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My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

community.home-assistant.io

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Re: My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

#111

Post by derefr »

tomComb wrote: post #44
_spduchamp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a button? I'd prefer to physically press a button on an intercom box than having something churning away constantly processing sound.

The pebble index seems like the optimal form for this. https://repebble.com/index Could be pressed even if your hands were busy.

Most of what I (and in my experience many people) want a voice assistant for, is setting+ending timers... which for me happens mostly in the kitchen, while I'm simultaneously holding a hot pan or hand-tossing a salad or paper-towelling off some raw chicken. In none of those cases would I want a ring anywhere near my hands, let alone a smart ring. (And nor, in half of those cases, is it convenient/hygenic to use my oven timer.)

That being said, we could solve for fully 50% of in-home voice-assistant use-cases just by developing an extremely domain-specific voice assistant that has an extremely small (ideally burned-into-a-DSP) voice model that only knows how to recognize commands to manage kitchen timers. If such a device existed, and was cheap enough that you could assume anyone who wanted this functionality would just buy one, then this would make truly hands-free activation of a "real" voice-assistant much less necessary, as there'd be far fewer user-stories that would really "need" that. The rest of those user-stories really mostly could work with some kind of ring / belt buckle / shirt comm badge / etc.

Re: My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

#113

Post by dullcrisp »

airstrike wrote: post #43
hamdingers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't clap if your hands are full and I would not subject my family to my attempts at delivering a melody. I haven't tried training my own wake word though, I'm tempted to see if it improves things.

Personally I'd pick "Cthulhu"

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Re: My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

#115

Post by marak830 »

nickthegreek wrote: post #47
voidUpdate wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not just turn the light on when you go in a room, and turn it off again when you go out? All the rooms in my flat have switches next to the door

My lights adjust their brightness and color spectrum automatically throughout the day while also understanding the time of year and sun position. This alone is next level. All are voice/tablet controlled. When I start a movie at night, lights will adjust automatically in my open floor plan first level. All of this operates without me ever having to give any mental energy beyond the initial setup. This is not just fli…

How the hell are you managing that. On a simple micro level I can figure it out, but as a whole over the entire house? o.0

Re: My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

#116

Post by huhtenberg »

hamdingers wrote: post #26
_spduchamp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a button? I'd prefer to physically press a button on an intercom box than having something churning away constantly processing sound.

If I have to go to a thing and push a button, I'd rather the button do the thing I wanted in the first place. Voice assistants are for when my hands are full or I don't want to get up. (I wrote more about my home automation philosophy in another comment[1]). Also I have all my voice assistant devices mounted to the ceiling 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47399909

What if you have two things? You'd then need two buttons.

The push button is a perfectly viable option, it just needs to be in a form factor that's works. Could be as simple as a tiny low-energy Bluetooth board with a coin battery that will last several months.

Re: My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

#117

Post by pedro_caetano »

voidUpdate wrote: post #4

Do people like talking to voice assistants? I've used one occasionally (mostly for timers when I'm cooking), but most of the time it would be faster for me to just do it myself, and feels much less awkward than talking to empty air, asking it to do things for me. It might be because I just really don't like making more noise than I have to (Yes, I appreciate that some people may be disabled in such a way that it make…

Not voice assistants but for anything that falls into the body of text category (emails, letters, documentaton) I just use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, mainly to give myself an RSI break from typing.

A Radiologist friend of mine convinced me to give it a try, apparently radiology reports are dictated in most places nowadays

I think the main frustration is often speed and precision but with modern dictation software it is pretty flawless.

Re: My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

#118

Post by pjc50 »

hamdingers wrote: post #10

If you're less concerned about privacy, I use Gemini 2.5 Flash for this and it's exceptionally good and fast as a HA assistant while being much cheaper than the electricity that would be needed to keep a 3090 awake. The thing that kills this for me (and they even mentioned it) is wake word detection. I have both the HA voice preview and FPH Satellite1 devices, plus have experimented with a few other options like a Ra…

Wake word detection in low power DSP is a not-quite-COTS product but definitely exists. I believe PC manufacturers are looking at adding it to laptops soon, precisely to use with AI assistants.

Re: My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)

#120

Post by Slav_fixflex »

Great write-up. I've been going down the self-hosted rabbit hole too – started with just a VPS, ended up building monitoring and security automation around it. The moment you start self-hosting seriously you realize how much 'invisible work' managed services were doing for you.
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