Local voice a**istants have a lot of appeal in the world of secure smart homes, but they often come with limitations. If you’re using a tool like Home a**istant to manage your smart home, you can typically install add-ons for speech-to-text (like Whisper) and text-to-speech (like Piper) and configure a voice pipeline. Plus, you can integrate your own smart speakers to work with. Home a**istant also recently rolled out the Home a**istant Preview Edition, a work-in-progress $69 voice a**istant that allows you to manage your connected devices with voice commands. It doesn’t quite have the expertise that Amazon’s Alexa has in handling commands, and as with all local voice a**istants, you’ll have to control the responses.