Cannot get Voice Assistant PE to work | Home Assistant | Page 1

dusty nacelle Jul 29, 2025, 2:01 AM

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I just purchased the Voice Assistant PE and was trying to setup based on the guide sent with it.

I went though all the steps and it looks like it was added via ESPHome. I went to setup the Voice Assistant part (because it originally failed too in the wizard), but I keep getting to the part where it starts spinning the blue light and saying "Over the next couple steps we're going to personalize your voice assistant." but then I just get the error here in the screenshot.

I thought maybe a factory reset might help, nope.
Then I followed the help link to here: https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/troubleshooting/#i-dont-get-a-voice-response, this too did not work for me.

I use a mixture of NabuCasa cloud and the hosting in my kubernetes cluster. I was using a custom build of Home Assistant but thought that might be the issue and switched back to the official image, no luck - same issue.

I can access the device with HA to turn on the ring led and such but as far as setting up the voice part, nothing.

So now im feeling sort of stuck because I dont know what else to do. Is there a special port other than 8123 needed? Or is it something else?

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home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app Traceback (most recent call last):
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "aioesphomeapi/connection.py", line 863, in aioesphomeapi.connection.APIConnection.send_messages_await_response_complex
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app TimeoutError
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app Traceback (most recent call last):
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/esphome/entity.py", line 242, in handler
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     return await func(self, *args, **kwargs)
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/esphome/assist_satellite.py", line 365, in async_announce
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     await self._do_announce(announcement, run_pipeline_after=False)
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/esphome/assist_satellite.py", line 426, in _do_announce
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     await self.cli.send_voice_assistant_announcement_await_response(
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     ...<5 lines>...
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     )
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/aioesphomeapi/client.py", line 1372, in send_voice_assistant_announcement_await_response
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     resp = await self._get_connection().send_message_await_response(
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     ...<8 lines>...
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     )
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     ^
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "aioesphomeapi/connection.py", line 881, in send_message_await_response
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "aioesphomeapi/connection.py", line 867, in send_messages_await_response_complex
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app aioesphomeapi.core.TimeoutAPIError: Timeout waiting for VoiceAssistantAnnounceFinished after 300s
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app Traceback (most recent call last):
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/assist_satellite/entity.py", line 237, in async_internal_announce
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     await self.async_announce(announcement)
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app   File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/esphome/entity.py", line 244, in handler
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     raise HomeAssistantError(
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     ...<6 lines>...
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app     ) from error
home-assistant-7b89d5b57b-fqtgp app homeassistant.exceptions.HomeAssistantError: Error communicating with the device home-assistant-voice-0a2af9: Timeout waiting for VoiceAssistantAnnounceFinished after 300s

flat lynx Jul 29, 2025, 2:46 AM

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For the voice assistant, no ports are needed except for what ESPHome Builder uses. It should sit on your LAN without much of an issue. Since you can access it to control the light ring etc... This indicates it's on your network at least. 🙂 Do you have Piper and Wyoming setup? I'm pretty sure it does that for you upon initial setup, but it's been a short while since I did mine. And I'm guessing you don't have your Mute turned on via the switch. 😎 (Red lights next to each mic hole in the ring)

junior pond Jul 29, 2025, 3:03 AM

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dusty nacelle I just purchased the Voice Assistant PE and was trying to setup based on the gui...

for most control it works by the HA server connecting to the VPE. however to play audio files this api connection is used to send a url to the vpe which then establishes a new connection to the HA server. this url is built using the url settings in the network settings of HA.

ensure that the url in the network settings is correct and the network allows for the vpe to use it to establish a connection to the ha server.

dusty nacelle Jul 29, 2025, 3:13 AM

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flat lynx For the voice assistant, no ports are needed except for what ESPHome Builder use...

Haha, no mute. Its always good to check though. I didnt setup Piper or Wyoming since it was not part of the getting started guide for the Voice PE. And like you said, I would assume it would do defaults for me at least.

dusty nacelle Jul 29, 2025, 3:14 AM

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junior pond for most control it works by the HA server connecting to the VPE. however to pla...

