA side), which will be evolving. The device itself does its job great.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

That is correct and that is what I am saying. There need to be some software updates.

[@formatBCE]

@SmartHomeJunkie I've heard "the device is bad". :)

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

You didn't hear that from me I hope.

[@formatBCE]

@@SmartHomeJunkie sorry, for me that was video conclusion... :)

[@SayWhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat]

OPENAI TESTS WASS UNFAIR! FOR NAMU YOU ASKED TO TURN ON AND OFF, FOR OpenAI you asking hard command like DIMMING. not specifying how much. Hardware of this device is trash. how hard was to add normal speaker? my phone sounds better. 70 euros for this sounds a lot. nICE TO HAVE LOCAL voice, but... 70 euros for item that will get new revision in 3 months..i will wait.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I asked openai to activate a home assistant scene, so why is it unfair?

[@formatBCE]

@@SayWhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat build one yourself. There's hardware available. All parts. I have 6 self-made devices, that work on same XU-316 chip and same esp32s3. Believe me, even with self-assembling and printing enclosure it's not cheap.

[@Tntdruid]

Its junk 😄

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Why?

[@diedrichg]

The hardware looks great. The majority of his tests were not able to be processed locally so they had to fallback to a cloud AI for the answer; this takes considerable time. He also didn't mention what hardware his HA instance is running on. A Pi will be much slower than HAOS running on a desktop processor. There are other reviews that show the response time comparison for local, NabuCasa, and ChatGPT .

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

My HA runs on a thin client. I do show local processing. It's the first demo in the video. But the AI part should be the most impressive. 🤷🏼‍♂️