Q: Home Assistant integration - location / sensors

[ccsmart]

As a question: Is there the intention to have the devices be visible in Home Assistant, such that ie:

• device can be given a location (related to presence detection "somebody is talking here" / command context ie "lights" having a localized meaning)
• sensors become accessible (Temp, Humidty, IR tx/rx, Radar / presence)

[nikito]

In terms of device location, that's planned to be integrated in Willow itself in the future, such that willow will expose the areas it sees in HA and you can assign the willow device to that area in the willow UI for things like location context awareness for commands/lights. Willow is an ecosystem that exists outside of HA and works alongside it, we don't have any tight integration into HA that allows exposing devices, that would require writing an HA integration and potentially even using the wyoming protocol to tie into the other integration points within HA. It's something we have noted but have not gotten too deep into at the moment due to other features taking precedence.

For the sensors we have heard this request from others and know there's a desire for it, but we need to look at that one carefully as the ESP devices have limited resources, and exposing sensors requires some core time on the ESP that can impact the voice experience or increase latency. Since our project is primarily focused on the voice interface and experience this hasn't had as much priority. Even the ESPHome devs/NabuCasa have not exposed those as part of their standard Voice Assistant firmware for the ESP Box, likely for the same concerns. :)