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Though a separate hardware helps - I believe voice and automation can be integrated more seamlessly to our existing devices (phones/laptops) with high compute built in. Llama and whisper are already public so that should help innovation in this area.
Can someone describe the use case here? I don't quite understand what its purpose is. Is this a fully-private, open source alternative to Alexa, that by definition requires a CPU locally to run ? Is the device supposed to be the nerve center of IoT devices ? Can it access the Wifi to do web crawls on command (music, google, etc)?
This device provides the microphone, speaker, and WiFi to do wake-word detection, capture your input, send it off to your HA instance, and reply to you with HA’s processed response. Whether your HA instance phones out to the internet to produce the response is up to you and how you’ve configured it.
I'm actually really excited for this! I noticed recently there weren't any good open source hardware projects for voice assistants with a focus on privacy. There's another project I've been thinking about where I think the privacy aspect is Important, and figuring out a good hardware stack has been a Process. The project I want to work on isn't exactly a voice assistant, but same ultimate hardware requirements Someth…
But for a first time unknown product? You get a lot fewer interested parties. Lots of people want to wait for tech reviews and blog posts before committing to it. And group buys being the only way to get them means availability will be inconsistent for the foreseeable future. I don’t want one voice assistant. I want 5-20, one for every space in my house. But I am not prepared to commit to 20 devices of a first run and I am not prepared to buy one and hope I’ll get the opportunity to buy more later if it doesn’t flop. Stability of the supply chain is an important signal to consumers that the device won’t be abandoned.
Here's what I'm looking for in a voice assistant: - Full privacy: nothing goes to the "cloud" - Non-shitty microphones and processing: i want to be able to be heard without having to yell, repeat, or correct - No wake words: it should listen to everything, process it, and understand when it's being addressed. Since everything is private and local, this is now doable - Conversational: it should understand when I finis…
> No wake words: it should listen to everything, process it, and understand when it's being addressed Even humans struggle with this one - that's what names are for!
Here's what I'm looking for in a voice assistant: - Full privacy: nothing goes to the "cloud" - Non-shitty microphones and processing: i want to be able to be heard without having to yell, repeat, or correct - No wake words: it should listen to everything, process it, and understand when it's being addressed. Since everything is private and local, this is now doable - Conversational: it should understand when I finis…
I'm actually really excited for this! I noticed recently there weren't any good open source hardware projects for voice assistants with a focus on privacy. There's another project I've been thinking about where I think the privacy aspect is Important, and figuring out a good hardware stack has been a Process. The project I want to work on isn't exactly a voice assistant, but same ultimate hardware requirements Someth…
A group buy for an existing product makes sense. Want to buy a 24TB Western Digital hard drive? It’s $350. But if you and your 1000 closest friends get together the price can be $275. But for a first time unknown product? You get a lot fewer interested parties. Lots of people want to wait for tech reviews and blog posts before committing to it. And group buys being the only way to get them means availability will be…
As long as this thing works and there's demand for it, I doubt we'll ever run out of people willing to connect an XU316 and some mics to an ESP32-S3 and sell it to you with HA's open source firmware flashed to it, whether or not HA themselves are still willing to.
That's a pretty timely release considering Alexa and the Google assistant devices seem to have plateaued or are on the decline.
I cannot wait to buy 5 or more of these to replace Alexa. HA is the brain of my house and up till now Alexa provided the best hardware to interact with HA (IMHO) but I'd love something first-party.
That's a pretty timely release considering Alexa and the Google assistant devices seem to have plateaued or are on the decline.
Curious what you mean by that.
And then even simple skills can't understand what I'm asking 60% of the time. The first maybe 2 years after launch it seemed like everything worked pretty good but since then it's been a frustrating decline.
Currently they are relagated to timers and music, and it can't even manage those half the time anymore.