Delay in playing the wakeup sound after being idle

[rockstar2020]

Hi there,
I have installed a bare metal version of LVA on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W with Respeaker 2-mic hat, along with Buttons/LED enhancements developed by
@omaramin-2000.
I have installed Debian Trixie 64bit Lite version on the Pi.
What I've noticed is that if the Pi is idle for some time, it takes about 2 to 3 seconds for the wakeup sound to be played, after the wake word is detected.
Any other subsequent wakeup events are executed properly (wakeup sound playing right after the wake word is detected).

This issue is only happening when the Pi is idle for sometimes.
Any ideas how to fix this issue?

Also, I have few questions:

1. Is there any environment variable that could be set in the systemd service to add the 2nd wake word?
2. Is there any event triggered in HA after the "Stop" word is detected?

Many thanks in advance

[omaramin-2000]

Hi, the delay you're experiencing in playing sounds could be due to several cases, such as memory load. However, let's answer your questions:

1. Only the first wake word could be set using the environment variable till now, and the 2nd wake word can set only from the dashboard (env var for 2nd wake word would be added in plan).

2. Currently, the "Stop" word is only detected inside LVA and doesn't expose any event in HA.

[rockstar2020]

Thanks a lot for your swift reply @omaramin-2000.
I doubt the delay after the idle state is caused by memory load issues.
My first guess is that the Pulse Audio somehow has a sleep/suspension timeout to preserve memory/power usage.
Thanks for taking time to reply.

As for the other questions you answered, I'll wait for the future releases.
In the meantime, I'll grab the "stop" event from within the LVA and create my automation separately.

Great work by the way!

Cheers

[rockstar2020]

Just wanted to provide some updates here!
After spending days banging my head to the wall and going through debug logs, I realized mpv player is a bit resource heavy for Raspberry Pi Zero 2W.
The issue is that when the first wake word is detected, it takes 2~3 seconds for the mpv player to get loaded and play the wake sound.
Subsequent wake sounds are played almost instantly because mpv is still in the memory.
After mpv goes to sleep after being idle, again the next wake sound is taking time to be played due to mpv loading delay.

What I finally did was to use aplay instead of mpv to play local sounds in raw wav format, which is far faster because aplay is lightweight.
I still keep mpv to play mp3 files from TTS.

Another option to slightly improve mpv performance is by setting up with following parameters:

self._mpv = mpv.MPV(
    audio_display=False,
    idle=True,
    cache="yes",
    terminal=False,
    video=False,
    log_handler=self._on_mpv_log,
    loglevel="error",
)

But still, aplay is far better option to play local sounds with.

Lastly, ffmpeg is the most suitable player for SBC's like Zero 2W, that's why Wyoming Satellite was working smoothly.

Hoping it helps others who may face the same issue.

[jimrkerry]

Have the same issue using PiCompose with LVA on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with Satellite1.1 HAT.

Takes a few seconds to wake up after it has been idle for a while. Subsequent wake-ups have no delay.