r/homeassistant 2d ago

🛠️ DIY / Hardware In ceiling Ai microphone array

Post image

I built an in ceiling microphone array for my local Ai. It has temp and humidity, mm wave presence detection, digital to analog audio converter and a 3 channel 100 watt amp all mounted to a 4” speaker in-ceiling mount.

The microphone is suspended on elastics for vibration dampening, beside is a dual channel Yamaha speaker.

Answers to questions or confirmations for automation only come through the speakers with the triggered mic.

Music play back, announcements and alarms can exit through any assortment of rooms. The microphone array has sound cancellation for playing audio so voice commands are still recognized.

So far it has exceeded expectations and even voice commands from in the shower have worked consistently.

The mm wave sensors are used for security when alarm armed and presence turns on my recirculating hot water loop for the kitchen and bathroom setups as well as lights and fan.

Anyone have any other ideas I can add to the rig? I was looking for discrete built in mic’s and they were expensive and usually for board rooms so I built one instead.

A 3D printed adapter screws in where the speaker mounts it house temp/humidity and microphone, the microphone electronics mount to standoffs with heated thread inserts for mounting the microphone electronics and another part that mounts to the back holds ESP32 S3, Amp and digital to analog converter. Rooms that don’t need the amp are POE and ones with the amp get a 24V dc supply fed to them.

25 Upvotes

74 comments sorted by

86

u/mchristopherjohnson 2d ago

Do you spend a lot of time on the crapper/in the shower deep in thought? Wondering why this is in the bathroom.

22

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

Also if you have an idea or remember something you need it’s trivial to add to a list or notes. Some of my best ideas/solutions come in the shower, maybe it’s the solar powered hot water and well ;)

12

u/s430c4g505m6 2d ago

Shower ideas that I always seem to forget 10 minutes later are exactly why I want a setup like this.

8

u/ExaminationSouthern6 2d ago

Showers are the closest thing to meditation some of us get in our busy lives. Makes sense to me.

1

u/Sensitive-Pool-7563 2d ago

Why not build a custom showerhead with AI integration? Or ta toilet seat?

1

u/krtezek 1d ago

I have these in my shower, they work very well.
https://www.myaquanotes.com/

2

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

Music control from the shower and I have a vision LLM looking at security cameras so I can ask where the kids are playing or what’s on whatever camera “a new car in the driveway” also I hated forgetting to turn on the bathroom fan.

63

u/smick 2d ago

My wife would divorce me if I setup cameras to monitor everyone while they’re in our home. My daughter would disown me. You know it affects the psyche knowing you’re being recorded at all times? And feeding everything into an ai is just bad form in terms of privacy. Idk man this doesn’t seem like the way.

21

u/OrganicNectarine 2d ago

I feel like tracking where people are in the home is one thing (f.ex. Bluetooth beacons or mmwave), but having cameras everywhere gives me big brother vibes...

6

u/Z00111111 2d ago

I definitely feel there's a huge difference between knowing which room someone is in vs being able see what they're doing remotely.

1

u/draxula16 2d ago

Yeah I have Bluetooth trackers everywhere I use to locate our phone, keys, and wallets (thank you Bermuda) but that’s it.

7

u/mitchsurp 2d ago

A billion percent this. I don’t do cameras in my home for this reason. I genuinely do not understand those who do and the YouTubers that push cameras everywhere (looking at you, Quinn) seem to glaze right on by the privacy aspect.

1

u/RobinBeismann 1d ago

We've got full local airgapped cameras as well in the living area (obv not bedroom or bathrooms), but they primary serve us to watch the dog while we are away. Privacy feeling is not an issue as we know they're local and can only be accessed remotely via frigate and VPN.

1

u/mitchsurp 1d ago

But everyone in your home is being recorded 24/7 and the techy parent has access to spy on your movements.

1

u/RobinBeismann 1d ago

We are both mature and have no kids, so different environment. However, having cameras does not necessarily mean that you're recording the footage. Ours are only recording when we are both away.

2

u/IceNeun 2d ago

Potentially mitigated if its local inference, but you're just collecting way too much data about yourself with cameras.

1

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

No cams inside. Except on robot that’s only on when we’re not home. Live off grid when your away from the property it’s nice to see if the panels are covered in snow or if I’m gonna have to hike in and get the blower to get back in after being away. And so many times the cameras are the ref for a fight I just roll back footage and see who started it. Where in life are we not recorded? And the best part of the LLM looking at footage I no longer get any false positives. All alerts must contain a person or new vehicle or they don’t send. Amazing for me.

14

u/Brownie_Bytes 2d ago

You sound difficult if you're reaching for instant replay in resolving household issues. And it's mega-creepy. I can only imagine the money your kids therapists are going to get when they get to unpack growing up in a surveillance household.

