Building a Local Smart Home Voice Assistant With ESPHome! 

Thanks so much for making this video, Lewis! I would absolutely buy mic add-ons for my EP1's :) Also a small note: you can test wake word detection via the pipeline debug panel now too.

Who else is waiting for another product that beats out the big manufacturers with all the features the community wants from Lewis for this? :D

I'd love your Everything Presence One with voice assistant integrated into one device! Would also be great if it could directly disable the microphone if no presence is detected, rather than go through an automation? Now that I think about it, that sounds great to me. I guess I'll try to build one such myself next year. Been wanting to DIY something with ESP for a while now.

As usual, great video. And yes. We absolutely want to see an add-on board with microphone and speaker. Maybe even an additional LED to show if it is listening for wake word. Would also be nice if the microphone could do double duty and listen for sounds in a more general way. Like any sound. "Trigger, if sound level is above xx dB."

I think the ways they've come for a private voice Assistant is amazing, even just getting wake words to work fairly decent. I am satisfied with it even being processed by the HA server locally, as the traffic never leaves the internal LAN, and if you pair it with something like the EP1 with automations the bandwidth really becomes negligible

I'd really love if you could provide a kit to upgrade existing fp1's as well as an option to buy the whole setup at once. The optional ability to have the mic disabled when no presence would also be great :) Keep up the good work.

Just waiting for the pipelines to be able to know what area the calling device is in now, then it'll be perfect (eg: say "turn the light off" rather than "the the kitchen light off") There is an open pull request for this so hopefully soon!

I just built this a few days ago and it is awesome, especially because google home and alexa don't support my language and while i'm fine with English, it is more natural to speak your day by day language when using home automations.

This is awesome. Can’t wait to spend way too much time on integrating this 😂

13:16 Lewis I love your humility. You could have easily mentioned the fantastic presence sensor that you sell here, but you chose not to :) Fantastic video as always! Thank you for all you've done for this community!

great video. I'm really excited about what's to come. Since I have 7 EP1s in operation myself, I would be happy to receive a kit to be able to use the voice function. such a kit with microphone and loudspeaker would be cool and maybe a new housing to print yourself 😂

Man I have to give this a try! Would love to have the response play back on a speaker already in that room like Sonos or heos. With it either pausing the media playing or lowering the volume in that room so it can hear better.

Microphone for EP Lite would be good too, mine just arrived today - thanks Lewis for designing these products!!

I love my EP1, it is so cool. But I think I am going to wait until the EA1 (Everything Assistant One) to add local Voice Assistant to HA.

Ideally, I'd like the EP2 (hint) to have the built-in microphone with on-device wake word, and the speaker be configurable in the response from Home Assistant so that it can output the voice response from the voice assistant through something like a Sonos speaker associated with the same room where the voice assistant was activated from (the room the EP2 is associated with).

Yes, if your presense sensor also included a mic and (maybe) mini speaker so i could use it for wake word stuff, I'd buy one for every room in my house (slowly, but i'd get there).

Okay, Lewis you need to bundle the voice features into your EP1 hardware! Just throw one in each room and 💥BOOM💥 you have all you need for hands free human interaction! I could see that as the backbone to my HA set up. Great stuff as usual buddy!

That would be awesome to have a microphone built into the EP devices. If you do go down that route please add the ability to easily disable the microphone.

Thank you. I've been (lazily) waiting for a full local tutorial. Much appreciated.

So great seeing all this strung together after the gradual releases this year! So EP-1 Pro with speaker and mic when? 😉

FYI I have connected 40W 4" speaker from FaitalPRO to my echo device and it outputs a crazy amount of volume, more than enough for music listening in 500sqft room. These speakers are very sensitive and perfect for ceiling-mounted smart speakers.

As if you needed to ask... Yes please for a mic for the EP1! Personally I'm easy about a speaker, depends how loud/clear it can be in a busy kitchen and what sort of new case it would need. Perhaps it might be possible to cast response audio to an existing Google speaker, if that's not too laggy... Edit: Actually perhaps bluetooth would be faster, always forget they do that.

Adding a mic and speaker to the presence detectors would be very cool

I’d also love to see a Docker/ Unraid video as well. As always, love your videos!

Yes!!!! Microphone accessory for EP1. Maybe speaker too if possible...? New 3D Printed case with speaker at back maybe?

