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Set up wasn’t as straightforward as I’d hoped; the online advice seems out of date or mis-aligned to what’s currently shipping.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.
You can get them from AliExpress for only a few bucks each, although I’ve made the switch to pi pico.