I'd be keen to use something like Snips instead of Alexa, but I'm not too sure I have the time and energy to solder things, or even just attach wires to some connector... Or even just figure out which part to order from where... And I already have a pi3 running Home Assistant.

To me this is the biggest barrier of entry.

The 2nd one (which is the same pretty much), is convincing my wife to replace this thing[0] with this thing[1], and also preventing my 4 year old from messing with the wires...

[0] http://d2ydh70d4b5xgv.cloudfront.net/images/e/1/new-echo-dot...

[1] https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/660238369_640.jpg

(please don't take it the wrong way, I really want Snips to win over proprietary cloud-based solutions)