Control a lamp by its everyday name with local Home Assistant voice

Start with Home Assistant OS, a connected lamp assigned to its room, and the Home Assistant Companion App on an Android phone. This guide takes that existing setup through local speech processing to a command that identifies the intended light.[1][3][4]

Speech-to-Phrase recognises a limited vocabulary of home commands. That suits this task; open-ended requests such as adding arbitrary shopping-list items need a different speech-recognition route. Piper supplies the spoken response.[1]

Build the local pipeline

1. Install and start the Speech-to-Phrase and Piper apps in Home Assistant.
2. Under Settings > Devices & services, add both discovered Wyoming integrations.
3. Under Settings > Voice assistants, add an assistant. Choose Home Assistant as its conversation agent, Speech-to-Phrase for speech-to-text and Piper for text-to-speech. Use English for this example and give the assistant a recognisable name.

Make the name unambiguous

Open Settings > Voice assistants > Expose and select the lamp’s entity. Enable Assist for that entity. Exposure connects a device already present in Home Assistant to the voice system; without it, the spoken request cannot control the lamp.[2]

Now add a name you would naturally use. In the same entity dialog, an alias lets Living room lamp answer to Lamp. A Bedroom lamp can also have the alias Lamp: the room distinguishes them. Keep the room in the request when speaking through a phone. A voice satellite assigned to the living room can supply that room context when someone simply asks for the lamp.[3]

Try it from the phone

On Android, open the Widgets panel, choose Home Assistant and drag the Assist icon onto the home screen. Select your Home Assistant server and the local assistant you just created, then enable Start listening. This shortcut selects the intended speech pipeline instead of leaving the choice implicit.[4]

Use the shortcut and say “turn on the lamp in the living room”. Check that the intended lamp responds. Then try its other name. The useful result is one device that answers to your vocabulary and the right room.[3][4]

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