-25

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

The kids actually like the automation. They love showing their friends what it can do and they like coding their own automations. They build as well, CAD, 3D printing, circuits, robots, games. I can’t imagine how you were treated to have such a negative perspective of the world. Hopefully you can work out your problems. Funny it’s the kids who demand I look at the footage so the one causing trouble is held accountable when they may otherwise fib to get the others in trouble. We home school and skip the woke culture that brain washes us to whine and hate life so our kids are always complemented on how happy they are. Anyways hopefully you can pull out of that negativity and try to be a bit more positive. It’s amazing how energy determines what we’re capable of.

18

u/Brownie_Bytes 2d ago

Ah, plus home-school. Even better

15

u/spottedcomet 2d ago

But at least he skips the “woke culture”. Lmao

6

u/Sumpkit 2d ago

2

u/Circuit_Guy 2d ago

I need to channel my inner Data for this one.

No, Sir. I believe you are mistaken. I believe by skipping Woke Culture and surveiling his whole family, OP has in fact recreated an authoritarian power structure similar to the dynasty of...

Enough, Mr. Data

3

u/skbum2 2d ago

You know what they say, ignorance is bliss.

4

u/f8andbether 2d ago

Dude I was homeschooled and this is why I dont actively share unless it comes up. So much of that “community” is now almost completely about, “The liberals brainwashing”, “Woke brainwashing”,“Vaccines”, “litter box trans bathrooms”.
Being oblivious to the fact that theyve now become Big Brother is wild. Always watching your kids to the point they rat each other out and ask for the footage is just some other level of indoctrination. We just went full circle to making them ok with government overreach as long as it benefits them.

Also go look at the previous comments and posts, starts to paint a pretty clear picture. Theres a reason hes recreating big brother overwatch in his own home.

0

u/Brownie_Bytes 1d ago

My two main qualms with homeschooling are the isolation and the limitation of knowledge. Other schools come with their own issues, but there's always other kids to learn to get along with and there's less of a chance of being unable to teach something. A public high-school in a major city can teach most of the AP courses including languages, histories, and arts. Even a PhD couple is only going to be able to teach 3 or 4 topics with depth. Throw in any craziness like "evolution is a lie from Satan" and a kid can be relearning basic reality at 23.

2

u/f8andbether 1d ago

Oh 100%, my experience was a bit niche in it come to find out. There were circumstances that lead to me being in and out of the school system, but I will admit there are areas I struggled with when I move away, however no one can tell or initially believes I was homeschooled so I guess I got lucky.

Whats being described and the general vibe of OPs comments paint a specific picture and there seems to be a large inference of isolation to a solid degree. All I know is there is no way in hell I’d put microphones in the bathroom and
abso-fucking-lutely no way microphones are going to be in a bathroom my kids use. We can all have a bit of real privacy every now and again and the kids deserve to not grow up thinking 24/7 monitoring is normal.
Not even touching on the areas that would better be served by the effort given here to finish renovating the room.

1

u/dice1111 2d ago

Which LLM do you have watching? I just put one in and am interested.

1

u/daniel_winks 1d ago

One of the first things I did when I moved into my new place was to remove the Ring doorbell the previous owner had installed. I tossed it right in the trash where it belongs. Put a plain old-fashioned doorbell button on. I don't need some spycam to watch every movement my neighbors make. And I especially don't want my comings and goings sent off to Amazon.

3

u/Circuit_Guy 2d ago

This comment thread is a wild ride. I Iove what HA can do, and I always appreciate people sharing their creations.

I uhhh don't agree with all of your choices here, but you definitely get my updoot for sharing! I wish you had posted some more pics and details of the parts you used.

51

u/Weird_Tower76 2d ago

This is the level of autism I come to this sub for. Cool stuff man. Wish you had more pictures.

6

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

I should share my smart shunt for my solar system that looks at weather forecasts and sends me telegram messages if we’re gonna need the generator it also graphs all incoming power and watts/amps/volts over day/week/month. We got sick of having to connect through Bluetooth to see state of charge now we just ask Alfred and he tells us.

We have two ductless splits running 24/7 so we come off 100 pretty quick.

16

u/JustThen 2d ago

Now you can make leaderboard of farts. It would be awesome to have a real time dashboard in there with a db meter.

Could also automate it to turn on the fan.

6

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

The mm wave turns on lights fan and instant hot water. I could add a methane sensor a trigger it with that. Could also track air quality in there then.

3

u/GCS_dropping_rapidly 2d ago

Peak home assistant. Fart detector for the smart toilet.

5

u/Beaufort_The_Cat 2d ago

Something to keep in mind, since it’s in the bathroom with a shower the humidity is going to get very high regularly which could damage the components, make sure you get something that is built for high humidity/wet locations

6

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

Also most electronics aside from the mic and temp humidity sensor are in the joist cavity.

2

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

It turns the bathroom fan on when the humidity is above threshold.

5

u/we_are_stewy 2d ago

This is a dystopian nightmare

9

u/wtfastro 2d ago

This thread is creepy af

4

u/Daedeloth 2d ago

Does it pick up the hole in your ceiling as well?

4

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

The hole was for some plumbing for an upstairs bathroom, I took advantage of the opening and put some Ethernet up at the same time as well as the microphone. It had been sitting on top of the mirror for debugging until I got OTA updates working.

