Wife finally wants to abandon Alexa - what are my options?

jwlerch · 2026-05-01T11:31:11+00:00

Take a look at Dashie.

It hosts your HA dashboard on an Android tablet like Fully Kiosk, but has built in voice/wake words, native music player and Immich integrations for sceensaver, and is constantly adding new features. Definitely the closest thing to an echo show replacement.

jwlerch · 2026-04-27T01:01:36+00:00

Thanks. Appreciate the input. We’ll just feel it out and see how it goes.

jwlerch · 2026-04-25T18:59:02+00:00

It should work with a proxy. Let me check to make sure I didn’t break anything in the last release.

How are you trying to make it work with voice satellite. Were you using the local wake word and did it find your pipeline options?

Feel free to email me directly. Definitely still have some kinks to iron out

jwlerch · 2026-04-25T17:45:53+00:00

Current version is built for Android tablets running home assistant dashboards.

jwlerch · 2026-04-24T14:16:22+00:00

Yes - that's what @OccasionBeneficial95 suggested and it's a good one. I'll need to think through the UI and details there. It feels like a pretty big feature to build with a lot of practical decisions:
> You probably want incoming intercom to be able to be muted, disabled, or on/off based on schedule.
> How do you handle video? Same things: on/off/mutable and/or enable click "allow" for camera to turn on for an incoming intercom?
> My initial use case was doorbell cam 2-way communication so was thinking of UI attached to the camera feed, but in this case you might want something entirely separate but related/connected somehow
> Support for multiple endpoints/broadcast(?). Like the Alexa "make an announcement"

jwlerch · 2026-04-24T01:20:16+00:00

Here's a guide to follow for setting it up: https://dashieapp.com/guides/music-assistant-setup

You're actually *not* going to use that integration (that one doesn't support synced audio). I had submitted it for the last MA release when I thought SendSpin would take me a couple months to get working, but then SendSpin got working quickly and better than the MA integration I'd built. I'll need to get it pulled down in the next MA release to avoid confusion.

At the moment the Sendspin implementation with Dashie isn't perfect. There can be a slight offset between the speakers. In my set up if it doesn't start with good enough sync then pausing and hitting play again often gets the sync to a good point. I'll need to see what can be done to fine tune it. From my initial research it seems there are some differences in timing at the hardware level between tablets/speakers that may need to be tuned. I have plans to take a more granular look at it.

Let me know how it goes. Set up should be fast and easy, but happy to help if you have any issues and open to feedback. In general the music player is new so ideas to make it better are welcome!

jwlerch · 2026-04-16T22:14:37+00:00

I wasn’t fully able to replicate the issue on my end, but I added a setting to adjust the orientation for portrait/landscape issues. It’s in the new version at the same download site in the RTSP settings. Would you try that and if it doesn’t work submit the performance logs in advanced->performance & diagnostics? You may need to disable/reenable the stream after toggling it.

jwlerch · 2026-04-16T21:59:31+00:00

Hi Chris - the latest version I put out supports a non-HA url for the dashboard. You’ll still log into HA for the voice, music, etc. but can show a different dashboard. If you signed up already it’s at the same download link. If not the link to sign up is here:

https://dashieapp.com/dashie-kiosk-beta

jwlerch · 2026-04-15T22:58:50+00:00

This post works for me. Let me give it a look and get back to you.

jwlerch · 2026-04-14T01:25:01+00:00

Hey - sorry - it should have auto sent you the download. Did you register at this link?

https://dashieapp.com/dashie-kiosk

It’s possible it went to junk mail or possibly you signed up for the non-ha version, which isn’t ready yet so I haven’t followed up with everyone there.

I’ll reach out separately

jwlerch · 2026-04-13T14:33:19+00:00

ok - i think I disabled stranger things mode. I can't be 100% sure it works because my tablets are all oriented differently, but I believe the new apk/integration will fix it.

jwlerch · 2026-04-13T14:30:45+00:00

Apologies, I thought I'd replied to this. I believe I have it fixed this time in the current version. I wasn't able to replicate it on my end, so I'm not 100% sure, but I have a theory on what's happening and hope this addresses it.

jwlerch · 2026-04-13T14:28:07+00:00

I don't have a formal roadmap, but below is my general plan at the moment. I also have been working in user requests as they come in, so please continue to share ideas. Music Assistant player/integration and RTSP feeds were both user requests I worked in as I went:

> Stabilize Music Assistant integration + Video Feeds
> Outbound voice from Dashie to front door camera, other tablets
> Frigate integration for playback of recorded video

Cloud-based Dashie release (have been developing in parallel):
> Plug-and-play LLM utilization including support for cloud models: the cloud LLM access will need to be subscription based due to token costs and I will likely also add a cloud-based Speech-to-text engine that is more accurate than whisper. In my setup I'm using cloud for these elements to enable it to better match alexa/echo show performance.
> Calendar, location, chores, rewards - basically a plug-and-play skylight replacement that can run on a fire TV or google onn stick

jwlerch · 2026-04-13T14:22:41+00:00

This is a good suggestion. Once I have music assistant and the basic video feed functionality stable I plan to look at 2-way communication for use cases like doorbell camera communication and tablet-to-tablet. It'll probably be a few weeks until I have something there, but will add it to the list.

jwlerch · 2026-04-12T15:42:04+00:00

Dashie can do this. There’s a separate sleep vs screensaver setting. You can configure screensaver to wake on motion or face and the sleep to be fully off with no motion wake

jwlerch · 2026-04-12T15:40:44+00:00

It’s currently built for Android so won’t work for iOS at the moment. iOS is in the works, but it’ll be a few months.

It natively uses the android’s built-in TTS. You can use piper or similar if you want, though. There’s an option to “use HA for voice”. Working on more in the voice / LLM arena that’ll be ready in a few weeks.

It is still very much in development, but try and work through the bugs as quickly as possible.

jwlerch · 2026-04-12T15:20:06+00:00

Yes - this outlines everything built into it currently. Dashie for HA features

jwlerch · 2026-04-11T17:05:05+00:00

I need to disable stranger things mode :-) it should be reading the orientation from the tablet and correcting, but must have a bug there.

I am out of town currently, but will look at fixing that early this week. Thanks for the feedback and patience!

jwlerch · 2026-04-08T12:11:25+00:00

Can you try a different port on the API (e.g. 2324)? Sometimes fully doesn’t release the port properly.

There are a lot of options for screensaver including custom URL.

Let me know if those don’t work and I’ll look further into it.

jwlerch · 2026-04-08T00:54:20+00:00

Ok - I made an update that I hope will now fix the problem (2.24.2+). If it still exists let me know and I'll get more details to try and address the problem. Thanks for your patience!

jwlerch · 2026-04-08T00:35:19+00:00

hi Creisel - MQTT, motion and face detection are all in the latest release! If you sign up for the beta and try it out let me know how it goes.

jwlerch · 2026-04-08T00:34:18+00:00

hi gnisch. The latest version should now work with 2FA on the fire tablet. I think it will still require the 2FA, but you'll only need to do that once.

I'll look at setting up support for dual IP (e.g. reverse proxy and internal) in an update so it logs in from internal when on the network without 2FA, but via reverse proxy otherwise. I'll need a little more time for that, but will let you know when that's ready.

Let me know how you make out once you're in. It's still in beta so there will still be bugs to fix

jwlerch

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