Wyoming Satellites Limitations

[marsh terrace]

I'm currently building a larger home and pulling my own low voltage wiring. I want the ability to be anywhere in my home and use voice control via Wyoming Satellites (if possible).

I'm planning to home run all my low voltage wiring into a central rack where I'll have all my AV equipment - including Home Assistant and amplifiers powering whole home speakers throughout my home.

Questions:

1. Is there a max limit to the number of Wyoming Satellites?
2. Because I plan to blanket my house with in-ceiling Satellites (to ensure voice coverage), if more than one Satellite hears the wake word for the same command (and within the same 1-2 seconds), is there a way/method for the closest Satellite to respond and the other Satellites ignore the request?
3. How far apart would you space in-ceiling Satellites for both a 12' ceilings as well as 9' ceilings?

[lunar raptor]

1. not really. Depending on what type of satellites they are and if you use OpenWakeWord, they might overload the server, but other than that, no, there's no set limit
2. that's built in. If multiple satellites are triggered, only one responds, but it might not be the one closest to you. It's basically the first one that gets triggered and gets informed by the server that it should listen to you
3. no idea, but someone else might know. the main idea would be to make sure that the lowest number of satellites can hear you, so as to prevent duplication (see point 2 above)
   That said, with the current implementation, you'd likely want to have one piece of hardware for each wyoming satellite. It's possible, but costly

[edgy coyote]

Want to do something similar but am so new to HA im not sure where to start, can you point me to any documentation that may exist to get this built for a large house? Is the basic to run speaker cable out to each room back to an AMP and then plug this into HA Green ?

[marsh terrace]

This is the closest video to what I am attempting to achieve, which will walk you through the basic idea of how to build a satellite and place them in the ceiling. https://youtu.be/eTKgc0YDCwE?si=ADkDUHH3AEnFAMkM

[edgy coyote]

Thanks Pal..

[sleek current]

For 3. I did some test and it’s more or less related to point 2.

For now we do not give the priority to the “closest” or “best sounding” satellite.

We give the priority to whoever comes first.

Whoever comes first depends on

• distance
• the size of the chuck it takes to process data.

I am not aware exactly the size of the chuck for openwakeword or any other wake word engine available on Wyoming (so ping @floral hemlock for that part)

For microWakeWord on the “ESPHome word”. The chunks are 10ms.

So a chuck is basically 3.2 meter.

If all assistants are perfectly in sync, and if 3.2 meter separate device 1 and device 2 in a straight line with the speaker on the “correct side”

Like that user <> D1 <> D2
Then it’s always going to be the closest.

Now if you remove the assumptions… device not in sync and user that can be in the middle. I would be recommend something like 6-7 meter.

Something like that.

But note that if you put more. You do not REALLY care which on triggers.
You may face issues at borders of areas when you say area specific command such as “turn off the lights”

Here you need to know which one triggers.

But that can be solved differently.

My house is filled my voice assistant but they “unmute” only when I am present on the area for example.

[marsh terrace]

What device(s) are you using for voice assistant and do you use an MMWave sensor (or something else) to determine if you’re in the area?

[sleek current]

Well you’re not going to like the response cause I’m going to sound like a spoiled child 🤣
But for now I use the unreleased, unannounced voice hardware device we are currently developing.

In every room

And yes mmWVe sensor in every room. A mix of EP1 from EverythingSmart and Aqara FP2

Sorry clarification ( we = Nabu Casa. I work at Nabu Casa)

[marsh terrace]

Wow - you suck (just kidding)! My goal is to have one in every room of my house (approx. 7,000 square feet between both levels). If you need someone in the real world (who doesn't work for Nabu Casa) I'd be more than happy to assist (FOR FREE)! BTW - I'm a retired software engineer with over 100 patents (dozens in the IoT space) so while I'm new to HA, let's just say that I've been around the block.

Any chance I could send you my high level floor plan (where I have tentatively marked where I plan to place each Satellite)? I believe it would take less than 10 minutes to review and provide feedback as to any recommended changes where the unknown device might reside 🙂

[elder ivy]

Man, no one in this world could say where to place satellites in your environment. I wouldn't carve that in stone right away if I were you. First, you can plan too much or too less. Second, you probably gonna need speakers too - and in the best case with satellites and media speakers it should be different devices.
Wyoming satellite isn't particularly good. Even Brad from FutureProofHomes, that video you base on, right now is working on his own satellite, because raspberry with 2-mic Respeaker hat doesn't work good. Everyone is into XMOS chips novadays. Nabu Casa device (PE) will use one, Brad's satellite will also use XMOS.
Your best shot as of this exact moment would be Seeed Respeaker Lite board with ESP32S3. It's worse than PE (at least it has duplex i2s connection for mics and speaker, unlike PE, so it can't play music good right now), but it's decent as satellite. I have several around my house, and they're work for the money. At least my wife stopped laughing at me, when I try to use voice commands 🙂

[marsh terrace]

Appreciate the feedback. I recognize that it's difficult to know exactly where each satellite should go but even a ballpark (or rough estimate) would be great so that I can run the proper cabling before the sheetrock goes in.

I have no intentions on streaming music from or to my Satellite. I will have HTD's Lync 12 controller + AMP's (with 12 zones and 4 speakers per zone) in my house and when a command to play music happens (within HA) that command will fire an event to HTD + media streaming device which will be attached to the source inputs of my HTD Lync system. I just need a Satellite to be listening for wake words and respond to commands (the response will be feed into my HTD amp's) and thus the response will play through my in-ceiling speakers.

At least this is what I am hoping/planning for if at all possible

[elder ivy]

Strong source of music should be as far as possible from these things. Imagine you placed satellites according to couch placement - but in couple years you decide to move it around. With Alexa or other countertop satellite you just move it... Not the case for mounted things. Also, you'd want to see the thing you're talking to, to see if it's listening to you after wake word. Are you ready to lift your chin every time you give command?
I don't also know how the face plates will affect mics range...
There's too many variables to reliably tell you that.

[marsh terrace]

HTD sells "Alexa kits" that professionally install in the ceiling. https://www.htd.com/Accessories/Voice-Assistant-Accessories

In that previous YouTube video I linked above from FutureProofHomes, Brad replaced his in-ceiling Alexa devices with Wyoming Satellites which is exactly what I'm after. It's gotta have a high WAF and I don't want devices spread all over the house.

[elder ivy]

Brad placed them, but to show that it's possible, not for his permannt setup. As i said, he's working on his own satellite, because Wyoming satellite is too bad for this.
Alexa is a bit different level of hardware, believe me. There's no open-source devices on the market, that are close to Alexa on mics. At least for now.