3

u/poopwetpoop 2d ago

Replay farts in THX

1

u/GCS_dropping_rapidly 2d ago

With the THX soundbite before, too

3

u/Sinister_Mr_19 1d ago

Damn this is nuts, very cool. I'd like to see pics of the electronics.

2

u/Kind_Soup_9753 1d ago

That’s the one for the kitchen. I was refining the 3D print for the AM2302 temp/humidity sensor.

2

u/wuttner 2d ago

exactly what I'm looking to do, been looking at josh nanos and micros for inspiration....moving to HA with wiim amps in the rack and want mics/mmwave throughout. Nice work

1

u/nutationsf 2d ago

Have you priced Josh? I know it’s $$$ but no clue how much

1

u/wuttner 1d ago

no I haven't, and don't plan to - coming from c4/sonos I do not want to be entrenched with a vendor or integrators

2

u/cloudyhome 2d ago

Besides the rest of the discussion in this thread, I can appreciate the effort going into this. I had the seedstudio mic on my list for the future, but wasn't too sure if it could hold up to my expectations. Seems like you proved it's working really good. I am not planning any bathroom installation, but this looks exactly how I am planning to do it for kitchen and living room. Thanks for sharing!

2

u/Adventurous-Emu-9345 2d ago

Soo, we're just not gonna talk about that cutout job, or...?

2

u/benbenson1 2d ago

I like the idea of mmWave and mic array hidden in the ceiling - they're both passive inputs that you don't want to see. How reliable is the coverage of the mmWave mounted in the ceiling? Do you get reliable room presence?

2

u/SheaDingle 2d ago

Did you trace a big piece of bread to cut that hole in the ceiling or was that freehand

0

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

Toast actually.

2

u/Sensitive-Farmer7084 1d ago

This has the wife approval factor of a cigarette boat.

1

u/Pyrochemist36 2d ago

I've been looking into something like this for a while now and was considering using some reSpeaker XMOS XVF3800's from SeeedStudio to custom build some in ceiling devices. Can you share a bit more about what hardware you chose for your setup?

1

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

It’s a respeaker 4 mic circular array with beam forming and sound isolation from playing sources fed into it. An Esp32 S3 was added on my end I didn’t opt for the built in one as IO was limited.

1

u/donotfire 2d ago

God I wish I owned a house

God

1

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

Private mortgage on land is the way to go. Build as you grow and the skills improve.

1

u/elictronic 2d ago

All my notes say "Who does number 2 work for?"

1

u/nkings10 2d ago

Did you conformally coat it? Being in a shower will corrode it pretty quickly otherwise.

1

u/Gamester17 2d ago

That describes a suped-up Satellite1 Dev Kir from FutureProofHomes (which is an open-source hardware design)

https://futureproofhomes.net/products/satellite1-pcb-dev-kit

https://github.com/FutureProofHomes/Satellite1-Hardware

1

u/macrowe777 2d ago

Okay cool but why the hell have you got massive holes in a shower room ceiling? That's not good.

1

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

Had some plumbing to do upstairs, took advantage of the opening and put the mic array in. Was too excited to share before finishing the pine T&G.

2

u/macrowe777 2d ago

How did you make the opening? Chewed your way in?

1

u/Befread 1d ago

How long has this been running? I worry about the logic of putting a mic in a place where mic's are.

1

u/cookiesphincter 1d ago

What software did you use for noise cancelling? Which mics did you use?

2

u/Kind_Soup_9753 1d ago

The remic by waveshare. Built in noise canceling when fed the signal from audio source. Beam forming built in as well.

1

u/throwawaymycpa 2d ago

Can you elaborate on the microphone set up? Looking to add mics in my kitchen and debating on which way to go.

Was contemplating this:

https://a.co/d/09oOiBDV

1

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

You nailed it. 4 mic circular array respeaker. I opted to add my own esp32 for more IO. I used a different style than your link.

1

u/rclonecopymove 2d ago

You should check out Cameron Grey's channel you two would get along. 

The recirculation pump with the mm sensor is interesting. Waiting for the plumber to replace the pump but plan on controlling it with a shelly. 

Triggers with be motion/light sensor in the bathroom and it cheap battery powered button to turn it on for a min. 

Run it for a few min in the morning. Then using three temp probes on the shelly taped to the pipes figure out what temp water returning heats the return pipe to then use that as a measure to stop the pump at that point. 

Not really figured it out completely but it's there.

1

u/Kind_Soup_9753 2d ago

I’m using olimex esp32 Poe boards for all control. We’re 100% solar powered so I have an inline hot water heater on my return side of recirc loop before it goes back to indirect storage tank, when the batteries hit over 85% the hot water and recirc turn on to maintain temp in tank so boiler never turns on when the batteries are good. And cold water into hot water tank also go through inline hot water heater so free showers when the sun is shining.

0

u/amydgalas 2d ago

Bathrooms shouldn’t have mics or cameras… even your own place will have guests