ThirdReality V&M: Home Assistant voice and music setup

This tutorial sets up the ThirdReality Voice and Music Dev Edition with Home Assistant for voice commands and music playback. Brian demonstrates Wi-Fi provisioning through Home Assistant when its host has Bluetooth, or through the 3R Installer phone app. He then adds the speaker through ESPHome.

The voice setup starts with Home Assistant Cloud before moving to local processing without that subscription. Brian installs Speech-to-Phrase for speech recognition and Piper for spoken responses, connects both through the Wyoming protocol, and assigns them to an assistant. He describes Speech-to-Phrase as suitable for Home Assistant Green or Raspberry Pi, with a vocabulary focused on home control. Whisper is the open-ended recognition option discussed, but he says it needs more processing power and does not install it here. Separate wake words let him select between two assistants.

For music, the tutorial covers button-triggered playback automations and Music Assistant configuration, including player providers, music sources and speaker groups. Brian demonstrates synchronization with Sonos using Sendspin and a sync group; he also discusses universal groups for other speaker types. He reports that synchronization is not always consistent, and the universal group provider is labeled experimental during setup. His speaker assessment favors clear everyday playback over deep bass. The final section adds dashboard controls and automation triggers.