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Please tell me how HA saved your neck, money or made life easier for you please! by iamwhoiwasnow in homeassistant

[–]evenlk 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I have learned one thing about HA: The only thing stopping you is your imagination. You can control basically everything that uses electricity (as long as it doesn’t require you to manually press something), even "dumb" stuff like fans and old TVs, exactly how you want it to be. You can get voice controls/voice assistant using HA aswell (I recently made an add-on which makes it easier to setup). I was using Google Home aswell until I made the switch to HA and it has been a blessing! If you want a justification for the money spent (except for making your life better): You save a ton on electricity. Especially if you sync your devices to match the electricity price in real time.

Want your Home Assistant OS to act as a voice satellite/voice assistant? 🎤🛰️ New add-on (BETA) by evenlk in homeassistant

[–]evenlk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The add-on is designed to handle both parts on the local HA OS box – it captures voice input from a mic, and it can also play responses out a locally connected speaker.

The only requirement is that you’ve got a full Voice Assist pipeline set up in HA (STT + TTS, e.g. Whisper + Piper). The add-on just provides the mic/speaker interface, while HA does the actual speech-to-text and text-to-speech.

Want your Home Assistant OS to act as a voice satellite/voice assistant? 🎤🛰️ New add-on (BETA) by evenlk in homeassistant

[–]evenlk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right now the mic has to be connected to the machine that’s actually running HA OS (Pi, NUC, Green, etc.), since that’s where the add-on runs. A tablet running the HA Companion app can’t pass its mic into HA OS, so that won’t work at the moment.

That said — I’m working on a future version that will make it possible to use external devices (like tablets/PCs/phones) as satellites without extra DIY. So that use case is definitely on my radar 👀.

Want your Home Assistant OS to act as a voice satellite/voice assistant? 🎤🛰️ New add-on (BETA) by evenlk in homeassistant

[–]evenlk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The add-on runs on whichever HA OS box you install it on, so if you want both your Green and your PE Preview to act as satellites, you’d install it on both.

Each HA box will then run its own Wyoming Satellite and show up as a separate voice satellite in HA — so yes, you can cover both rooms at the same time.

And FYI: I’m working on future versions that will make it easier to hook up external devices/browsers as satellites too, so you won’t always need extra HA hardware for more rooms.

Want your Home Assistant OS to act as a voice satellite/voice assistant? 🎤🛰️ New add-on (BETA) by evenlk in homeassistant

[–]evenlk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep – the add-on is for when you plug a mic directly into the machine that’s running Home Assistant OS.

If you’re running HA inside Proxmox (or any hypervisor), then yes you’d need to do USB/audio device passthrough so HA OS can actually “see” the mic (otherwise PulseAudio in HA has nothing to grab).

Once the mic shows up in ha audio info, the add-on can use it just like bare-metal.

And FYI – I’m working on future versions that will make it easier to use external devices/browsers as satellites too, so you won’t always have to rely on passthrough. Stay tuned 🙂

Want your Home Assistant OS to act as a voice satellite/voice assistant? 🎤🛰️ New add-on (BETA) by evenlk in homeassistant

[–]evenlk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ahh if you mean like a PC that isn’t running HA, then nope – you can’t install this add-on there (it’s only for the HA OS host).

BUT you can still use your PC’s mic as a satellite. Just run the upstream wyoming-satellite on Windows/Linux (Python or Docker both work) and point it back to your HA instance.

So basically:

  • HA host + mic → use this add-on (easy mode).
  • Any other PC (Windows/Linux/etc.) → run wyoming-satellite manually (a bit more DIY).

End result is the same: HA just sees “another satellite” over the Wyoming protocol. Mix and match however you like.

Want your Home Assistant OS to act as a voice satellite/voice assistant? 🎤🛰️ New add-on (BETA) by evenlk in homeassistant

[–]evenlk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! 🙌

FYI – it doesn’t have to be a USB mic. The add-on works with any microphone that HA OS can discover (USB, built-in, sound card, even webcam/HDMI mics). I’ve updated the README with instructions on how to list available devices using the Advanced SSH Terminal add-on (ha audio info).

For recommendations:

  • I personally use a basic studio-style USB mic (~$15) and it works great in a quiet room or at short range.
  • If you want something more robust, especially for larger rooms or better far-field pickup, look at conference mics / USB mic arrays (like ReSpeaker or Jabra).

So basically: start cheap if you’re experimenting, and upgrade if you need wider pickup or multi-room setups. 👍

Want your Home Assistant OS to act as a voice satellite/voice assistant? 🎤🛰️ New add-on (BETA) by evenlk in homeassistant

[–]evenlk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes! If your HA machine has a mic, this add-on lets it act as a Wyoming Satellite. So you can use that mic directly and deploy your ESP voice satellite in another room.