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Set up wasn’t as straightforward as I’d hoped; the online advice seems out of date or mis-aligned to what’s currently shipping.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.