Finding your Smart Home's Voice

[@Chsae314]

What a great and fair review! I can't wait to see how you routed your Voice Assistant output to the nearest media player! Also really interested in how you changed the default "I didn't understand that" response, what a great idea!

[@georgehooper429]

I have to hand it to you, of the reviews I watched, you were the first to identify the hardware as a gateway product and not the complete voice assistant. This appears to be an excellent device to take commands and provide the output, but its up to us has home assistant tinkerers to build the entire system to make it comparable to amazon’s or google’s home assistants. I’ve seen quite a few reviews of this device where they think that just plugging in this audio device gives a complete and comparable system to the big three. Consider the number of man hours and $$$ spent by amazon or google’s engineers to have their home automation system user friendly, and compare that to most home assistant admins. You can only get out multiples of the effort you put into it. But back on point, well done with your review and reality check on the product.

[@suzithewitch]

I saw you in the comments during the live stream so I've been waiting for you to come out with this video. Thank you. I bought one during the preview and then immediately suffered about $60 worth of buyer's remorse. This video helped me take a more realistic view of what I can do with it.

[@SlackerLabs]

I actually wrote, and recorded this video 5 times. That was the delay haha. We don't use voice for much of anything in this house. It's always been "Jarvis" stepping in to tell us stuff we need to know. But I have been having fun adding functionality.

[@AdnanKhan-dm8iz]

That shirt sold me on subscribing without even getting through the first min of the video

[@Wysp_Sedai]

Really looking forward to your video on routing the responses to an external media player!

[@mdmk]

This is a great and concise review of why this is a "preview"! Thanks so much Jeff 😊

[@gerryf7015]

Nice review/intro Jeff. Looking forward to your integration of your historical Jarvis skills and all the new ideas running around in your head!! I've got a couple on order. I feel a wave on new voice solutions and HACS are on the way. Keep up the great work.

[@diedrichg]

Haha! 5 seconds in and you got a thumbs up from me for the disclaimer! 😂

[@gedgicat2063]

Ordered one during the release party. BTH it was obvious that it's nothing really new, expect for the atmos chip, oh and the 3.5mm audio jack that's missing from google devices. But I also think it will help the community get behind the project much easier as they can now all do it off a common hardware base. Keep the content coming will be watching where you take this.

[@ericbaker8807]

I've watched all the videos on Voice PE. Yours is the first that has mentioned creating your own commands, similar to Alexa's routines I imagine? I hope? I have so many Alexa routines that call Scripts in my HA instance. I NEED this Voice PE to be able to do the same. Looking forward to your other videos. I've got a Voice PE on the way to play with.

[@SlackerLabs]

Thats a good idea. I just added that to my video idea list.

[@ericbaker8807]

@SlackerLabs sweet. Looking forward to your other videos. I assume you could probably tell Voice PE explicitly to "Execute script ". But that would be clunky. Who speaks like that in real life? The thing I haven't quite connected the dots on is how I get a specific voice prompt to execute some actions in home assistant. It's like the missing link in all the Voice PE videos I've seen so far. For example, I've got two Alexa routines I use almost every day. (1) "Alexa Goodnight" - she triggers a script that turns off every light/device in my house. Some devices only exist within HA. (2) "Alexa, turn on the TV" - She triggers a script that sends Wake on LAN packets to my Shield, LG TV, and Onkyo receiver. Edit: I am now realizing that Automations has an option in it to set a spoken sentence as a trigger.... I don't know why I didn't realize this before.

[@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?

[@fotalimark]

so, I am looking to do this from the other direction. I have home asssitant and have been using it for the last two years. Lots of automations and it works very well in my home for everything I want. I am also using chatgpt advanced voice. It knows a lot about me from using it a lot (I can turn that off, easily, but I like its personalized responses). I have openai for home assistant, but I want to use my chat gpt advanced voice on the OUTSIDE of home assistant looking in. I still want to have it do a bunch of my home assistant stuff, but want the HA stuff to be a small part of the over stuff that it does for me.

[@SlackerLabs]

I am the same way. Although I want to keep things as local as possible. But my idea is that Jarvis knows everything. My smart home tracks the family so it can step in and let us know when we need to be aware of stuff when we are outside the house about things that are not smart home related. The voice stuff for us is more Jarvis talking to us then us talking to the house. I want Jarvis. But I don't want it built on someone else's stuff.

