Vendor page
Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition
Home Assistant project, Home Assistant, 2026
Read the originalRead on October 17, 2026
- What it is
- The product page for Home Assistant's own voice satellite hardware, with its price, local and cloud speech options, the built-in wake words and the Intel N100 advice for fully local Whisper.
- How much weight it carries
- The vendor's own product page, reliable for what its hardware and software do. Prices vary by region and retailer, and the page's advice on hardware is the project's own.
Facts taken from this source
- Home Assistant says its cloud speech processing runs on Microsoft Azure under commercial terms, and that Home Assistant Cloud itself keeps no record of your voice, data or commands.
“Home Assistant Cloud leverages the enterprise services of Microsoft Azure for its industry-leading speech processing ... In addition, Home Assistant Cloud itself does not keep any record of your voice, data, or commands.” (How does Home Assistant Cloud maintain my privacy with voice?)
- Home Assistant says that for some languages it believes Home Assistant Cloud provides the best experience, because the local speech-to-text models do not support them.
“For some languages, we believe that Home Assistant Cloud provides the best experience.” (Do I need Home Assistant Cloud?)
- The Voice Preview Edition has an internal speaker, an internal dual-microphone array and a 3.5mm audio output.
“Internal speaker Internal dual-mic array 3.5mm audio output” (Features and Specs: Microphone and speaker)
- The Voice Preview Edition uses an ESP32-S3 system on a chip with 16 MB of flash storage and 8 MB of octal PSRAM, and an XMOS XU316 chip for audio processing.
“ESP32-S3 SoC with 16 MB of FLASH storage 8 MB octal PSRAM Audio Processing XMOS XU316” (Specs: Inside and Audio processing)
- Home Assistant's timeline of its voice work lists the launch of the Voice Preview Edition in December 2024.
“December 2024 Voice Preview Edition launches Dedicated high-quality hardware allows you to experience and develop this community-driven and private voice” (Timeline of Home Assistant voice (December 2024 entry))
- Home Assistant's product page shows the Voice Preview Edition at $69 in US dollars, or 59 euros.
“Preview the future of voice for just $ 69 / 59 €” (Product header, Buy now button)
- Home Assistant says the mute switch on the Voice Preview Edition physically cuts power to the microphones.
“Physically cuts power to the microphones for guaranteed privacy” (Advanced audio processing)
- Home Assistant recommends at least an Intel N100 or an equivalent processor for running OpenAI's Whisper locally, and says the Base model runs reasonably fast for English and Spanish.
“If you wish to use OpenAI’s Whisper, we recommend using at least an Intel N100 or equivalent processor. ... This model runs reasonably fast for languages that have large public datasets to train on, such as English and Spanish.” (Can I run this voice assistant fully locally?)
- Home Assistant says a standardized hardware platform for voice is an essential ingredient for the community to drive its voice project forward, and that the Voice Preview Edition was built for that purpose.
“An essential ingredient for the community to drive the project forward is a standardized hardware platform for voice, built for Home Assistant from the ground up” (Why is this called the Preview Edition?)
- Out of the box, the Voice Preview Edition listens for three wake words, Okay Nabu, Hey Jarvis and Hey Mycroft, using the on-device engine microWakeWord.
“Out of the box, the device can listen for “Okay Nabu,” “Hey Jarvis,” or “Hey Mycroft” as wake words.” (Which wake words can I select?)
Pages that rest on this source
- Home Assistant Voice: Speech to Text and Voice CommandsGuide
- Does Home Assistant voice control work offline?Question
- How do you use Whisper for speech to text in Home Assistant?Question
- What is the best speech to text for Home Assistant?Question
- What is the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition?Question
- Can an ESP32 or microcontroller do speech recognition?Question