Do I need to factory reset the Voice PE after this? Because if not, I dont think this worked for me either.

junior pond Jul 29, 2025, 3:17 AM

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dusty nacelle Do I need to factory reset the Voice PE after this? Because if not, I dont think...

you may need to reboot home assistant and/or the vpe but shouldnt need to default it.

if you still have issues you could plug the vpe into your pc and use the ESPHome web tool to access its live log. then you can see if there are any errors that that might hint at issues.

dusty nacelle Jul 29, 2025, 3:22 AM

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junior pond you may need to reboot home assistant and/or the vpe but shouldnt need to defaul...

I attempted to do the assistant setup again and I am getting this on the VPE logs.

[23:20:56][D][esp-idf:000][ann_read]: E (90458) esp-tls: [sock=57] select() timeout
[23:20:56][D][esp-idf:000][ann_read]: E (90458) transport_base: Failed to open a new connection: 32774
[23:20:56][D][esp-idf:000][ann_read]: E (90458) HTTP_CLIENT: Connection failed, sock < 0
[23:20:56][E][audio_reader:120][ann_read]: Failed to open URL
[23:20:56][E][speaker_media_player.pipeline:112]: Media reader encountered an error: ESP_ERR_HTTP_CONNECT
[23:20:56][E][speaker_media_player:326]: The announcement pipeline's file reader encountered an error.

junior pond Jul 29, 2025, 3:25 AM

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dusty nacelle I attempted to do the assistant setup again and I am getting this on the VPE log...

Failed to open URL look for the url its trying to use just before these errors

dusty nacelle Jul 29, 2025, 3:28 AM

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Oh, this? (replaced my domain)

[23:20:21][D][media_player:074]: 'Media Player' - Setting
[23:20:21][D][media_player:078]:   Command: ENQUEUE
[23:20:21][D][media_player:081]:   Media URL: http://hass.MYDOMAIN.com:8123/api/esphome/ffmpeg_proxy/2fbfd6c2279dbd8bcae79d8948c40e8b/OMkTVOD2sEWY4yRbbH7fmQ.flac
[23:20:21][D][media_player:087]:  Announcement: yes

junior pond Jul 29, 2025, 3:31 AM

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does that url work?
if you try and access that url from a device on the network does it allow you to play/download the flac file?
and do you have any kind of special network config that would potentially not make it work from how the vpe is connected?

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the api connection from the server to the vpe is working and sending the url but when the vpe tries to establish the connection to access the audio file its not connecting.
this is pretty much either a url issue or a network config issue

dusty nacelle Jul 29, 2025, 3:39 AM

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Yeah I think you are onto something with this URL. I cannot connect to it with a browser nor with VLC.

junior pond Jul 29, 2025, 3:43 AM

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either network config, or perhaps dns issue?

trail cypress Jul 29, 2025, 12:43 PM

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It's always DNS.

magic thunder Jul 29, 2025, 1:48 PM

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trail cypress It's always DNS.

DidNotServe ? 😉

upper venture Aug 4, 2025, 3:04 AM

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I bought and tried 2 home assistant voice both do not show up in device and service.
I have lost my way. Any way to reset everything to start again,? Any help would be appreciated..retired and trying to learn it. Thanks

junior pond Aug 4, 2025, 9:50 AM

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upper venture I bought and tried 2 home assistant voice both do not show up in device and serv...

https://support.nabucasa.com/hc/en-us/articles/25800241218717-Reinstalling-the-firmware

Nabu Casa

Reinstalling the firmware

It is not usually necessary to reinstall the firmware. Only follow this procedure if you have a good reason to do so. Normally, you receive an update notification for the Home Assistant Voice Previ...

upper venture Aug 5, 2025, 12:56 AM

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Thank you..It worked like a champ!
Can I run two voice units on the same home assistant green?
Thanks again.

#Cannot get Voice Assistant PE to work