I want to build a voice assistant with esphome that supports wake word calling from every angle in the room without screaming. What microphone (-shield) is recommended for this purpose?
#Room-appropriate microphone to use Voice assistant with esphome
wet timber
marsh drift
the inmp441 is tried and tested and is really as good as any. The main issue that we are facing is that currently there is nothing reliable in place to filter out background noises. So you will experience false positives, and things such as TV sound etc being picked up and recognised as voice, but obviously it won't be what you want the assistant to react to. Other than that fact, they do work really well., but be mindful that there are the limitations mentioned. Nabu Casa are developing a device currently which uses more advanced audio hardware and also busily working on the software side too. Hopefully there will be advances on the software side that will help alleviate these issues even when using a basic ESPHome diy build, time will tell.
I thought it best to manage your expectations, diy voice assistants are as good as any other currently available off the shelf device, so for an inexpensive way to get into using HA with voice assistant it is certainly a good solution for now.
gray plume
Yup, also Seeed has new Respeaker 2-mic hat lite for ESP32, I have one coming to check how good it is. No huge expectations though, since Respeaker on Pi works not good for me.
noble sluice
The ESP devices (e.g. Atom, etc) are all garbage to be honest. The Respeaker is just a rebranded Wave basically and it's "OK" but not great. The best thing I've found so far are those USB conference speakers (Anker Powerconf, Jabra Speak, etc) and those both work a LOT better for voice pickup and accuracy as well as TTS playback.
wet timber
The ESP devices (e.g. Atom, etc) are all garbage to be honest. The Respeaker is ...
Thanks for your answer. (How) did you manage to integrate the usb speakers in a room that does not connect to the home assistant server itself (e.q. raspi4)?
noble sluice
@wet timber I'm using Wyoming. It's great, just flash a MicroUSB with the official Lite OS, install Wyoming Sattallite and Wyoming OpenWakeWord and that's pretty much it.
Was running it on a Pi 4 but that was overkill so switched to Pi Zero W2s now instead.
So tiny and low power.
They then show up in HA.... ugh, we still can't post pictures here.
Pretend you see the HA integration dash with a bunch of Wyoming devices in it.
dry ravine
Was running it on a Pi 4 but that was overkill so switched to Pi Zero W2s now in...
did you 3D print a case?
or hide it inside?
noble sluice
Any normal Zero case will work. I'm just using one of the tiny £3 transparent ABS cases for each one.
So it's PSU > Pi > Conference Speaker. So the Pi can be hidden anywhere as it's not needed for recording or playback.
Any conference speaker that when plugged in via USB shows up as a speaker and microphone works fine.
I've personally got an Anker PowerConf S3, Anker PowerConf S330, and Jabra Speak 710 set up at the moment and they all work well.
The added benefit is you don't need to make an enclosure as these are all designed to look nice on a desk anyway.
gray plume
I've personally got an Anker PowerConf S3, Anker PowerConf S330, and Jabra Speak...
How exactly do you connect Anker to Pi Zero? Via microusb?
Geez, Jabra is 340CAD 🙂
noble sluice
Anywhere selling conference speakers is a good idea, businesses sell them off for cheap. I got 2 of those Jabra 710s for only £55 each (they are £150 on Amazon)
There's cheaper Anker ones too which also work fine.
And yeah, you'll want a Micro-USB to USB-A lead. Then you can plug in anything.
(completely forgot about that bit as I had a few lying around)
dry ravine
it'd be cool if you could hide the pi inside