---
layout: page
title: "Snips"
description: "Instructions how to integrate Snips within Home Assistant."
date: 2017-06-22 12:00
sidebar: true
comments: false
sharing: true
footer: true
logo: snips.png
ha_category: Voice
ha_release: 0.48
---

The [Snips Voice Platform](https://www.snips.ai) allows users to add powerful voice assistants to their Raspberry Pi devices without compromising on Privacy. It runs 100% on-device, and does not require an Internet connection. It features Hotword Detection, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Dialog Management.

![Snips Modules](/images/screenshots/snips_modules.png)

Snips takes voice or text as input, and produces *intents* as output, which are explicit representations of an intention behind an utterance, and which can subsequently be used by Home Assistant to perform appropriate actions.

![Snips Modules](/images/screenshots/snips_nlu.png)


## {% linkable_title The Snips Voice Platform %}

### Installation

The Snips Voice Platform is installed on Raspberry Pi with the following command:

```sh
(pi) $ curl https://install.snips.ai -sSf | sh
```

### Creating an assistant

<div class='videoWrapper'>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/223255884" width="700" height="380" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>

Snips assistants are created via the [Snips Console](https://console.snips.ai). Once trained, the assistant should be downloaded and copied to the Raspberry Pi:

```sh
$ scp assistantproj_XXX.zip pi@pi_hostname:/home/pi/assistant.zip
```

and installed locally via the `snips-install-assistant` helper script:

```sh
(pi) $ sudo snips-install-assistant assistant.zip
```

### Running Snips

Make sure that a microphone is plugged to the Raspberry Pi. If you are having trouble setting up audio, we have written a guide on [Raspberry Pi Audio Configuration](https://github.com/snipsco/snips-platform-documentation/wiki/1.-Setup-the-Snips-Voice-Platform-on-your-Raspberry-Pi#configuring-the-audio).

Start the Snips Voice Platform using the `snips` command:

```sh
(pi) $ snips
```

Snips is now ready to take voice commands from the microphone. To trigger the listening, simply say

> Hey Snips

followed by a command, e.g.

> Set the lights to green in the living room

We should see the transcribed phrase in the logs, as well as a properly parsed intent. The intent is published on MQTT, on the `hermes/nlu/intentParsed` topic. The Snips Home Assistant component subscribes to this topic, and handles the intent according to the rules defined in `configuration.yaml`, as explained below.

## Home Assistant configuration

By default, the Snips MQTT broker runs on port 9898. We should tell Home Assistant to use this as a broker, rather than its own, by adding the following section to `configuration.yaml`:

```yaml
mqtt:
  broker: 127.0.0.1
  port: 9898
```

In Home Assistant, we trigger actions based on intents produced by Snips. This is done in `configuration.yaml`. For instance, the following block handles `ActivateLightColors` intents (included in the Snips IoT intent bundle) to change light colors:

```yaml
snips:
  intents:
    ActivateLightColor:
      action:
        - service: light.turn_on
          data_template:
            entity_id: light.{% raw %}{{ objectLocation | replace(" ","_") }}{% endraw %}
            color_name: {% raw %}{{ objectColor }}{% endraw %}
```