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Enabling a wake word

This tutorial shows how you can enable a wake word in Home Assistant. It does not describe how to use it.

To use the wake word, you need some extra hardware. A low cost option is the M5Stack ATOM Echo Development Kit. To set that up, follow the $13 voice assistant for Home Assistant.

To enable a wake word

Enabling a wake word consists of 2 steps:

Home Assistant version 2023.10 or later, installed with the Home Assistant Operating System
Home Assistant Cloud or a manually configured local Assist pipeline

Go to Settings > Add-ons > openWakeWord and select Install.
Start the add-on.
Go to Settings > Devices & Services.
- Under Discovered, you should now see the openWakeWord integration.
- Select Configure and Submit.
- Result: You have successfully installed the openWakeWord add-on and Wyoming integration.

Go to Settings > Voice assistants
Choose the Assistant:
- To enable wake word for an existing assistant, select the Assistant and continue with step 6.
- To create a new Assistant: select Add assistant.
Give your assistant a name, for example the wake word you are going to use.
Select the language you are going to use to speak to Home Assistant.
- If the Text-to-speech and Speech-to-text sections do not provide language selectors, this means you do not have an Assist pipeline set up.
- Set up Home Assistant Cloud or a manually configured Assist pipeline.
Under Text-to-speech, select the language and voice you want Home Assistant to use when speaking to you.
To define the wake word engine, under Wake word, select openwakeword.
- Then, select ok nabu.
- If you created a new assistant, select Create.
- If you edited an existing assistant, select Update.
- Result: You now have a voice assistant that listens to a wake word.
For the first run, it is recommended to use ok nabu, just to test the setup.
- Once you have it all set up, you can create your own wake words.