FIRST POST EVER

[bright knot]

I'm brand new to Home Assistant and Discord I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions about the best Voice Assistant

[worldly wraith]

I would suggest asking ChatGPT for it, or Facebook group. 🙂 Here it's mainly for more in-depth questions.

[glass grove]

don't suggest people use AI chatbots to solve problems.

[glass grove]

do you mean hardware for a voice satellite or do you mean software setup side of it?

[worldly wraith]

That was written 3 years ago. AI situation changed a bit, isn't it?
Ok, I will just leave be the basic broad questions. 🙂

P.S. Paulus himself is happily vibe-coding now. 🙂 As does everyone else.

[glass grove]

It is still the rules.

[worldly wraith]

Okay.

[bright knot]

more research since the post. now i am really lost. just wanted to do some small things and i am so far down the rabbit hole now. i think i am going to try box3. I have begun to believe everything should stay local. No cloud. How does this work? Should i look for another thread for other topics?

[glass grove]

A Voice-PE is a great satellite for a voice assistant

as for a fully local assistant. it really depends on what your goal is.

[bright knot]

thank you for the reply. My goal? I don't ever know yet. The goal post is on wheels. Just trying to look down the road and steer away from amazon devices. I'm pretty new to this but have an industrial automation background. having fun.

[glass grove]

I would say that if you are planning to dive right in deep then the VPE is a good investment. it sees updates regally in line with project improvements and gives you some options. if you go with one of the cheaper options then you end up replacing it quickly anyway.
what does your home assistant setup look currently? how are you running it?

[bright knot]

i put the ha instance on a dell d10u. Use a desktop for the interface. I keep the dell open incase i ever try to learn yaml. I have 6 alexa devices,fire tv's firesticks, samsung tv's smart plugs and bulbs- most of which were purchased without ha considerations. Recently began zigbee mesh build (which i like). I have an electrical background- so - i am real dangerous. trying to move away from alexa devices. i have all the mentioned device intergrations loaded. No real issues yet. just starting to build automations. a few by highjacking alexa motion detection. how about you?

[glass grove]

mine is an absolute mess of chaos 😛 I was more wondering about your setup for voice assistant plans. running on the dell is probably fine for a basic local setup without too much trouble. but its not a direct drop in replacement for something like an alexa. you can replicate most features but it takes some work. but again it really depends on what your requirements are for voice commands.

[bright knot]

just voice commands for ha. where i dont want to rely on automations or alexa. you are the first human i have talked with about ha.

[glass grove]

one key thing to keep in mind when diving into home assistant is that you need to take things one at a time and enjoy the wins as you go. if you try and do everything at once then you will get overwhelmed and burnout.

for basic commands for turning things on/off etc... then you should be able to get that running pretty easily. if you want "intelligence" behind it with llm's etc... then thats a more advanced topic.

also keep in mind that the project is in very active development so guides and things you find can quickly become outdated. this is especially true with voice.

[bright knot]

i think a piece at a time is going to keep me satisfied. a win at a time as you describe it. Goals seem to always have many pieces to solve but it all seems possible if you have the time and access. Do you use LLM's to work with home assistant? there is no way i can have gotten this far without copilot and (lately) gemini.

[glass grove]

i have a local llm running qwen3 on ollama on one of my servers which is attached to my home assistant setup. a lot of people use online services for llms though openai/gemini etc...

but that can be added into the mix later

tbh i mostly just use it for easier notification text generation. its way overpowered for what i use it for 😛

[bright knot]

i recently retired. i have all day every day to play around. the weather has kept me in the shop for weeks. i can easily spend 8-10 hours at a time- following copilot down a dead end hole. but im learning. becoming familar with the ui. how do you bring your router info into ha?

[glass grove]

my router is a OPNSense install so i use an integration to connect to it. not the built in one though. theres a custom one i use instead as its more functional for that.

following ai blindly can also lead you in the wrong directions too. as its based on scraped data which gets outdated. its better than it used to be but it definitely cant be 100% relied on. i dont really use ai at all. sure i mess around with some local stuff a bit but i dont use any cloud ai at all.

[bright knot]

i will get there. i have lots of time. i came from decades of rockwell automations background. this is different but the basics are the same. less wires and more typing. but its all inputs- programming- outputs in my mind.

[main wind]

Steve, you have a background with decades of rockwell automations. Are you in/around the Milwaukee area? I ask, becasue I am, and am currently working on building hardware to replace all of my smart speakers. I am in process of building and my wife will not allow a single smart speaker to move wiht us. I am trying to add 4-6 devices ot my home that will allow me to utilize the assistant locally with local llms to control my home assistant connected devices. Would be great to connect.

[glass lake]

Has anybody ever been able to get an ecobee to work?

[worldly wraith]

What's this to do with someone else's post in non-related thread?