Based on a recent comment here, I realized that I had heard of a couple of voice options for HA, but that there were obviously more out there that I hadn’t heard of. I’m in the market to eventually replace all of my google home speakers, because I miss my voice integrations after deciding I didn’t want Google harvesting us any more. I have 2 Google Nest Audio’s, one original Google Home Mini, and one original Google Home.

My ideal would be an open-sourced Reflash for all of them, but ultimately I think PCB replacements for the Mini and the Nest Audio’s are the most likely candidates. They look good and blend in around the house, and sound great for their size.

So here are the options I’ve heard of: what has anyone else seen that might be useful to me or anyone else looking for good local HA audio?

  • Home Assistant Aux 2 (from the latest post that made me think of this)
  • seeed respeaker - available in multiple shapes and configurations, but not really designed as an all-in-one solutino
  • Louder ESP32 - again available in a few shapes and sizes, but needs old bookshelf speakers, and has no mic capability that I can see.
  • onju voice - turns a nest mini gen 2 into a local device, but for music these devices are too small to ever sound good.
  • futureproof homes satellite1.1 - by far the most complete offering, and it has a chance of sounding good, but is priced accordingly.

So what is everyone else using / pining over?

  • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    5 hours ago

    I literally just bought a satellite 1.1. I bought an atom echo to POC whether I could get reasonable wake word + stt + LLM running locally with good latency with the intention of building my own speaker afterwards.

    I went with the satellite 1.1 because:

    1. I haven’t done a good audio driver circuit since university
    2. Getting 2-3 PCBs printed and SMD soldered sounds like a PITA
    3. I didn’t want to design an acoustic cavity
    4. Satellite 1.1 w/ xmos is just really hard to compete with, and the on-board humidity and temperature and stuff removes the need for me to have a distinct sensor for those in that room

    It’s a bit more expensive but I’m really optimistic. It hasn’t arrived yet, I’ll lyk how I like it when it is delivered!

    I saw a project (echomuse) that converts an EchoDot gen 2 into an HA speaker that I thought about doing as well but I didn’t really wanna spend $100+time when I could spend $200 and no time for a better product and support a cool company.

  • roofuskit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    I went the hacked Echo show route and am very happy. Works on Echo Show 5 Gen 1 & 2 and 8 Gen 1.

    Amazon recently patched the exploit so any freshly updated units are not going to work. But anything listed on eBay at this moment is likely safe. Both the dev maintaining LineageOS and the dev maintaining the View Assistant Companion App that both make this work have been on a tear lately fixing and improving things. It’s been great.

    I recycled all my Google homes by selling them on Facebook Marketplace.

  • ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Do NOT go with the respeaker. It’s a buggy mess. I have two on my desk that will not respond to flashing the DFU and Seeed has no interest in fixing it.

    The Satellite looks awesome but very pricey.

    I did see someone had converted an Amazon Show 5 into a wake-worded voice assistant that would first try to match up HA automations then pass it off to an agent if it didn’t match anything local. I ordered up a couple to try that with.

  • dadarobot@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    5 hours ago

    https://github.com/RealDeco/SendspinZero

    i collect vintage stereo equipment so i just built one of these. and plugged it in through the tape input.

    i did the simple no screen no button option. crazy cheap and very easy to put together even with my very rudimentary soldiering skills.

    think they have versions with built in amplifiers too which would probably work well for gutting an existing device and reusing its speaker.

    i also am still using a few chromecast devices and music assistant/sendspin plays well with those too. need to find a good replacement for those. maybe i can put a degoogled android or nura or something on chromecast/roku/firestick. havent look into it much yet.

    if you wanna spend some money, ive seen very nice all on one speakers for ma/ss

    good luck!

  • mlfh@lm.mlfh.orgEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    I run a proxmox cluster that includes 2 old thinkpads, so I pass their audio hardware (mic and speaker) through to a vm with a stack of openwakeword, whisper for stt, and piper for tts. I figured I’ve got mics and speakers in the server rack already, may as well use them. I have an assortment of snapclient speakers around the home as well, working on adding mics and fully integrating them as voice satellites as well.