Home Assistant

Using voice assistants - overview

We are in chapter 3 of Home Assistant’s Year of the Voice. No, wake word detection is not yet supported. But you can make Assist the default digital assistant and start it on an Android phone, tablet, or Wear OS watch with one push of a button.

Assist complication on Wear OS

You can also create your own custom sentences to start an automation. For example, you could say “Clean the floor when I’m gone” to start the vacuum after you left your home zone. For the full list of new features and some videos, head over to the chapter 3 blog post or watch the stream.

While the video below does not include these latest changes, it gives a good overview of some of the basics.

  • How to voice-control devices using the Assist button, an analog phone, or an ATOM Echo.
  • How to expose devices to Assist.
  • How to set up a local voice assistant.
  • The video also shows the differences in processing speed. It compares:
    • Home Assistant Cloud versus local processing,
    • local processing on more or less powerful hardware.