Amazon is upgrading its decade-old Alexa voice assistant with generative AI and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of the technology.
Don’t take it personally. It’s just a few trolls who think they’re superior. Your question is valid and I’m also interested in alternatives too. I have home assistant, but it’s another thing entirely to more easily swap out Alexa for some equally well supported mic/speaker hardware. I’m sure this will change with people being motivated not to give Amazon subscription fees and ‘to finally’ cut the online requirements. I would love local voice control so that I’m not reliant on phone apps if the internet goes out.
Depends somewhat. Home Assistant has its own app that works pretty well. Generally other apps don’t integrate with Home Assistant, but rather the other way around with Home Assistant having a plug-in to allow it to control and interact with other hardware/software. Everything is controlled/managed by Home Assistant so when you need to issue commands or setup triggers its your one stop shop.
I know there are voice control plugins for Home Assistant that are reviewed reasonably well, but I don’t personally use them so I can’t say what models of mic work well or not. My usage is pretty minimal with simple timers and/or things like presence and temperature sensors being sufficient to meet all my automation needs supplemented by the occasional custom UI button on my Home Assistant dashboard accessible through the app or web interface. Personally the rule I try to follow for all my IoT devices is to avoid Wifi if at all possible in favor of standard mesh network tech like Zigbee or Z-Wave that way it’s literally impossible for my “smart devices” to call out to the Internet without me manually installing some kind of bridging software in Home Assistant.
So I got curious and did a little research. Home assistant itself provides several tutorials for setting up voice controls. There are several options to choose from. The simplest to get up and running seems like signing up for home assistant cloud and paying a monthly fee, although that’s also the least private and most costly option. At the other extreme you can go entirely DIY by picking up a cheap dev board for around $14, flashing it with ESPHome and hooking it up to your local voice assistant setup.
I haven’t personally used any of this as I’ve said previously, but everything I’ve read seems reasonable and it sounds like it’s the generally accepted way to go about doing these things with Home Assistant.
Edit: Reading the reviews of the ATOM Echo it seems like a lot of people complain about the mic and speaker quality and issues with it going into sleep mode. A more expensive but possibly better option might be one of the ESP32 S3 Box models flashed with ESPHome, although once again I have not personally used any of this so I can’t say whether the complaints about the ATOM Echo hold water or if the S3 Box is better. There also seems to be a Assist app for at least Android, so if you don’t want a dedicated hardware device you might be able to make do with just your phone.
Edit 2: This also looks like it might be a great option. It looks a little more polished and ready to go, and is supported by ESPHome.
Don’t take it personally. It’s just a few trolls who think they’re superior. Your question is valid and I’m also interested in alternatives too. I have home assistant, but it’s another thing entirely to more easily swap out Alexa for some equally well supported mic/speaker hardware. I’m sure this will change with people being motivated not to give Amazon subscription fees and ‘to finally’ cut the online requirements. I would love local voice control so that I’m not reliant on phone apps if the internet goes out.
Is there good app support for Home Assistant? Like a one stop shop or is it spread over the apps of the various pieces of equipment?
Depends somewhat. Home Assistant has its own app that works pretty well. Generally other apps don’t integrate with Home Assistant, but rather the other way around with Home Assistant having a plug-in to allow it to control and interact with other hardware/software. Everything is controlled/managed by Home Assistant so when you need to issue commands or setup triggers its your one stop shop.
I know there are voice control plugins for Home Assistant that are reviewed reasonably well, but I don’t personally use them so I can’t say what models of mic work well or not. My usage is pretty minimal with simple timers and/or things like presence and temperature sensors being sufficient to meet all my automation needs supplemented by the occasional custom UI button on my Home Assistant dashboard accessible through the app or web interface. Personally the rule I try to follow for all my IoT devices is to avoid Wifi if at all possible in favor of standard mesh network tech like Zigbee or Z-Wave that way it’s literally impossible for my “smart devices” to call out to the Internet without me manually installing some kind of bridging software in Home Assistant.
Thank you so much for your detailed answer. This is going to be something I take a real look at.
So I got curious and did a little research. Home assistant itself provides several tutorials for setting up voice controls. There are several options to choose from. The simplest to get up and running seems like signing up for home assistant cloud and paying a monthly fee, although that’s also the least private and most costly option. At the other extreme you can go entirely DIY by picking up a cheap dev board for around $14, flashing it with ESPHome and hooking it up to your local voice assistant setup.
I haven’t personally used any of this as I’ve said previously, but everything I’ve read seems reasonable and it sounds like it’s the generally accepted way to go about doing these things with Home Assistant.
Edit: Reading the reviews of the ATOM Echo it seems like a lot of people complain about the mic and speaker quality and issues with it going into sleep mode. A more expensive but possibly better option might be one of the ESP32 S3 Box models flashed with ESPHome, although once again I have not personally used any of this so I can’t say whether the complaints about the ATOM Echo hold water or if the S3 Box is better. There also seems to be a Assist app for at least Android, so if you don’t want a dedicated hardware device you might be able to make do with just your phone.
Edit 2: This also looks like it might be a great option. It looks a little more polished and ready to go, and is supported by ESPHome.
Great information, thank you.