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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 reaso

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 recognition results, other integrations, etc. It's just two of us working on this part time over the last month or so - this is VERY early but I think we're off to a good start!

canadiantim 3y ago
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?
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  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.
  - stavros 3y ago
    We're doing healthcare and this is exactly right. Perhaps I'll be contacting you in the future!
    - kkielhofner 3y ago
      Let me know! Contact in profile.

canadiantim 3y ago

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?

kkielhofner 3y ago
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.
- stavros 3y ago
  We're doing healthcare and this is exactly right. Perhaps I'll be contacting you in the future!
  - kkielhofner 3y ago
    Let me know! Contact in profile.