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I love this idea. I've wanted to do something similar for a long time, but I was thinking about building a home assistant where the always-on mic was a complete

by lftl 8y ago

I love this idea. I've wanted to do something similar for a long time, but I was thinking about building a home assistant where the always-on mic was a complete separate board that only listened for wake words and had no internet access. The main mic would only be powered on when the smaller board woke it up. Alias achieves the same thing in a much simpler way to where I might actually consider buying a home assistant now.

tantalor 8y ago
Explain how this is an improvement?
- hnnh44 8y ago
  I'm wondering this too. Like hey, let's install some under developed AI from some unknown company with unknown security policies on top of a device with access to hordes of personal data and the ability to make transactions online. No hacker will EVER think to use it as an attack vector /s
  - mental1896 8y ago
    It's open source: https://github.com/bjoernkarmann/project_alias https://github.com/bjoernkarmann/project_alias
  - lftl 8y ago
    I didn't look into Alias deeply, but does it even have network access at all? I don't see a reason it would have to.
    - kelnos 8y ago
      It needs it for setup (so you can set up the wake word using your phone), but then after that it can be disconnected.
- supermatt 8y ago
  you just put it on top of your device, instead of needing to modify the electronics of your potentially expensive and complicated home assistant?
- lftl 8y ago
  Mostly what supermatt said -- this is a lot simpler. Particularly, it's been a long time since I looked, but when I last looked neither Google nor Amazon were offering the voice assistants in nice package where you could bring your own hardware but use their APIs. So beyond the hardware, the project would've also involved building my own voice assistant software as well. Both of those ecosystems have evolved alot so that might not be a hurdle anymore.
  - tantalor 8y ago
    Look again: https://developers.google.com/assistant/sdk/guides/library/python/ https://developers.google.com/assistant/sdk/guides/library/p... https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/set-up-raspberry-pi.html https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/set-up...
amdavidson 8y ago
How is this different than an actual echo device as it sits now? You're still relying on a piece of software to make the wake-word assessment and hand off the audio to the cloud. Now you're just adding more hardware parts to fail. If your argument is that you trust your software more than Amazon's, then you shouldn't need anything more than a single microphone anyways because why would you surveil yourself?
- jake_the_third 8y ago
  > ... you shouldn't need anything more than a single microphone anyways because why would you surveil yourself? For the same reason nginx usually runs as a separate user: people make mistakes and security vulnerabilities happen. Security in depth is a good thing.

by lftl 8y ago

tantalor 8y ago

Explain how this is an improvement?

hnnh44 8y ago
I'm wondering this too. Like hey, let's install some under developed AI from some unknown company with unknown security policies on top of a device with access to hordes of personal data and the ability to make transactions online. No hacker will EVER think to use it as an attack vector /s
- mental1896 8y ago
  It's open source: https://github.com/bjoernkarmann/project_alias https://github.com/bjoernkarmann/project_alias
- lftl 8y ago
  I didn't look into Alias deeply, but does it even have network access at all? I don't see a reason it would have to.
  - kelnos 8y ago
    It needs it for setup (so you can set up the wake word using your phone), but then after that it can be disconnected.
supermatt 8y ago
you just put it on top of your device, instead of needing to modify the electronics of your potentially expensive and complicated home assistant?
lftl 8y ago
Mostly what supermatt said -- this is a lot simpler. Particularly, it's been a long time since I looked, but when I last looked neither Google nor Amazon were offering the voice assistants in nice package where you could bring your own hardware but use their APIs. So beyond the hardware, the project would've also involved building my own voice assistant software as well. Both of those ecosystems have evolved alot so that might not be a hurdle anymore.
- tantalor 8y ago
  Look again: https://developers.google.com/assistant/sdk/guides/library/python/ https://developers.google.com/assistant/sdk/guides/library/p... https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/set-up-raspberry-pi.html https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/set-up...

amdavidson 8y ago

How is this different than an actual echo device as it sits now? You're still relying on a piece of software to make the wake-word assessment and hand off the audio to the cloud. Now you're just adding more hardware parts to fail. If your argument is that you trust your software more than Amazon's, then you shouldn't need anything more than a single microphone anyways because why would you surveil yourself?

jake_the_third 8y ago
> ... you shouldn't need anything more than a single microphone anyways because why would you surveil yourself? For the same reason nginx usually runs as a separate user: people make mistakes and security vulnerabilities happen. Security in depth is a good thing.