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Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

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Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#91

Post by nkaz123 »

squarefoot wrote: post #56
rkagerer wrote: post #5

I wanted to create a voice assistant that is completely offline and doesn't require any internet connection. This is because I wanted to ensure that the user's privacy is protected and that the user's data is not being sent to any third party servers. Props, and thank you for this.

+1. That's the #1 feature I want in any "assistant". A question: does it run only on the Pi5 or other (also non Raspberry Pi) boards?

I think so. I plan to update the README in the coming days with more info, but realistically this is something you could run on your laptop too, barring some changes to how it accesses the microphone and camera. I assume this is the case too for other boards.

The only thing which might pose an issue is the total RAM size needed for whatever LLM is responsible for responding to you, but there's a wide variety of those available on ollama, Hugging Face, etc. that can work.

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#92

Post by nkaz123 »

ethagnawl wrote: post #47

I'm looking forward to trying this. Hopefully this gains traction, as (AFAIK) an open, reliable, flexible, privacy focused voice assistant is still sorely needed. About a year ago, my family was really keen on getting an Alexa. I don't want Bezos spy devices in our home, so I convinced them to let me try making our own. I went with Mycroft on a Pi 4 and it did not go well. The wake word detection was inconsistent, th…

I'm really inspired reading this and hope it can help! I'm planning to put more work into this. I have a few rough demos of it in action on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OryGVbh5JZE) which should give you an idea of the quality of it at the moment.

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#93

Post by nkaz123 »

ghnws wrote: post #62

I didn't see a mention of languages in the readme. Does this understand languages other than english?

There are two models at use here, whisper tiny for transcribing audio, and then llama 3 for responding.

Whisper tiny is multi lingual (though I am using the english specific variant) and I believe llama 3 is technically capable of multi-lingual, but not sure of any benchmarks.

I think it could be made better, but for now focus is english. I'll add this to the readme though. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#94

Post by fat_cantor »

rob74 wrote: post #59
rkagerer wrote: post #5

I wanted to create a voice assistant that is completely offline and doesn't require any internet connection. This is because I wanted to ensure that the user's privacy is protected and that the user's data is not being sent to any third party servers. Props, and thank you for this.

Extra kudos for the name - and extra extra for using the good old "Picard facepalm" meme. But seriously - the name got my attention, then I read the introduction and thought "hey, Alexa without uploading everything you say to Amazon? This might actually be something for me!". > The default wake word is "hey assistant" - I would suggest "Computer" :) And of course it should have a voice that sounds like https://en.wik…

Seriously yes, that's what I came here to say - the default wake word should be "Computer", with edit access to a captain's log granted if spoken with sufficient authority in proper Shakespearean English.

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#95

Post by nirav72 »

shaan7 wrote: post #57
baobun wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Rhasspy. You won't get anything practically useful running LLMs on the 4B but you also don't strictly need LLM-based models. In the Rhasspy community, a common pattern is to do (cheap and lightweight) wake-word detection locally on mic-attached satellites (here 4B should be sufficient) and then stream the actual recording (more computational resources for better results) over the local network to a central…

I've been a happy Rhasspy user and now even more excited for the future because I'm hoping the conversational style (similar to what OpenAI demo'd yesterday) will eventually come to the offline world as well. It is okay if I gotta buy a GPU to make that happen, or maybe we get luckier and it wont? Ok, maybe I'm getting too optimistic now

Someone posted this on the HA sub yesterday - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W3_vHIoVgg

He's using GPT 4o. Although not the stuff that was demo'ed yesterday, since it hasn't been widely rolled out yet. But I think its entirely possible in the near future.

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#96

Post by j5155 »

herval wrote: post #26
pyaamb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love for Apple/Google to introduce some tech that would make it provable/verifiable that the camera/mic on the device can only be captured when the indicator is on and that it isn't possible for apps or even higher layers of OS to spoof this

That’s allegedly the case in iOS (not the provable part, but I wonder if anyone managed to disprove it yet?)

Definitely not. Neither Face ID nor the recently added “screen distance” feature in Screen Time use the camera indicator, and both use cameras (and lidar scanners) continuously

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#97

Post by j5155 »

jerbear4328 wrote: post #81
krono wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinkpads come with that, an unspoofable indicator that will tell you with 100% certainty that your image is not being recorded or even recordable unless the physical operator of the machine allows it. Can't beat a physical cover if you really want to be sure!

Now make a cover for the microphone :)

Framework laptops have physical power switches for camera and microphone. The devices completely disappears from the OS when the switch is moved.

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#98

Post by squarefoot »

nkaz123 wrote: post #91
squarefoot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. That's the #1 feature I want in any "assistant". A question: does it run only on the Pi5 or other (also non Raspberry Pi) boards?

I think so. I plan to update the README in the coming days with more info, but realistically this is something you could run on your laptop too, barring some changes to how it accesses the microphone and camera. I assume this is the case too for other boards. The only thing which might pose an issue is the total RAM size needed for whatever LLM is responsible for responding to you, but there's a wide variety of those…

Thanks. My ideal use case would probably involve a mini PC, of which I have a few spares and most of them are faster and can be upgraded to more RAM than the Pi5, which especially in this context would be welcome.

Re: Show HN: Pi-C.A.R.D, a Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

#99

Post by shaan7 »

nirav72 wrote: post #95
shaan7 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a happy Rhasspy user and now even more excited for the future because I'm hoping the conversational style (similar to what OpenAI demo'd yesterday) will eventually come to the offline world as well. It is okay if I gotta buy a GPU to make that happen, or maybe we get luckier and it wont? Ok, maybe I'm getting too optimistic now

Someone posted this on the HA sub yesterday - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W3_vHIoVgg He's using GPT 4o. Although not the stuff that was demo'ed yesterday, since it hasn't been widely rolled out yet. But I think its entirely possible in the near future.

Awesome. Side note: now my living room lights are white because I listened to this on speakers lol. I have the same wakeword xD
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