Enhancing Voice Assistant: Integrate an External Speaker using ESPHome

Did you know you can easily integrate an external Smart Speaker with your voice assistant using ESPHome? In this video, we'll show you how to use ESPHome to connect your M5Stack Atom Echo or ESP32 S3 Box to your Home Assistant setup. Enhance your voice assistant experience with a better sound quality today!

NOTE:
Changing the i2s_dout_pin: GPIO22 to i2s_dout_pin: GPIO21 in the speaker: section stops the Atom Echo internal speaker from playing as well. Thanks @revilo819!

Links referred to in this video:

⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐

Music by:

00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:54 Updating the code for the Atom Echo
00:03:00 Selecting your Smart Speaker
00:05:14 Installing the new firmware for the Voice Assistant
00:06:30 Making sure that the ESPHome device may invoke services in Home Assistant
00:07:02 Testing the Voice Assistant response using a smart speaker

#homeassistant #tutorial #voiceassistant #voicecontrol #ESPHome #externalspeaker #smarthome #smarthomesolutions #homeautomation #technology #homeimprovement #smartdevices #homeintegration #smartliving #smarthometechnology #intelligenthome #hometech #automatedhome #smarttechnology #connectedhome #homeinnovation #smartgadgets #homeentertainment

[SmartHomeJunkie]

And the winner is @revilo819! Changing the i2s_dout_pin: GPIO22 to i2s_dout_pin: GPIO21 in the speaker: section stops the Atom Echo internal speaker from playing as well.

[stangman]

Once again, you've rescued me from some small amount of pain! I had a speaker that quit announcing for some strange reason and I remembered this video. While working on it, I realized I have two atom speakers that I could tie to a local media player and have made both of them much easier to hear in their respective rooms. Thank you!

[revilo]

What a great tutorial. Thanks very much. Changing the i2s_dout_pin: GPIO22 to i2s_dout_pin: GPIO21 in the speaker: section did the trick for me to stop the Atom Echo internal speaker from playing as well.

[photelegy]

1:40
Instuctions unclear:
1. Watched the recommended video "Trash it!" and then trashed my Google Home Mini
2. Went back to this video and now need to buy a new Google Home Mini?
😅😂😂😂😉

[trent-dq]

I was just thinking about this last week. Thanks for the guidance

[SpencerHartmann]

Just remove the speaker from the Atom Echo 🙂, two quick wire to remove and good to go

[PeterPavlik]

Audio output re-direction should be supported by the standard VoiceAssistant engine because all ESP development devices have insufficient volume/quality speakers.
Have local MPD & Sonos media players but only use Google TTS with them because of this.
Hope that the VA developers will remove this limitation soon...

[SMorrisRose]

This worked for me exactly as described, just using an OTA update because easier. Thanks - it seems to have been a lot of work.

[MarcelvanDorp-mrgv]

If you don't mind the internal speaker of the echo still active (or just cut the wires:), then you can just use the default config, with the on_tts_end part added to it (under the voice_assistant: key).

If you save and use the validate button, you'll see all the code, with the on_tts_ends part added, just what is needed.

I did a cosmetic enhancement as well: Under the substitution: key I added external_media_player_id: media_player.sonos_move, and in the on_tts_end I use this as media_player: ${external_media_player_id}

With this enhancement the added code is static, and only the substitutions need to be configured. I believe updates to the atom echo code is also honored, as long as it doesn't involve the on_tts_end automation...but then again: if this is added in the official code, then probably this solution isn't needed anymore :)

Unfortunately I don't know a way to use this same trick to overwrite or delete the speaker: configuration to disable it. AFAIK, this only works with additions, not with changes or deletions

[FrenkyvanDodewaard]

Could this also be done via a bluetooth speaker?

[michaelblaisdell]

I was able to copy your code for a cup of coffee and the google speaker works - but - when I asked the assistant to set a timer for 10 mins it stated timers were not supported on the device. Any idea why timers would no longer be supported??? This was on the ESP S3 Box 3.

[steffenlenk]

The video was exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately it didn't work for me because I got the following error during installation: “esp_image: Image length 1836240 doesn't fit in partition length 1835008”. But this error is known (M5 Stack Atom Echo VA firmware does not install locally since a79c9fa - image too big. #227) and I hope that since I don't know how to do the workaround, I guess I'll have to wait for the fix. But thank you very much for this good explanation

[wapphigh]

Why isn't Nabu Casa selling a hardware with mic and speaker solution for local voice like this that simply works out of the box?! Do we even know if they are working on producing one? thanks!

[TheSpantsutube]

has anyone ripped the processing guts out of an echo, replace it with esp and reused the mic/speaker?

[photelegy]

❓ 7:00
After the install of the new firmware it doesn't work anymore.
Could this be because the firmware on Github looks a bit different than yours. (I used m5stack-atom-echo.yaml and there is also m5stack-atom-echo.adopted.yaml, would this be better?)

Do you have an idea what the problem could be?

[homeyoutube]

Hi Junkie!

In your video, at 06:40, the overwritten previous adoptable item is visible on the top left of the HA screen with a green tick at the top. How can this be permanently deleted from here?

[cedricdelecole]

Too complicated for me ;-) but thanks a lot !

[Evermysticdesigns]

i have purchased your code, love your tutorials and your channel but please help me out here . spent hours trying to work out how you got access to the m6STACK key, code... etc ... my setup looks nothing like that

[fins]

Nice work.. 99% there, just need to turn echo volume off! Awesome to know voice is moving along.

[tylerrydell]

I found that I couldn't outright disable the speaker to stop the audio because parts of the code require a speaker to be defined in order to compile. I did, however, stop the atom echo from playing any audio by breaking its config, like pointing the pin to something other than the correct pin, like GPIO21. That way, the code will still compile and install, the speaker won't output audio, and your HA media_player will play audio instead.