Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition: The Open-Source Game Changer We've Been Waiting For?

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2025-01-05 20:30:15

It's been just over a week since the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition arrived, and I've been testing it out to see how well it performs and how it holds up to the Amazon Alexa ecosystem. As expected, the platform has got a long way to go before it's fully mature and on-par with Alexa, requiring not only an instance of Home Assistant running, but several APIs setup (either locally or in the cloud) to get performance which somewhat rivals the current competition.

I think it's important to note that this is not meant as a replacement for Alexa or Google Home quite yet, and this initial experience will likely be buggy and have quite a few teething issues, compared to the current commercial solutions. This post is intended to give my initial thoughts, and a long-term review is quite a way away yet.

As with a lot of enthusiast-grade smart home tech, the packaging is very simple, and is just a cardboard box with the product, some warranty information, and a small sticker. All setup instructions are linked via a QR code, which takes you to a well documented website with good, clear instructions.