Man, I hope someone designs a dock for this with a better speaker for music!!!
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io
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Was anyone able to order one? I saw this last night and at 2 hours after post, all three us retailers were saying sold out. I suppose it’s a good problem for ha to have.
Edit: one of the retailers updated their message to “ we have sold out of our initial HA Voice stock in 21 minutes”
European retailers seem to be better stocked
I look forward to getting my hands on one of these! Just need to work out where to put it in the house first.
And possibly waiting for a POE version. But that's a nit-pick.
Is it possible to test this out using a phone or PC? I really like the idea of local voice assist.
Mod Magic.
IIRC the home assistant android app has VA functionality built in.
Not sure if it works in the same way as this box though.
One of the best parts of HA is the HomeKit bridge: any supported device is exposed to HomeKit ….. so if I’m using a personal device, my VA is Siri. Much smoother and more integrated than any of the app VAs. I have it configured to require a click, so it’s not always listening. However the rumors of the upcoming Apple smart home hub are mighty enticing, so we’ll see
I stopped using Google Assistant years ago.
Echo devices are pretty much in every room and a huge privacy issue. Also that’s my one integration with the biggest internet dependency. I don’t know if I can get rid of them, but I’d surely like to try
I'm not into any of the assistant ecosystems, they creep me out too much to have them listening in.
I've got my HA instance set up for independent VA integrations and I've had a few tries and using pi's with microphone and speaker hats as custom endpoints, they worked okay-ish but it fell by the wayside eventually and i've just been waiting on this kind of first party-promoted kind of announcement to get back in to it.
They also used to creep me out, but Siri was the one that got me. Of the majors, Apple is most concerned about privacy and the only one whose business model is not exploiting us that way. More importantly, as something on personal devices, it’s still useful if you require a click rather than always listening. It becomes normalized, and you no longer consider what you’re giving up
Then we discovered using Alexa as an intercom, and the convenience of always having it listening in every room, and threw out our own privacy. I’d really like to claw this back
That pretty sweet. The previous open source voice control solution I'd seen (Mycroft?) was like 400 bucks per device.
Might have to grab a mini PC and replace some of this Alexa shit which gets progressively worse since they announced a premium version.
I just need shit to do what it's told, not try to sell me things.
Nice! Been holding off on HA voice stuff, waiting for a more plug and play solution, so I've been watching this pretty closely. Managed to get one ordered before they (presumably) go out of stock in the UK. Hoping it arrives soon so I can tinker during the break!
Good news indeed
Only 2.4GHz WiFi?
Why would it need 5GHz? At most it needs to do two audio streams, which aren't going to need lots of bandwidth
Interference. Especially in apartment complexes, the 2.4Ghz band is busy, causing a lot of packet drops and random disconnects.
I've eliminated 2.4GHz wifi in the house for this reason.
The only downside is, I really need to get a couple more WAPs installed.
HA has been dead handy when I occasionally need to use an old device, as I can flip the second radio on from a dashboard.
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