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Introduction

Ever since voice satellites were introduced to Home Assistant, people wanted to use good microphones and speakers for this purpose, but not many were really available. In a valiant attempt to free a Google Nest Mini (2nd generation) from its privacy ignoring overlords, Justin Alvey created Onju Voice, a drop-in replacement PCB for the Mini, with an ESP32-S3 at its heart, capable of some pretty funky stuff.

The purpose of this project is to be able to use such a modded Nest Mini as a voice satellite in Home Assistant. Here's a small demo:

Features​

  • Wake word, push to talk, on-demand and continuous conversation support
  • Response playback
  • Audio media player
  • Service exposed in HA to start and stop the voice assistant from another device/trigger
  • Visual feedback of the wake word listening/audio recording/success/error status via the Mini's onboard top LEDs
  • Uses all 3 of the original Mini's touch controls as volume controls and a means of manually starting the assistant and setting the volume
  • Uses the original Mini's microphone mute button to prevent the wake word engine from starting unintendedly
  • Automatic continuous touch control calibration

Prerequisites​

  • Home Assistant 2024.7.x or newer
  • A voice assistant configured in HA with STT and TTS in a language of your choice
  • ESPHome 2024.7.3 or newer

Known issues and limitations​

  • You have to be able to retrofit an Onju Voice PCB inside a 2nd generation Google Nest Mini.
  • ESPHome currently can't use the I2S bus for both listening and playing simultaneously. As such, if you want to stream audio (like a TTS notification) to the Onju, you need to stop wake word listening first
  • The version for microWakeWord is in BETA and probably full of bugs (please report them if you find any)

License​

The PCB is NOT my work and has its own license. This repository only refers to the ESPHome config that makes the board a HA-compatible voice satellite.

The config is distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

The notification sounds used are under CC BY 4.0 ATTRIBUTION license.

Credits​