Last Updated or created 2024-01-22

I made my own Mqtt to speech thingy in the past.
Sending a text to a mqtt topic would be picked up by my domoticz raspberry and using a bash script the topic payload was converted to speech and being played on a connected speaker.

Scripts on my domoticz instance

This speaker migrated to my Home Assistant NUC.
So i changed the speech engine.

Beside this migration, i’ve started using the HA voice assistant capabilities.
This was a major impact/project in 2023.

I’m not going to talk about configuring this .. There are many good YT tutorials and forum topics about this.

https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/thirteen-usd-voice-remote/

This is the device: a ESP32 pico, Microphone, leds and Speaker are being used for this sound assistant.
(It uses ESPHOME)

Back to the speaker being hooked-up to my HA NUC.

Install the addon PicoTTS (speech synthesis)

configuration.yaml

# Text to speech
tts:
  - platform: picotts
# My part
input_text:
  mqttspeech:
    name: mqttspeech
    initial: ""
    

Then install notified addon

Add a text field to your dashboard …