After some of the voice hype in February, I ordered a few ESP32-S2-BOX-3’s from Mouser. Naturally, they ended up delayed and I only received them this week.
For my family’s purposes, they work well and seem very likely to replace our google home/assistant devices.
Set up wasn’t as straightforward as I’d hoped; the online advice seems out of date or mis-aligned to what’s currently shipping. In short, even when following the instructions to the letter, set up was not as simple as I expected (seldom worked).
HOWEVER, once I decided to use the ESP Home Add On in HA for set up? All I really needed was a little experimentation, a single web search, and patience. I got consistent successful set ups and I’m a happy camper.
If you wanted to get these and you were waiting… I’m seeing them available in a number of places - including Amazon (hence this post).
If these become as common as I hope, this could help accelerate development and adoption of HA’s push for fully local assistant and control. All I’m missing now is local AI. Patience may solve that one, too.
HA has very specifically targeted the device I mentioned. While I know ESP Home and Esp32 generally is a vast topic and catalog… There’s one primary device (currently).
And it is, now, easy to set up once you find your way. When they improve the instructions, it is quite near to being a button click. And has been explained as nearly as much, hence the expectation.
I think you are mistaken though. The S(x) devices are just a package of things where the ESP32 SoC and ecosystem are driving it.
I think maybe you don’t get what ESP32 is at it’s core, which is just an easily programmable chip that drives different hardware. You’re are a fan of a specific device which uses that. I, on the other hand, use a bunch of different ESP32-based devices for other things.
Does that make sense?