ESPHome Voice Assistant for the Waveshare ESP32-S3-AUDIO-Board

A Home Assistant voice satellite running on the Waveshare ESP32-S3-AUDIO-Board, the little AI smart-speaker devkit with a dual-mic array, an ES8311 codec, three buttons and a 7-LED RGB ring. Pure ESPHome, no custom C firmware: an always-on core you pull as a package, plus one thin config file you actually edit.

Status: stable (v1.0.1). Wake word, STT/TTS, clean playback and the LED ring are confirmed on-device. Full docs are in the Wiki; the release history is in CHANGELOG.md.

You  ──▶  Waveshare ESP32-S3  ──▶  Home Assistant Assist
         (wake word + audio)      (STT / LLM / TTS)

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What it does

• Voice assistant: on-device wake word (alexa, okay_nabu) via micro_wake_word, the full Home Assistant Assist pipeline (STT / LLM / TTS), a wake beep and music ducking while it listens.
• Simultaneous music and announcements: a mixer speaker blends the media and announcement pipelines, so a doorbell announcement ducks the music instead of fighting it. Both are exposed to Music Assistant.
• LED ring: one state machine drives it. Boot, no-Wi-Fi, no-HA, listening, thinking, replying, timer counting, ringing, volume changed - each a distinct colour/effect. Brightness and the animation for the listening / thinking / replying phases are pickable from HA: solid plus 14 animations - pulses, breathe, wipe, scan, spinner, comet, twinkle, fireworks, fire, rainbows.
• Timers: set by voice, with an on-ring countdown and a "Next timer" sensor in HA. (A daily-alarm engine is present but its entities are hidden by default.)
• Buttons: the three onboard keys do volume down, play-pause, volume up.
• Boot chime: a short "ready" sound once the device connects to HA (toggleable, and it also settles the amp so the ring boots silent).
• Tunable live from HA: microphone mute, ES7210 mic gain, LED brightness and wake-word sensitivity are all entities, so there's no reflashing to tune it.

Quick start

Requires ESPHome 2025.8.0+.

1. Copy secrets.example.yaml to secrets.yaml and fill in your Wi-Fi. The native API is unencrypted by default; enable encryption in base/core.yaml if you want it (see the commented block there).
2. Copy waveshare-va.yaml next to it and edit the substitutions: at the top (device name, timezone, volume limits). That thin file is the only firmware file you keep. The core is pulled from GitHub at compile time, see its packages: block.
3. First flash over USB, then updates go wireless:

   esphome run waveshare-va.yaml
   

   Or drop both files into the ESPHome dashboard's /config/esphome/ and hit Install.
4. In Home Assistant: the new ESPHome device appears, open Configure and assign an Assist pipeline.
5. Say "Alexa" (or "OK Nabu"). The ring should go violet.

The example config pins the v1.0.1 release tag, so a build is reproducible. To move to a newer release, bump ref: in the packages: block to a later tag (or main to track the latest), then esphome clean waveshare-va.yaml (clears the package cache) and esphome run waveshare-va.yaml.

Documentation

The Wiki has the full guide:

• Installation: first flash, Home Assistant setup, updating.
• Configuration: every substitution and every Home Assistant entity.
• Audio architecture: the shared-I2S two-bus design, in depth.
• LED ring: the state machine and every ring effect.
• Hardware: pinout, I2C map, and sourced gotchas.
• Troubleshooting and FAQ.

How the shared I2S bus is handled

The board wires the ES8311 (DAC) and the ES7210 (ADC) to the same BCLK/LRCLK pins, and only one device can drive those clocks. ESPHome also cannot run a single I2S bus full-duplex: a microphone and a speaker on one bus each try to init the port, and the second fails with "Parent bus is busy".

The layout that works, all on stock ESPHome components:

• Two I2S buses (two ports) over the shared pins. The mic bus is the I2S master: it is always capturing for the wake word, so it drives BCLK/LRCLK/MCLK continuously. The speaker bus is a slave that reads the mic's clock, so it never needs a port of its own to master.
• The ES8311 and ES7210 are stock and slave to the mic's clock.
• The mic is pinned to 16-bit (the i2s_audio default is 32-bit); since the mic is master it sets the frame's slot width, and a 32-bit frame against the 16-bit DAC comes out as noise.

This gives simultaneous capture + playback with no custom component. The annotated config is in the audio section of base/core.yaml.

Repository layout

waveshare-va.yaml          # YOUR config: copy + edit this (pulls the rest from GitHub)
secrets.example.yaml       # copy to secrets.yaml
base/
  core.yaml                # the always-on core, pulled as a remote package
docs/
  HARDWARE.md              # pinout, I2C map, gotchas
scripts/
  validate.py              # offline YAML check (syntax, substitutions, duplicate ids)
  esplog.py                # stream device logs over the native API
skill/
  waveshare-esp32-s3-audio/  # Claude Code skill: pinout + hard-won gotchas

Configuration

Everything worth changing day to day is a Home Assistant entity, not a config edit: mic gain, LED brightness, the ring animation per assistant phase (Listening / Thinking / Replying effect), wake-word sensitivity, wake sound, boot sound, microphone mute.

What lives in waveshare-va.yaml:

Substitution	Default	What it does
name / friendly_name	waveshare-va / Waveshare Voice	Device name. Changing name re-creates every entity in HA.
posix_timezone	CET-1CEST,...	Clock zone in POSIX form (the device has no IANA database). DST automatic.
volume_min / volume_max	0.4 / 0.8	Media player clamps, because the onboard amp distorts near the top.
hidden_ssid	false	true enables fast_connect for a hidden SSID.
boot_sound_file	repo startup.mp3	The connect-to-HA chime. Any URL or local MP3/FLAC/WAV.

Pins and the audio format are substitutions too (in base/core.yaml), but you should not need them unless you are porting to another board.

Claude Code skill

This repo ships a Claude Code skill at skill/waveshare-esp32-s3-audio/: the pinout, the shared-I2S constraint, and the gotchas that cost real debugging time. Install it user-wide so any session picks it up:

cp -r skill/waveshare-esp32-s3-audio ~/.claude/skills/

Credits

• jensenbox: the ESP-master I2S layout for this board that the audio setup is based on.
• ESPHome: everything the firmware is built out of.
• Home Assistant Voice PE: the sounds, and the phase/ducking model the LED state machine follows.