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Home Assistant Voice

This page lets you talk to Home Assistant through the clock: hold the knob for a moment, let go and speak. Home Assistant's Assist understands the request, carries it out and answers through the clock's speaker.

How it behaves

While Voice is on, the clock keeps a connection to your Home Assistant. Holding the knob starts a request: the clock records what you say and sends it to your Assist pipeline. Home Assistant carries out the request and sends back a spoken answer, which the clock plays through its speaker. After a failure, the clock connects again by itself, at most every ten seconds.

What you need

  • Home Assistant reachable from the clock's network.
  • An Assist pipeline with speech-to-text and text-to-speech, for example Whisper and Piper, or Home Assistant Cloud. Set one up under Settings → Voice assistants in Home Assistant.
  • A long-lived access token: in Home Assistant, open your user profile, go to Security and create one under Long-lived access tokens. Copy it right away. Home Assistant shows it only once.

Set it up

  1. Open the web UI and go to System → Home Assistant Voice.
  2. Enter the Home Assistant Address, for example http://homeassistant.local:8123. Only the address: no path such as /lovelace.
  3. Paste the access token into Token.
  4. Choose an Assist Pipeline, or keep Default. Only pipelines with speech-to-text and text-to-speech are listed.
  5. Press Save and connect. This also switches Voice on.

Connection at the top of the section shows Ready once the clock is connected. If it cannot connect, it shows why. See When it does not work.

The token is kept on the clock and never shown again. To keep it, leave the field empty when you change something else. When you change the Home Assistant address, enter the token again. Remove next to the token deletes it and switches Voice off.

Switch it off

The Voice switch takes effect at once. Off, the clock closes its connection to Home Assistant and holding the knob does nothing. Address, token and pipeline stay saved, so switching it on again is enough. Save and connect also switches Voice on.

Talk to it

  1. Hold the knob for half a second. The Home Assistant house appears on the display. You can let go now.
  2. Speak once the house opens its mouth wide.
  3. Stop talking. Home Assistant hears that you have finished and answers through the speaker.

The answer plays at the alert volume, alertVolume, as a share of the master volume. A radio station that was playing comes back afterwards. See Volume.

Home Assistant listens for about 15 seconds at most. To finish sooner, press the knob briefly. A short press before the house opens its mouth cancels the request.

Turning the knob still opens the bars for brightness and volume, and a short press switches between them while the bars are shown, as described in Buttons, knob & clock.

Commands for the clock's room

Assist can take "turn on the lights" to mean the lights in the room the clock stands in. For that, tell the clock which room it is in:

  1. In Home Assistant, open Settings → Devices & services → Devices and pick a device in the clock's room. This can be the clock itself or anything else in that room. It needs an Area.
  2. Copy the address of that device page from the browser, for example http://homeassistant.local:8123/config/devices/device/0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef.
  3. In the web UI, paste it into Room device under System → Home Assistant Voice and press Save and connect. The clock keeps only the device ID at the end.

Requests then use that device's area. If you move the device to another area in Home Assistant, the next request follows. Leave the field empty to switch this off.

Start it from Home Assistant

You can also start Voice without touching the clock, for example from a dashboard button or an automation.

  1. Connect the clock to Home Assistant over MQTT and switch on discovery, as described in Home Assistant.
  2. In Home Assistant, open the clock's device page. It has a button called Assist.
  3. Press it. The clock starts listening, just as if you had held the knob.

The button works only while Connection shows Ready. Without discovery, publish an empty message to <prefix>/cmd/voice/start.

When it does not work

Connection shows What to do
HA unreachable Check the address and that Home Assistant runs. Address only, no path.
Token rejected Create a new long-lived access token and save it.
Pipeline lacks STT/TTS Pick a pipeline with speech-to-text and text-to-speech.
Not understood Speak once the house opens its mouth, without long pauses.
Wi-Fi too slow Move the clock closer to the router.
HA too slow Use a faster speech-to-text or text-to-speech.
Microphone update pending Keep the clock on USB power. The update installs by itself.
Microphone error The microphone stopped while you spoke. Try again. If it happens again, restart the clock.
Playback error The answer could not be played. The pipeline's text-to-speech has to answer in MP3 or WAV.
Settings unreadable The saved Voice settings cannot be read. Enter the address and the token again and press Save and connect.
HA error Home Assistant reported a problem. Its log says which.

Privacy

The clock records only from the start of a request until Home Assistant hears you finish, you press the knob, or a minute has passed. The recording goes straight to your Home Assistant and its pipeline, and is not stored on the clock. With Voice switched off, the microphone is not used for Voice at all.