Voice Control and Wake Word Detection on USB Speakerphone in Home Assistant

[@TechDregs]

As an update, the speakerphone is back up and working again, so maybe the USB issues are now sorted.

[@saiyantwan]

This really tells me that they need a way for bluetooth speakers to work natively. especially since most have built it mics

[@ChrisS-oo6fl]

AMEN! It’s only been requested 200000 times by 99% of all HA users!

[@b_snyder]

The thing about this setup is that it only works when the speaker is directly connected to the HA server via USB, this should work over bluetooth but for some reason the HA bluetooth integration doesn't discover bluetooth speakers. My HA server is in my utility closet so it's almost useless in there to have assist.

[@TechDregs]

Yeah, for a remote voice assist, you'd probably need to go with something build on ESPHome. They have a specific tiny wake word system for that now I think. Back when I built my voice remote, it wasn't available yet. kzbin.info/www/bejne/e5a4eGaJnp6ZkM0

[@edgecrush3r]

i had similar issue with the Anker S330. Turned out, it just needed a newer firmware and now works fine.

[@Jasonhartley31]

Only issue I see is lack of updates for “Assist Microphone”. They seem to be few and far between, and requests for improvements like a simple HASS service call to have the microphone activate and listen for commands again are met with “This is something I would consider adding to the Wyoming Satellite code:” by the lead developer. I use it and love it, but feels like it’s being treated as the Red headed step child to the satellites. I have a $200 Dell conference speaker phone I’m using for it. Audio is great as well as the microphone. It can pick up the work word from all over my apartment. I have no need for lower quality ESP32 devices.

[@TechDregs]

Yeah, frankly, I agree. It does seem like the ESP32 devices are being treated like the default, when this seems like it would be so much easier for most people. I get that the ESP32 allows for the device to be anywhere rather that plugged directly in, but still, I don't see how local USB isn't just vastly easier to push forward.

[@the_smart_home_maker]

Great video, thank you

[@nighi100]

You could set up an automation if assist is in progress to lower/mute your TV volume.

[@TechDregs]

Great suggestion.

[@thesecretreviewer8242]

i've been using my Reolink cameras as my mics for HA then stream the audio back through the Echo devices.

[@meaning-machine-l7i]

This is an interesting set-up. Can you explain how you did this? I have a reolink camera and wifi connected sonos speaker. I've been trying to find a better microphone than the atom echo that I currently have set-up.

[@renee3461]

​@@meaning-machine-l7i You can try Stream Assist

[@b_snyder]

@@meaning-machine-l7i You need to use the Stream Assist integration. All you need is the camera entity_id and a path to a ding.mp3 or some sound file you can link it to so you know when assist is listening. You also need openWakeWord set up and selected as your voice assistant. Search for the integration, give the instance a name that reflects where your camera is and hit submit. Then click on CONFIGURE for that instance and select a media_player to play the audio response to wake. Then set the path to your response mp3 and Select your pipeline and it should just work.

[@lawrencemanning]

Me again lol. We must have similar lives. I set this up a couple of months ago. Worked well except for false positive triggers. How are you doing with them? With the TV on openwakewordd was triggered randomly every 20 minutes or so. Was really frustrating as it generally worked quite well otherwise. I used the “hello Jarvis” wakeword as I wouldn’t get the default one to work reliably.

[@TechDregs]

I only get a couple a day. Unfortunately, other than tweaking the threshold or moving to a different wake work, I'm not sure what you can do. Possibly playing with the trigger level in openwakeword, but I haven't touched that setting yet.

[@Andrew-bf8zc]

I got the speakers you got followed every step and still nothing any ideas or just hope one day it will work

[@IoSonoAndreaZ]

i'm using HA with docker on a raspberry 5, I can't add the Assist Microphone add on as i'm using docker, what can I do?

[@chrisdixon5241]

Just a thought regarding your USB device not showing up in Home Assistant but appearing in the OS. Permissions issue? Maybe the user running HA didn't have the right to open and access the USB device and it got fixed by an update / machine reboot

[@TechDregs]

Maybe, but what's weird is my zwave and zigbee hubs are both plugged into USB and never had issues.

[@FelipeCastillo]

Any recommendations for satellite speakers? I want to place speakers in some far away rooms, that can be triggered with a wake word. USB/Bluetooth speakers are not a bad idea, but I still need to connect them to something that can send/receive the audio from the server

[@TechDregs]

Maybe an ESPHome type project.

[@wapphigh5250]

I have been using Alexa voice control with HA for a couple years and I am getting fed up not being able to reset/delete devices since Amazon disabled alexa web interface. My AlexaHA integration is now bogged down with multiple orphan devices. So I am desperate to move to local HA voice control. My question is this. Is this speaker phone now 100% reliable? Is it the only device out there that will work from the box to give HA voice control? Are there any others? This only works directly plugged into the server running HA right? Thanks

[@TechDregs]

It's not going to work as well as Amazon Alexa, I don't think. It's also not as smart as Alexa. So, I guess it depends on your expectation level. It works, but it's not perfect. This device works, but I don't believe it's the only one that will. In theory, and USB speakerphone should work. I have only tried this one. And yes, this is a USB device, so it must be plugged in directly. You can make devices that work via WiFi with Esp32 boards and ESPHome, but that's much more involved.

[@Alpha7__]

Any idea how to control the volume of the speaker? I have a single "volume" entity and I have it set to its lowest value of .1 (down from 1) and my speaker is extremely loud. Local control on the speaker to adjust volume don't affect the assistant volume either.

[@TechDregs]

No, not sure. Unfortunately, a recent update to Home Assistant rolled back some of the USB updates, and my speakerphone went back to being unrecognized again.

[@Alpha7__]

@@TechDregs Mine is actually working, and I was able to figure out how to control the volume so the dang thing isn't shouting at me. Are you saying that under Add-ons, for the "assist microphone" its not showing your speaker anymore as an option or are you having problems elsewhere?

[@TechDregs]

Yeah, it's no longer letting me select the device in Assist Microphone. It just shows "default" now. Occurred due to them reverting some changes to the USB driver in HAOS 12.1.

[@edwhard2000]

how did you set all of this up?

[@TechDregs]

Plug in the device. Set up openwakeword and Assist Microphone in your addons, get them into Wyoming, add the wake word in your Voice Assist pipeline, and that's it.

[@rasbe6863]

Can you send TTS messages out on that device also?

[@TechDregs]

Honestly, I'm not sure. I would think you could if it's configured as the output device for whatever service you are using. However, recent updates to HA have broken this project because they rolled back the USB updates that enabled it. :-/

[@CrypticConsole]

Can you run this on HA core docker?

[@TechDregs]

Not sure. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with that. It would probably depend on how docker handles passing USB devices to containers.

[@CrypticConsole]

@@TechDregs Passing a USB device to a container is as easy as specifying the USB ID using the device part of the compose file. The main issue is that you cannot use the "addons" part of home assistant, which many people are saying you need for this specific setup.

[@TechDregs]

@@CrypticConsole It does require addons, yes.

[@CrypticConsole]

@@TechDregs thanks 👍

[@tomlynn1000]

Not sure if he ever got to the point.....