Loved this video! I’m an Arduino project builder and IT person and have HA running in a docker container. Will be getting hold of an ESP32 to give this a go, after watching the ESP Home intro video first! You also have yourself a new subscriber!! Keep up the good work!!

Yes yes yes, I would love the microphone add on for the EP1. That would be perfect. Also, hoping they add "computer" to the wake word list soon. All us star trek fans will be waiting xD

I just purchased EP1 and would love the addition of microphone and speaker.

Just an FYI: With that inmp441 the data sheet says that in mono applications the L/R pin should be pulled low so that it is assigned to the Left channel to reduce interference.

homeassistant gets better and better so nice to see the progess

Picard walks into his readyroom and says : " Computer, lights! "

Lewis...anxiously awaiting YOUR I2S microphone breakout board!!! Great video as always, many thanks!

Excellent news! I can live with wakeword detection being done centrally rather than on device, especially since the required bandwidth per device is quite low. If anything it adds more flexibility since you could dynamically switch the pipeline and associated wakeword depending on who is home or present in a particular room (multi-lingual family / friends and relatives coming to visit / etc.) Great job HA team!

Yes, I would love a speaker+mic combo for the EP Lite!

this is pretty huge. i stepped away from HA because i was able to accomplish everything in another platform, but being able to self-host a voice assistant is huge. i might just have to load up HA again

Thanks once more Lewis, straightforward step by step guide, as always! Also, +1 for the EP1 mic add-on module! Any idea if USB mic arrays like the Seeed Studio ReSpeaker work with Home Assistant?

Yes - microphone on / in the EP1 ! YESY YES, YES! Speaker to ???!!! YES / YES / YES !

Yes! Microphone add on to EP1 would be awesome! 👍

What I would love to see is: * A way to talk to assist programmatically (rest API?) and get a response back, to do local TTS and/or STT * A way to "talk" to assist using some existing chat system (IRC, XMPP, mattermost) etc Or

As someone that is about to pick up a EP lite kit, Would you make a video about adding the microphone into the EP1 and the EPL?

great video again, i believe they did just announce that you can build a satellite that runs Wake Word detection directly on it, can you do a video on how to build one? Id really love that.

Thanks for this but my heart sank when I saw you mention ESPHome. I consider myself competent with technology and have Home Assistant voice control working on my Intel NUC via a cordless phone with Grandstream VOIP and through the Companion app. However, it would be an understatement to say that ESPHome had me pulling my hair out when I tried to set it up with an Atom Echo. I read every available instruction and spent literally days trying to set it up - a total of at least 30 hours. I found Home Assistant/ESPHome's own instructions ambiguous and unhelpful. I had an Echo device that was recognised by the system but wouldn't do anything, then on attempting to reinstall it, a whole raft of different problems ending with a persistent encryption error that, according to ESPHome's documentation, had been fixed a month earlier! I finally gave up and binned the device for the sake of my mental health. Since it means going into ESPHome again and adding custom hardware, I won't try to follow your process but instead wait for further developments in input devices.

Great video & hope you are not affected by the storms - stay safe and well.

Maybe you can do a video on the creative "containers" viewers create for their home. (Like the R6, I'm sure others will come up with fascinating devices.)

You need som kind of box for the speaker to make is sound better. I remember I found a lid that was the perfect size for one of those speakers a few years ago. Just some hot glue and it will be a major difference

hey great video thanks :) yeah Id total buy an add on mic for my EP1 that would be a great way to add voice control without needing something else sitting around.

Brilliant works a treat, cant wait for this voice assist to mature, thanks for the video

Finally! Wake words. P.S. I am waiting for delivery on an EP lite so yes, I would be interested in adding mic and speaker.

Yes please do the microphone for the everything presence one. Thank you

Is it possible to send the speech output to one central good speaker instead of equipping every device with a speaker?

I hope this leads to us being able to have custom voice assistant voices... celebrities/characters etc

Another fantastic video! Hope you've got some time off planned....you've been one busy dude!

