The era of open voice assistants

You've misunderstood what they're asking for. They're asking for Home Assistant hardware (microphone, speaker, wifi) that, instead of being a standalone box taking up space on the counter/table/etc, fits into the hole in the hall where they currently have a lightswitch.

I guess I did misunderstand, because that request seems strange to me. I’m assuming they have more than one switch. Which one should have Home Assistant on it? Seems like an odd deployment strategy. A pi isn’t that big..

No I don't think that's it either. Home assistant runs on a server somewhere still.

What the top level comment is asking for, completely unrelated to the article mind you, is to have a smart device in the form factor of a light switch that you can hook into your home assistant system.

The problem they likely have (I have it too) is that you set HA up and it can control smart plugs, smart thermostats, etc, but it can't control 99% of the existing lights in your house because they are wired to dumb lightswitches. Instead of some mechanical finger flicking a switch or something, why not uninstall the existing light switch and replace it with a smart one.

Not the home assistant controller, but a peripheral. A light switch you can toggle manually or through the assistant.

I think the problem with this setup is that it needs to be wifi connected, and if you embed an esp32 inside a wall it will get exactly zero signal. Maybe with external antennas hidden in the switch outer case.

Not OP but if I have to have a CPU and microphone for voice commands anyway it doesn’t sound crazy to throw a whole pi/relay node into every room of the house that I want to have control of. Pi zero 2 is fifteen bucks and can run Whisper speech2text iirc, throw ChatScript on there for local command decoding and call it a day. I think I’d pay 50 to 100 per room for the convenience, paying a premium to not have my voice surveilled by Alexa just to set timers.

? I have my house packed to the brim with tplink Wi-Fi smart switches, they work fine.

https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/smart-switch/

The switches I linked are esp32. They live inside the wall. They get great signal.

So my original comment was not a misunderstanding. They are smart switch drop in replacements.

Yes - exactly this. If there are multiple needed, then some can be smarter/ more capable than others, but this removes the “just another box and cable(s)” issue.

Without trying to digress, but why not make it modular too ? I.e. base model is a smart switch, one unit is the “base” unit and the rest talk to that. Possibly even add further switches, dials (thermostat or dimmer etc). Perfect placement in my opinion.

Suppose I have a bias for meshnet vs hub and spoke. Seems to me having full power cpu on every mic is going to be better experience latency and glitchwise than streaming audio feeds around. Of course they would still talk to each other to pass commands around.

Ah right I forget I'm talking to Americans on an American site, who all have walls made out of wood and gypsum. Try that with brick and steel reinforced concrete lol.

Yeah, you're right. That is a weird request then, or I don't understand it either. I didn't realize something like [1] goes inside your switch. I was expecting a switch with a faceplate combined.

1: https://us.shelly.com/products/shelly-1-gen3

:)

They also make what you’re describing.

I use Lutron Caseta switches for my smart switches.