Dear SaraKIT Supporters,

We’re thrilled to announce a new feature for SaraKIT that will elevate your smart home experience: offline and hybrid voice control for Home Assistant with SaraKIT!

Offline Voice Control

SaraKIT is equipped with three sensitive microphones and a specialized audio processor that filters and recognizes speech from up to five meters away. Using VOSK, you can enjoy completely offline voice recognition. This open-source tool supports multiple languages, offering free and private speech recognition.

Hybrid Voice Control

For even more accuracy, our hybrid solution uses VOSK to detect the wake word offline, then switches to Google Speech-to-Text for enhanced speech recognition. This approach keeps your system offline until it hears the wake word, combining the best of both worlds – privacy and precision.

How It Works

Once SaraKIT converts your speech to text, it sends commands to Home Assistant via MQTT. This method is simple yet powerful, allowing you to control various smart devices effortlessly. Check out our demo video to see it in action.

Getting Started

We’ve made the setup straightforward. Below are the key steps:

1. Configure VOSK for offline speech recognition.
2. Optionally, integrate Google Speech-to-Text for hybrid mode.
3. Use Python to send MQTT commands to Home Assistant based on the recognized speech.

For detailed instructions, visit our project page on Hackster.io and the SaraAI website.

We’re excited to see how you’ll use this new feature in your smart home setups. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback and see your projects in action.

Thank you for your continued support!

Best regards,
The SaraKIT Team