On: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voic...

[RileyJames]

I’ve been living in a house for the past few months with a google assistant. I only use it to put on music, but I have noticed I play more music due to the ease of putting it on.

But I hate the privacy invasion aspect. I’m definitely in the market for something like this. And this one looks great.

Additionally, I’ve noticed that the google voice assistant (connected to Spotify) doesn’t keep playing the albums I ask for.

It states it’s playing the album. But after 4/5 songs it starts playing different songs, or different artists.

[kkielhofner → RileyJames]

Music output is "on the list".

Biggest fundamental issue is the speaker built in the ESP BOX is optimized for speech and not going to impress anyone playing music.

That said, the ESP BOX (of course) supports bluetooth so we can definitely pair with a speaker you bring.

Willow is the first of it's kind that I'm aware of to enable this kind of functionality at anything close to this price point in the open source ecosystem. Either we (or someone else) is likely going to manufacture an improved ESP BOX with market competitive speakers built-in for music playback.

Then it's "just" a matter of actually getting the music audio but we'll figure that out ;).

[COGlory → kkielhofner]

Could we not use Willow to cast music, say, via Spotify or some other network streamer, through HA, to my pre-existing sound system?

[kkielhofner → COGlory]

The approach there would be to ignore Willow for music output and just do what it does today:

- Wake

- Get command

- Send to Home Assistant conversation/intents API[0]

- Home Assistant does whatever you define, including what you describe just like it does today

So unless I'm missing something your use case should "just work".

[0] - https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/intent_index/

[RileyJames → kkielhofner]

Nice. I guess I don’t expect willow to cover the speaker element. I’d rather connect with my existing hifi / Bluetooth speakers.

But with google I’m stuck with their integration to Spotify. It’s that component I’d like control over, and that’s why I’d use willow.

That and not being spied on in my own home.

Definitely keen for one.

[kkielhofner → RileyJames]

The ESP Box with the ESP32 S3 has robust bluetooth support and I don't see A2DP/BT/pairing management/etc being that big of a lift. In full transparency it's probably towards the bottom on the priorities list ATM but the important thing is it's on the list already and it happens to be something I'm personally interested in :).

[chankstein38 → RileyJames]

It also, at least in my case, frequently won't stop playing when you tell it to. And, if you want a song that has a title that isn't family friendly, it'll completely ignore that title and just play whatever the heck it wants.