Smartbox in the living room

Experimental

Smartbox with Homer firmware is a DIY build: the speaker is opened and reflashed, which voids the warranty. It is not part of the Homer 1.0 product.

DEXP Smartbox is the third Homer speaker. It stands in the living room next to Alice and the TV. It runs no Homer program of its own: it is a microphone and a loudspeaker, and the computer does the listening and answering.

The speaker was prepared separately: it has root and a connection script. You don't need to repeat this for a normal setup.

How it works

• The speaker connects to the computer itself with one TCP connection to port 8793. Its microphone goes up, Homer's voice comes down, both 16 kHz mono.
• On the computer it is served by a separate speaker instance: the scheduler task homer-speaker-smartbox, HTTP port :8795, log tmp\speaker-smartbox.log.
• It handles lights and quick commands itself. Complex things go to the main speaker on :8790, and it plays the answer in the living room.
• Unlike the backup on the GPD, Smartbox doesn't give the computer 1.5 seconds: a phrase said in the living room is its own right away.

Install the task once:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools\speaker\install-autostart-smartbox.ps1

It ignores itself and the TV

The speaker stands by the TV, and its built-in echo cancellation doesn't fully remove its own sound. So:

Protection	What it does
Answer tail	After sending speech, the speaker counts as talking for another 0.8 s: sound goes over the network and through a buffer
Own echo	The main speaker returns the answer text along with the sound, and it is used to recognize the speaker's own phrase coming back into the microphone
28 dB threshold	A phrase without the name quieter than 28 dB is dropped. The answer tail and music from the computer arrive at 11–23 dB, a voice nearby at 35 and up
No name — follow-up	A phrase without the name goes to the main speaker as a continuation of the conversation. The model stays silent if the phrase isn't for it, instead of answering “Not for me” to the news
No early beep	The “I hear you” beep on the name from Vosk and the “got it” beep on phrases without the name are off on Smartbox: Vosk caught “Homer” on TV

Without the computer

The connection script on the speaker tries addresses in turn: first the computer, then the home server (GPD).

• On the GPD, a receiver of its own waits for the speaker: the homer-speaker-smartbox task with --prefer. Every 10 seconds it checks the Smartbox instance on the computer, and once that answers twice in a row, it lets the speaker go. The speaker reconnects and starts from the computer again.
• Without the computer, lights and quick commands work as usual. Complex things are answered by the cloud model directly if the home uses a cloud with a key. With a Claude subscription, only lights work without the computer.
• speaches recognition and voice live on the computer, so without it Vosk recognizes speech and the Windows voice answers.

TIP

The log shows where the speaker is connected now: the line сетевая колонка подключилась: <address> (network speaker connected) in tmp\speaker-smartbox.log on the computer or on the GPD.

Automation sounds

Smartbox plays automation sounds like the other speakers. An automation calls it both on the computer and on the GPD, and whichever one it is connected to plays it.