It's been a while since I last updated my blog. Over the break I had some time to play with the new Voice PE hardware and write up my thoughts:
https://blog.ceard.tech/2025/01/ha-voice-pe
TL/DR: Imperfect, but shows the potential
#My (personal) thoughts on the Voice Preview Edition
dapper cedar
marble knot
Well written! I agree with most parts, certiantly the bigger than expected footprint, the weight and the audio output. I hope there will be a select on the device page in the future to use any media_player.
The reporting of open doors etc might just be down to lack of support for your locale, no?
dapper cedar
My locale is English, so ... probably not?
marble knot
Actually, I stubled into a PR for it that has unfortunately been declined, more info in the comments. https://github.com/home-assistant/intents/pull/2835
dapper cedar
Thank you!
narrow notch
I’m astounded they went with the worst speaker possible. So far my experience has been overwhelmingly negative I can’t recommend this to even a tinkerer
vernal vine
You gotta acknowledge the hard work though to find the worst speaker possible but still release it before Xmas. Tbh I think it might just be the 2nd worst speaker.
Maybe I'll just grab the worst speaker myself and connect it to the 3.5mm jack.
SCNR. While I also don't particularly like the speaker, there are definitely worse options and since they gave us an option to connect other speakers, I'm a little less frustrated than others.
dapper cedar
It's good enough for TTS announcements, just, and to me that's all that matters.
Would I have liked something at least as "good" as the GHome/Nest Mini? Sure, then TTS would have sounded better. I still wouldn't be listening to music on either 😄
hoary wind
I also had issues with it being slow and then I found the culprit. Whisper really needs functioning AVX instructions. I flipped one setting under Proxmox and I got from 15 second response times to under 1.5 second.
plain aurora
It's good enough for TTS announcements, just, and to me that's all that matters....
The speaker choice and a 3.5mm out is the best choice. Google hub speakers aren't great either, at least now if you care you can plug in an actually good speaker or two in
dapper cedar
The speaker choice and a 3.5mm out is the best choice. Google hub speakers aren'...
I'm hoping that at some point we get to use other media players for the TTS, not just limiting us to hard wired
plain aurora
I'm hoping that at some point we get to use other media players for the TTS, not...
Eh, I'd rather hardwire than worry about batteries for TTS. I use TTS for more critical alerts. I'd hate to miss one because the battery is dead.
plain aurora
I took wireless as battery. That is my bad if you meant something like Bluetooth with 'not limiting us to hardwire'
dapper cedar
Or even, you know, any media_player entity - people have those wired to their network, or connected over WiFi, etc
hard wired is very limiting when you consider that not every media player device has an analogue audio in
sage dove
can you not specify a different speaker within esphome and tell it to route stuff through home assistant to that speaker? you would have to customise the firmware a bit but its doable i think? i havent messed with that for a while though so might be misremembering
marble knot
For me, I haven't found myself speaking to it once since the day I got it and set it up. Maybe I've automated my way out of actually needing voice control.
plain aurora
For me, I haven't found myself speaking to it once since the day I got it and se...
That's a good problem to have and should the goal. As little manual control as possible.