The thing we most urgently need is an out-of-the-box S2T engine with the voice of GLaDOS :p

Definitely want a mic accessory for the EP1🤟

You're going to make me start soldering things again and remember my college days in engineering. I drank a lot of alcohol along the way to forget those days. LOL

5:55 "you should see that all three services now show up" .. yeah, or not :D why am i not surprised? That's HomeAssistant :D

Brilliant video thanks. Waiting for a how to guide to set this up on a pi 3b use some of that old Tec up.

This is great! I am hoping someone will design a half way decent 3D printed case to put this ESP32/speaker setup in so it can look halfway presentable. Until then I've ordered an M5 to play with.

you can just use a cheap esp8266 for this build, no need to go bangers with esp32, it only stream low quality audio over home assistant anyway, maybe we need a esp32 once a on-device wake word becomes a thing, heck I wouldnt be surprised if we need a esp32-c3 this time since we just really need the extra cpu power for the pn-device wake word to become a thing, esp32 is still using mips based processor while c3 is now using the better risc-v. also tried it with those cheap and tiny esp32-s2 and those work fine as well.

This would fit perfectly in the EP!

great explanation Lewis, getting closer to general consumer level, are you going to create a new EP1 Kit with a voice assistant included?

Can we use this without having SSL setup locally, or without Nabu cloud? It doesnt work through the HA app. It would be awesome to see you do a video on how to get local SSL up and running. Love your content!

Find a good enough Bluetooth speaker and add some sort of mediaplayer integration and this could be nice for playing local media. Just stuff everything inside the speaker.

EP lite with speaker and mic could be sick :O

Wow, nice video and tutorial. I make one with esp32 but in esphome log have a speaker buffer full error...

Ok so I’m waiting for a device I can put in every room and just set it up. Getting out my soldering iron? Not since my Nascom. As for the voice synthesis, that was worse than my bbc micro!! Seriously it is progress but a very long way to go.

Mic add-on for EP1 please!!!! It would be the ULTIMATE SENSOR!

Some rtttl buzzer can be attached and trrigered on listen and on end action for listening sound.

Thanks Lewis for another great video. I would like to know, how it could be accomplished to implement a sound feedback instead of status LEDs on such a voice assistant. For example I would like to have some Startrek computer sounds to show if the command was understood or not. The "usual switched on" or "switched off" is rather long and in fact really useless. Perhaps this is an idea for an follow up video? Thanks again for your great work. Cheers Wilhelm

absolutely add a mic as an accessory for the ep1!!!!!!

Thank you for the great video. Would like to buy upgrade kit for all my EP1s. Cool. Please proceed....

This sounds like an amazing feature and I'm sure I'll come up with lots of ways to use it. Question: Can you configure an existing smart device, such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, to act as the voice command trigger / responder for the new voice assistant function within Home Assistant? Thank you for the very informative video and the detailed explanation, great job, as always!

Thank you, this video is yet another great one like many you do. I have followed it to make my own less the speaker. Almost all look good, device seems to be up and running however, no response and "Assist in progress" is off. any help to debug would be great

I need HA to brew tea and bring it to me 😄

Great video and very simply explained! I was able to setup Voice Assistant in HomeAssistant using 1. ESP32 Devkit V1, 2. DFRobot Max98357 and 3. INMP441 It works like a breeze Two problems I am facing however which I hope you or someone can help me fix :) 1. The speaker keeps giving humming noise till the first command is given, after that it works amazing 2. The ESP32 DevKit keeps crashing every few seconds of running ( memory issue ? ) Any pointers will be helpful! Thanks again for a great video :)

Awesome thanks Lewis! Soo, when are you going to work your magic and build one for us? ;)

yes please on the additions for EP1 and EPlite. :)

Thank you lots for this example and the Code. I was trying to do it with the instructions for ESP32 from the Chapter 4 Blog post. But it only refers to the code for the M5 and it is missing a wiring diagram. Without any knowledge about I2S i got stuck pretty fast... 🤪

A bit late to this but very usefull video. I would also purchase a mic add on for my EP's

Very very cool! This is now my next project, thanks Lewis 😎

Thank you for sharing! Trying to get it to work on the esp muse luxe speaker. But haven't got too far. (Video request ☺️) Also want to run the models on my blue iris machine as it has more power. Currently what works well for me is willow on an espbox :)

As always, a great video. I cant get past testing the speaker on my PC (it has a red exclamation mark next to it). (Running HA on RaspPi, accessing HA from firefox or chrome). I'd love a video on how to setup https locally (if this is what is needed to make it work). Subscribed to home assistant cloud and use that for google integration / remote access

Question: how is device arbitration currently being handled? For example, I have 2 mics in adjacent rooms, and I loudly scream "OK Nabu!"... is there an algorithm in place which determines the "winning" device?

