ESPMUSE Proto esp32 Development Card with Speaker and Microphone

If it wasn't obvious from the product description, this is somewhere between a proof of concept and a fully fledged consumer device and is running software developed by the open source community. While I think it's a great device, set your expectations appropriately and don't expect a ton of refinement. It's one of the most "plug and play" options in the squeezebox/LMS world these days, but still requires some knowledge and willingness to troubleshoot.That being said, as a LMS/squeezebox/slimdevices player, this thing is excellent. As a point of comparison: I've got a couple of raspberry pis set up for multi-room audio, one running raspberry pi OS w/the required LMS software installed, one running picoreplayer. While picoreplayer makes things relatively easy, it's still a pi, which means you have to find one, buy the right parts, install linux things, and buy an external DAC if you want good audio quality. And a pi is definitely overpowered for this kind of job, which feels a little wasteful. I've also found that my pi music players need to be rebooted every so often or they get a little unstable.The Muse Mn cast takes a different tack, running the ubiquitous ESP32 SoC. It uses very little power (according to the devs behind squeezelite-esp32, it has *just enough power* to run squeezelite) and comes with wifi / bluetooth out of the box. If you're not familiar, the esp32 family of boards is vast and confusing and surprisingly expensive for the DIY'er. IMO, a huge part of the Mn Cast's value is that they've retained a lot of the DIY ethos behind the squeezelite community while handling the annoying and expensive guesswork of finding the right board, cobbling together inputs/buttons/screens, and packaging it all in a case.Cons: I will say that setup was a little wonky for me. The documented steps on the rpiaudio website didn't work for me, but I was able to find the solution by reading through the configuration webpages the device serves up. The volume knob is a little bit wonky and its debouncing logic probably needs a little tweaking. The case isn't perfect and the power switch is upside-down to my mind, but these honestly don't bother me at all. Just mentioning in case other buyers care about that kind of thing. Wifi reception is not the best, but a) it's at least as good as my pi zero and b) cmon it's just a tiny little board!Pros: sound quality is excellent. On par with my pi + external DAC. Great connectivity options. The screen is fun and configurable. Awesome to have a knob and play/pause button. Near-instant boot and connects to wifi extremely quickly. The configuration pages for squeezelite-esp32 are a work in progress, but really impressive for such a young and niche project. So far, it's been a rock-solid squeezelite player for me and makes me want to get more into the ESP32 universe!

These are very nice little devices. It's fun to play with and use it as a learning tool, but I'd not use them as a product. They just don't have the CPU power, good antenna or good power consumption for that matter. So thinking you'll make a speaker out of these and use it with your homeassistant would be a good way of disappointing yourself. However, it is a very good platform to develop your skills and learn, also do stuff that woudl not require absolute dependability. I'm using this to make small announcements from my homeassistant that are not crucial nor time sensitive. Also, they are not the best for music. But for the price you get a lot of fun.

Using this for my Home Assistant, flashing it via the web flasher was very straightforward and it integrates into HA fine. The biggest problem is that the audio is so low it is basically useless. I originally tried with the on-board speaker but the sound was so tinny and low that it was not usable. I cut the PCB trace and connected two external bookshelf speakers in parallel (to get 4 Ω ). It did improve the sound quality and got a little louder but it is still too low to hear unless you are in a quiet room. I have seen posts about a setting for amplifier gain, didn't make a difference for me. Other posts that complain about the volume say if you flash it with Squeezebox Lite, the volume is perfectly fine. Maybe I will try that but, as a voice assistant for HA it misses the mark.

I love raspiaudio and this does not disappoint at all!!! Once you update the firmware it's amazing!!! Great job!!!

Works great with Home Assistant and streams audio like a champ. I can even send text-to-speech audio notifications. Internal speaker is tinny, but plenty loud. A cool gizmo!

These devices crash frequently with the available firmware and disconnect from the network. Would not recommend.

I have home assistant with ESPHome , integration was very straightforward . But the audio output from built-in speaker or external speaker was very low which is useless .

So cool. Took only 1/2 hour to download the firmware and fire it up!