“While it was easy to setup for the first time, what it can do, without extra dabbling inside HA, was a bit disappointing. I appreciate that HA is improving at a pace and as this is a preview edition, it will improve also. If you're an HA nerd then this might be for you, otherwise I'd hold fire.
Despatch by The Pi Hut was very quick with excellent communication of updates.”
“It was really quick and easy to set up, and once I realised I needed to increase the memory in my virtual machine, it started working! It is still very much a beta product—I don't think you would be able to get away with too much if you don't know what you're doing, but still—it works well!”
“It's a preview edition so there is still a lot to work on. Noise cancellation and focusing on specific voices is needed with background noise (my house is rarely quiet). That said, works great when set up well.”
“With the latest Home Assistant releases and this device we are making huge strides towards a voice assistant which will challenge Alexa. It works perfectly in a room where there is minimum extraneous conversation or talking going on. It struggles to know when you have stopped speaking when there is extraneous conversation such as a television.
Nonetheless it is called a preview edition for a reason and as a purchase for my hobby/project I have found it fault free, easy to use and set up and I would highly recommend it.”
“Hardware-wise it’s a bit meh - whilst it has all of the ‘essential’ features it does feel like they skimped out on a few things (e.g. a light sensor for room brightness or a better in-built speaker). The software is improving fast (it is a ‘preview’ after all), and Nabu Casa are very good at keeping everything working and writing good documentation. Very useful piece of kit for development although I think some better hardware will be needed in the future to make it truly great.”
