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:

  1. Installing the openWakeWord add-on.
  2. Enabling the wake word for a specific voice assistant.

Prerequisites

Installing the openWakeWord add-on

  1. Go to Settings > Add-ons > openWakeWord and select Install.
  2. Start the add-on.
  3. 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.

Enabling wake word for your voice assistant

  1. Go to Settings > Voice assistants
  2. 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.
  3. Give your assistant a name, for example the wake word you are going to use.
  4. 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.
  5. Under Text-to-speech, select the language and voice you want Home Assistant to use when speaking to you.
  6. 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.
  7. For the first run, it is recommended to use ok nabu, just to test the setup.

Related topics

About wake words and assistants

Extra hardware to use wake word