Hi Lewis, fantastic and informative video as usual. I have bought the ESP32 chip from the store, wired it up following the video instructions. HA recognises the ESP device and everything seems to be configured OK. It is my first time with ESPHome / electronics and so am a complete newbie. I have set-up the voice pipeline and it works from my laptop browser microphone and speaker. However, the Assist button doesn't come on at all when I speak to the ESP microphone at all. Please can you advise where I should begin trying to resolve and get this exciting project working. Any hints would be gratefully appreciated either from you or the wider community. Thanks in advance for any ideas you could provide.

I use tablet and old android phones in my rooms as control panels where anyone can interact with smart home / home assistant. Is it possible to use those devices as microphones for picking up wake words and voice commands?

Not sure if you use Garage doors where you live or if you are following along on the situation with Chamberlain (myQ) BLOCKING there API for all third party smart home systems... Everyone is recommending RATGDO as a replacement. Would love to see a video about RATGDO or other alternatives to myQ

Think you might include speaker/mic in the next iteration of the Everything Presence 2?

Well…. That’s another 5+ hours of my life down the pan in the name of home assistant….. parts ordered and looking forward setting up.

I know people have privacy concerns, but I really want a setup that doesn't require wake words. Especially if everything is locally processed and trusted, just listen to everything and figure out when I'm talking to the house.

Question for you. Thank you and great job BTW, i do enjoy the project ideas you have. For my question, I built this project and it is pretty good. Ive been trying to create a solution that looks good and works like the A or G of the world. HA and this project is a great first step in that endeavor. I followed your project and powered it up via my laptop, everything worked perfectly. It activates lights and switches and even can turn on and off my alarm if you know the right commands. However, my problem came into play when i enclosed it in a case and powered it via a USB power supply (not my laptop). When it powers up and begins listening for audible commands the speaker renders a LOT of static. i checked my wiring and soldering and everything looks perfect if i do say so myself. The static is pretty persistent until i give it a command to do something. Once the device engages the speaker and presents an audible message the static goes away completely until the next time i power it down and back up. My question is this, did you experience this in your build, if so how did you solve for it? I used the exact same setup you did using the same GPOI pins. The only thing i can thin of is i have bleed through frequencies coming from the wires i chose. (i tested it with cat5 cable wiring). I did order new wires which will be here this weekend to see if that will solve the issue permanently or not. Since the static goes away after i give it a command i'm not confident that is the issue. thoughts?

Can’t wait to try. Thank you for this!

Be well up for a pre-made device Lewis 🎉

With matter still only trickling its way to market, and still lacking much of the openness in regard to its promise of all the sensing from a device being available outside of its owners app, I’m very glad to see the year of the voice progressing so well. I backed a project in 2016 by Protonet, called Zoe, to do what home assistant is able to do now. Ultimately that project was refunded due to being too far ahead of the tech for their ambition. Think 2024 will be the year I switch from Amazon to Home assistant, maybe now would be the time for Protonet or someone else to revisit the concept of Zoe.

A major problem I ran into is while running on proxmox you need to enable certain cpu features. I'm not sure which as I just changed mine to pass all features my physical cpu supports. Otherwise its unbearably slow/inaccurate.

I wonder if a raspberry zero 2 w is powerful enough for on device wakeword processing.

I have a couple ESP8266 laying around. Thought they'd work. Remapped the GPIO pins and set the proper board type. NOPE. Voice code only works in ESP32 chips (for now?). "Invalid ESP32 Variant". So , FYI

My Local HA Assist I setup was named Jarvis already... I'm glad thats a wake word!!! LOL... Tony Stark!

This is legitimately exciting

As soon as the ESP32 boots up, I get a rather loud buzzing/crackling sound from the speaker. Once "Nabu" responds after carrying out his first command , the buzzing/crackling stops. And does not come back until it reboots again.

Will there be a video presenting the presence lite on your channel. ? My order is currently stuck at customs. Gotta love it. Import taxes when not EU country!