Voice-Controlled Home Automation Without Alexa or Google Assistant

With software development kits (SDKs) readily available for both the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice recognition services, it has become almost trivially easy to add voice control to your projects. But, that doesn’t mean those are the only options you have. As maker “imr5" shows in his tutorial, you can create your own voice-controlled home automation system without using either of those services—or even an internet connection.

Before we get into the how, let’s first address the why. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are both easy to use, and are incredibly robust. If you prefer a more customizable experience, then open source Mycroft AI is a good choice. But, these all require quite a bit of processing power, along with an internet connection.

By following imr5’s guide, you can build a voice-controlled home automation system that doesn’t need either of those. The hardware you’ll need is an Arduino Uno and a Elechouse VR3 voice recognition module. That module is the real base of the project, but it doesn’t use natural language processing (NLP), so it doesn’t need an internet connection or a lot of processing power.

The VR module works by listening for voice commands which match samples you’ve trained it on. But, not many commands can be stored, so you’ll have to choose them wisely. From there, imr5’s build uses the Arduino to control standard home automation equipment.