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Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

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Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

#101

Post by Cu3PO42 »

Semaphor wrote: post #86
ivanhoe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I researched ReSpeaker was one of the better solutions, they provide various mic-array PiHats, as well as professionally looking cases for the device. They also sell pre-build devices I think, if you're not into DIY. https://www.seeedstudio.com/category/Speech-Recognition-c-44... (Just to male it clear, I'm not affiliated with them in any way)

Yeah, ReSpeaker looks like they have the best hardware for this. But the issue was, that they only sell one case, for their old array, which is barely available any more (neither case, nor array. But! Now they sell the new array as USB array in a proper case! That’s not perfect as I’ll have 2 devices instead of one to place/hide, but it’s still a lot better than last time I checked their site. Thank you, now I have p…

Would you mind sharing said company? If you'd rather not do so publicly, you can reach me at @outlook.com

Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

#103

Post by Semaphor »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #101
Semaphor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, ReSpeaker looks like they have the best hardware for this. But the issue was, that they only sell one case, for their old array, which is barely available any more (neither case, nor array. But! Now they sell the new array as USB array in a proper case! That’s not perfect as I’ll have 2 devices instead of one to place/hide, but it’s still a lot better than last time I checked their site. Thank you, now I have p…

Would you mind sharing said company? If you'd rather not do so publicly, you can reach me at @outlook.com

https://www.distrelec.de/de/usb-mikrofonarray-respeaker-seee...

Note that I did not look into them, just found them when searching and bookmarked the site for next year ;)

Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

#104

Post by Semaphor »

tzs wrote: post #96
Semaphor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software has been mostly solved for a while. My issue is hardware. The way I read, is that to get proper voice recognition in many circumstances, you need a microphone array (for every DIY Alexa and Dot). Now you have a PI, the array installed on it and… it just stands around looking ugly and accumulating dust? You want a case, but then from my research, cases can easily interfere with those arrays. So you need one t…

How about putting a string of microphones around the room, say at the top walls? You can get I2S microphones (here's a breakout for one [1]), so you'd just need a bundle of 6 wires running around the room. That breakout is $6.95 with price breaks to $6.26 at 10 and $5.56 at 100 which is probably a bit pricey for this application, but really you only need the breakout to make it easy to play around with it on a breadb…

I love the idea. Somewhat impractical for renting, and it both requires more skills and even more effort. But it sounds like a cool project I’d love reading about in a blog :D

Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

#105

Post by wccrawford »

maccard wrote: post #79
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a TV even have mics. Crazy world.

Because all of the high end TVs contain alexa/google home integrations.

Or even just their own search-by-voice functionality, which is useful to many people, especially those with disabilities.

Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

#106

Post by thebiblelover7 »

noitpmeder wrote: post #34

Although not exactly what you're looking for, I've heard really interesting things about https://knocki.com/ Essentially you can program your house to coded knocks. Lights/music/door/... all by sequences of knocks.

Never thought or seen this, but really like the idea!

Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

#107

Post by qchris »

jffry wrote: post #6

I've heard of Mycroft before but have no personal experience with it: https://mycroft.ai It seems like they have an open source client that you can run on your own hardware but it's still dependent on the backend services that Mycroft-the-company provides. Perhaps their privacy stance is more palatable to you, though? I think there used to be a project that was fully on-device but it got bought and consumed by Sonos

I played around with their open source code a few years ago, and found it, well, operable, if not particularly useful.

On the flip side, I do not, I repeat, DO NOT recommend giving their team money for pretty much any reason. They've been struggling to put together any working hardware (and promising the opposite) for years through a genuine comedy of errors. I think the most recent design iteration of MycroftV2 is something like a Raspberry Pi on a daughterboard in a 3D-printed case. I still check in on their blog and subreddit every few months to see what's changed, and everytime I'm rewarded with additional details on what seems to be one of the most incompetent engineering organizations I've ever heard of.

Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

#110

Post by gwbas1c »

Uhm, I just don't use any voice assistant.

Every time I try a voice recognition this or that, I find the experience so frustrating that I don't want to deal with it when I need to turn on the lights.

Ironically, the first time someone tried to demo Alexia turning on the lights, it didn't work. I just laughed.

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