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Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

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Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#51

Post by stintel »

detaro wrote: post #50
discardedrefuse wrote: post #48

So I was just looking at the installation process for this device's dev environment (ESP-IDF from espresiff) and it seems kind of...insane. The manual install method in the directions is not manual at all. It's a script that calls several python scripts. One has 2660 LOC and installs a root certificate (hard coded in the script itself) because of course, even though you just cloned the whole repo, it still has to dow…

yes, do it in a container or VM. Welcome to the wonderful world of hardware manufacturer SDKs.

Indeed. This is exactly the reason why we standardized on building in a container.

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#52

Post by kkielhofner »

canadiantim wrote: post #45
kkielhofner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! We are really, truly, and seriously committed to building a device that with support from Home Assistant and other integrations doesn't leave any reason whatsoever to buy an Echo or similar creepy commercial device. No compromises on cost, performance, accuracy, speed, usability, functionality, etc. We're really looking forward to getting additional testing and feedback from the community on speech recognitio…

Wow yeah I think you're really onto something here. No one actually wants the creepiness from Echo or Alexa etc. That's what prevented me from trying any Home Assistant thing before, but I know it could be very useful if actually sensitive to privacy-concerns. Best of luck with the development! I'll definitely be following closely. Do you sell the pre-built hardware yourself?

Thanks!

When you're releasing a pet project of love like this you never really know if other people are going to appreciate it as much as you do. Looking here on HN it seems like people appreciate it.

We don't sell the hardware currently because:

1) Espressif has well established sales channels and distribution worldwide.

2) It's not our "business model". In my capacity as advisor to a few startups in the space I've been approached by various commercial entities that want a hardware voice interface they fully control. In healthcare, for example, there are all kinds of interesting audio and speech applications but NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE is going to be ok with seeing an Echo in their doctor's office. That's where an ESP BOX or custom manufactured hardware and Willow come in.

Our business model is to combine our soon to be released very high performance inference and API server with Willow to support these commercial applications (and home users with HA, of course). In all but a few identified and very limited cases all work will come back to the open source projects like our inference server and Willow.

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#53

Post by stavros »

r1cht3r wrote: post #49
stavros wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope so, I've been waiting for good audio assistant hardware forever. I hope this is finally the time where I ditch Alexa once and for all, thanks for releasing Willow!

fwiw I found them in stock on adafruit.com

Thanks, but I'm not in the US :( Good idea to check Pimoroni, though, thanks!

EDIT: Found one with a direct link from Ali from Espressif's site, even though it doesn't show up in a search:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003980216150.html?spm=a2...

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#55

Post by nescioquid »

b8 wrote: post #44

This project reminds me of MyCroft https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core .

I think Mycroft is dead at this point. The project had some intertwined relationship with other projects and Neon AI. The suggestion from Mycroft at this point is to use NeonAI's OS for the Mycroft device:

https://neon.ai/NeonAIforMycroftMarkII

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#56

Post by stintel »

odiroot wrote: post #31

Does it also work with the lite version of ESP box?

It should. I personally haven't tested it as I don't own the lite version, but everything should work besides touch. It complains about not being able to initialize touch during boot, but that's not fatal. Shouldn't be too hard to ifdef away that error.

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#57

Post by kkielhofner »

odiroot wrote: post #31

Does it also work with the lite version of ESP box?

It does for everything but the touch display because it doesn't have one[0]. We don't support the three buttons at the bottom but I have two ESP BOX Lites and we should be able to make it happen pretty easily.

We haven't been focused on the ESP BOX Lite because it seems kind of limited. However, Espressif hasn't sold many of these things since release and judging from people looking for stock, etc in this thread I think that's about to change.

Espressif has incredible manufacturing capacity and our hope is they will ramp up manufacture of the ESP BOX family now because (to my knowledge) Willow is the first project that actually makes meaningful use of them.

The only gaiting component of the ESP BOX family that I can see is the plastic enclosure. I'm sure Espressif can figure out how to crank these things out ;).

[0] - https://github.com/toverainc/willow/wiki/Hardware

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#58

Post by dingledork69 »

kkielhofner wrote: post #41
dingledork69 wrote: post #8

Cool! What software is used for the wake word detection, speech to text and text to speech?

For wake word and voice activity detection, audio processing, etc we use the ESP SR (speech recognition) framework from Espressif[0]. For speech to text there are two options and more to come: 1) Completely on device command recognition using the ESP SR Multinet 6 model. Willow will (currently) pull your light and switch entities from Home Assistant and generate the grammar and command definition required by Multinet…

Thanks so much for doing this, that sounds very exciting and I can't wait to try it out!

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#59

Post by yoavm »

This is wonderful. I would love to replace my stupid Google Home Minis with this if I can actually get the hardware for $50. The Mycroft device is like $400 so I didn't even consider it, and I never understood why it had to be so expensive. I don't even need a screen - just a microphone. Will definitely give this a shot!

Re: Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware

#60

Post by java_beyb »

kkielhofner wrote: post #28
api wrote: post #26

I love seeing lots of practical refutations of the "we have to do the voice processing in the cloud for performance" rationales peddled by the various home 1984 surveillance box vendors. It's actually faster to do it locally. They want it tethered to the cloud for surveillance.

We can do either. For "basic" command recognition the ESP SR (speech recognition) library supports up to 400 defined speech commands that run completely on the device. For most people this is plenty to control devices around the home, etc. Because it is all local it's extremely fast - as I said in another comment pushing "Did that really just happen?" fast. However, for cases where someone wants to be able to throw a…

first, good initiative! thanks for sharing. i think you gotta be more diligent and careful with the problem statement.

checking the weather in Sofia, Bulgaria requires cloud, current information. it's not "random speech". ESP SR capability issues don't mean that you cannot process it locally.

the comment was on "voice processing" i.e. sending speech to the cloud, not sending a call request to get the weather information.

besides, local intent detection, beyond 400 commands, there are great local STT options, working better than most cloud STTs for "random speech"

https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api https://picovoice.ai/platform/cheetah/

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