[@fotalimark]

@@SlackerLabs Precisely. I want full on Jarvis and then I will use it to control smart things. I have Jarvis running headlessly on the pc in my living room. (not associated with homeassistant) I use pico voice to wake it (hey jarvis) when it comes online, about 1.5 seconds, it makes a pleasant little sound and then i interact with it. When I am done I say 'stop listening' (my shutdown word). It plays a little confirmation sound and then it is back to waiting for the wake word. yesterday I asked it to tell me how much longer the daylight would be today verses yesterday, it told me "1 -2 mintues" I said please be precise. It went to the web found the sunrise sunset for my location, computed the math and told me a precise answer (ended up being one minute). It just knows and knows and knows. It is actually very fun to talk to because you can go down any rabbit hole. So here is my next plan. I am going to take my home assistant DASHBOARD configurations, feed it to gpt. Then it will know the dashboard "names" that I have given the various entities. these are the tings I use the most and that is why they are on the dashboard. I have them named well, so the it will be easy to use. Plus I have already memorized the names because i have been using the dashboard for two years. With gpt voice ability to remember stuff, will just say out-loud "my kitchen, living room and dining room form a group" Lets call it "mealtime". it will then remember that forever. The same exact gpt (that knows me) is the one that I access in my car from the gpt app. I just push the advance voice button and boom, I am talking to the same ai that already knows me (and is about to know my smart home)

[@fotalimark]

Ok, it worked perfectly. Copied my dashboard config file to the clipboard. Pasted into AI. I asked gpt to make a paired list out of the dashboard button or sensor name, and the associated entity. Perfect! When you make the video on how to do this, give me a shout out credit! This is a unique way to get this done. Now I am going to edit the list to only include things I want jarvis to be able to control. Remember this is advance voice gpt controlling home assistant, not the other way around.

[@Joseph-ko2kl]

I'm a Pass on it however, I appreciate the review and that you kept it honest and real on what it is and is not.

[@samuraiintellectual]

Here I thought your Jarvis voice, which I believe is an Amazon voice only worked with the google speakers.

[@SlackerLabs]

Yea. I have slot switch Jarvis over to the HA cloud TTS. I really like how easy it is to build voice functionality in HA.

[@daveforrester61]

I've got 2 already, and yes, I will also be getting one for each of the main rooms once I've added a few more elements to the conversation configuration. This is a great review. I particularly like the way you've presented it as "maybe" the voice assistant you've been looking for (said in my best Obi Wan Kenobi Voice 😂). I've seen a couple of reviews that just haven't got to grips with the intent (no pun intended) of this device. The kids love having a proper JARVIS in the house. What voice did you settle on for yours? We've gone with Alfie for now.

[@SlackerLabs]

Ryan I think is the voice. I tried Alfie. I go back and forth actually. haha

[@major_west]

Great review. I'm debating on purchasing a Preview Edition, but am also looking at the voice assistant from Future Proof Home. It would be great if someone would do an honest comparison of the two.

[@michaelmenzie2806]

When I routed the output of my atom echo to my Google home mini it still plays the audio on the atom echo too so it sounds horrible the two devices echoing each other. Can this be fixed?

[@SlackerLabs]

@@michaelmenzie2806 yes. I just comment out the speaker line in the voice assistant section in your device config. I have seen others change the GPI port in the speaker as well. But I have heard some say that might cause other issues but it would block the speaker.

[@Bigglare]

Mine is on its way. I can't wait to Voice like its 2001 again. Nothing worse than losing home internet during a hurricane or other storm. I put phone to 5G for communication but then its not on home wifi to connect to HA or Apple Home so have to go back to PC web. Im looking forward to still having a easy functioning voice control at anytime.

[@michaelmenzie2806]

Digiblur's WAF video did not shed a favorable light on this device

[@SlackerLabs]

I haven't watched that one yet. I also have a uncommon view on WAF. Or I should say I build my smart home so WAF isn't even a thing that I would need to worry about. But yeah, I can see if you are in a house that relies on the non smart home features of the other voice assistants or even heavily on voice then this device is going to feel like a step back.

[@pappyman179]

Sorry, it's too stupid and much too slow.