How is the speaker in that? I have some atoms and the speaker sucks. Thinking about buying a bunch of these Google devices and replacing the PCB but I'd rather save the time if something like this actually has good sound.

For music, it's not great. For voice, it's pretty good. It's decently loud and legible. There's no bass. The mics however are pretty good. As far as I've read, you can't get the mics to work well unless they're tuned for that speaker in physical placement and hardware/firmware. The HA speaker uses the same kind of DSP chip that makes it possible for it to hear well in worse than ideal conditions which makes speech recognition work so well. So yeah, if you don't wanna faff with stuff and you don't care about music, just get it. It's got 3.5mm TRS out if you wanna hook a proper speaker for music. The DAC is probably not amazing for HiFi but should you want to hook up something like a JBL Charge, I imagine it should work. In fact I'm planning to do this in another room where I used to use a larger Google Nest speaker for music.

I don't use Google assistant to control any other devices but the amount of stuff I ask 'hey Google's to do over the last few years has gotten worse than when it first started. More often now I just play music to it via Bluetooth connection.

I assume this is going to arrive at the solution of "Upgrade to Gemini-supported devices today!" Yeah, no thanks.
I wish I could get Home Assistant working with my nest minis.

You got to love the author of that article. If you want the lights to turn off and on normally, maybe people should use light switches. Those aren't going to break due to software downgrades, those don't require Gemini or internet connections.

And I understand, there are rare situations when throwing the internet at your home appliances can make sense for solving niche problems. Those situations definitely exist, but for almost everyone almost all of the time, but it's pretty fucking easy to turn lights off and on.

Is it easy to set up a smart speaker with Home Assistant? Last I heard, it was kind of a PITA.

Does it work with music assistant in HA? Thanks for the response btw

You got to love the author of that article. If you want the lights to turn off and on normally, maybe people should use light switches. Those aren't going to break due to software downgrades, those don't require Gemini or internet connections.

And I understand, there are rare situations when throwing the internet at your home appliances can make sense for solving niche problems. Those situations definitely exist, but for almost everyone almost all of the time, but it's pretty fucking easy to turn lights off and on.

Probably 200$ of raspberry pi gear plus a few weekends messing around should net you something awesome that only catastrophically fails sometimes.

You got to love the author of that article. If you want the lights to turn off and on normally, maybe people should use light switches. Those aren't going to break due to software downgrades, those don't require Gemini or internet connections.

And I understand, there are rare situations when throwing the internet at your home appliances can make sense for solving niche problems. Those situations definitely exist, but for almost everyone almost all of the time, but it's pretty fucking easy to turn lights off and on.

These just dont need to be online. 90% of the use I have seen is timers and lights, like a half step above hello world.

There is a market for voice assistants that are local.

Lights are one of the areas where I think automation is genuinely useful, but my rule with anything "Smart" is that it has to be able to run 100% locally.

Get an ESP32, a temperature sensor, and 4x relay board and build your own with esphome!

If you pull the instructions for your thermostat, the wiring guide should tell you what each wire is for (because you can't trust wire colors). From there it's just wiring up the relays properly, getting the config built in esphome, and setting up a generic thermostat.

It sounds kinda daunting, but it's really not super complex. The only gotchas too look out for are any of the relays that can't be on when another relay is on. There's a way to prevent that in esphome. I'm sure someone has made a guide on it by now. I would have made one if I had gotten my enclosure figured out before my 3D printer took a hiatus.

It also needs to fail gracefully. A smart switch needs to fail to a dumb switch, not "no switch".

I assume this is going to arrive at the solution of "Upgrade to Gemini-supported devices today!" Yeah, no thanks.
I wish I could get Home Assistant working with my nest minis.

Lights are one of the areas where I think automation is genuinely useful, but my rule with anything "Smart" is that it has to be able to run 100% locally.

You got to love the author of that article. If you want the lights to turn off and on normally, maybe people should use light switches. Those aren't going to break due to software downgrades, those don't require Gemini or internet connections.

And I understand, there are rare situations when throwing the internet at your home appliances can make sense for solving niche problems. Those situations definitely exist, but for almost everyone almost all of the time, but it's pretty fucking easy to turn lights off and on.

Get an ESP32, a temperature sensor, and 4x relay board and build your own with esphome!

If you pull the instructions for your thermostat, the wiring guide should tell you what each wire is for (because you can't trust wire colors). From there it's just wiring up the relays properly, getting the config built in esphome, and setting up a generic thermostat.

It sounds kinda daunting, but it's really not super complex. The only gotchas too look out for are any of the relays that can't be on when another relay is on. There's a way to prevent that in esphome. I'm sure someone has made a guide on it by now. I would have made one if I had gotten my enclosure figured out before my 3D printer took a hiatus.

I have three lights that were wired to one switch. With smart bulbs, I can individually turn them on and off or dim them. No "dumb" solution exists for homes that were wired in a stupid way. This isn't a niche application, it's a common reality.