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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. The

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 Something I'm kinda curious about: it sounds like they're planning on a sorta batch manufacturing by resellers type of model. Which I guess is pretty standard for hardware sales. But why not do a sorta "group buy" approach? I guess there's nothing stopping it from happening in conjunction I've had an idea floating around for a site that enables group buys for open source hardware (or 3d printed items), that also acts like or integrates with github wrt forking/remixing

Brendinooo 2y ago
I invested in Mycroft and it flopped. Here’s hoping some others can go where they couldn’t.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bdavbdav 2y ago
  I guess the difference here is that HA has a huge community already. I believe the estimate was around 250k installations running actively. I suspect a huge chunk of the HA users venn diagram slice fits within the voice users slice.
  - balloob 2y ago
    Our estimates are more than a million active instances https://analytics.home-assistant.io/ https://analytics.home-assistant.io/
    - emsixteen 2y ago
      More than a million? It says on the page: "424,548 Active Home Assistant Installations" Am I missing something? Is it that these are just those you know are sharing details, and you can scale that up by a known percentage? :)
      - schnapsidee 2y ago
        > Analytics in Home Assistant are opt-in and do not reflect the entire Home Assistant userbase. We estimate that a third of all Home Assistant users opt in.
      - alias_neo 2y ago
        I'm a big fan of home assistant, and use it to control a LOT of my home, have done for years, have tonnes of hardware dedicated to and for it, and I've also ordered some of these Voice devices. I'm also opted OUT of the analytics.
    - bdavbdav 2y ago
      Wow- good on you guys, and kudos for such an amazing project!!
- bronco21016 2y ago
  I think Mycroft was unfortunately just ahead of its time. STT was just becoming good enough but NLU wasn’t quite there yet. Add in you’re up against Apple Google and Amazon who were able to add integrations like music and subsidize the crap out of their products. I just think this time around is different. Open Whisper gives them amazing STT and LLMs can far more easily be adapted for the NLU portion. The hardware is also dirt cheap which makes it better suited to a narrow use case.
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  IIRC one of the main devs behind this device came from Mycroft.
  - dole 2y ago
    OP's username checks out.
  - robotfelix 2y ago
    Yep, Mike Hansen was on the live stream launching the new device. He also notably created Rhasspy [1], which is open-source voice assistant software for Raspberry Pi (when connected to a microphone and speaker). [1] https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- tacticalturtle 2y ago
  I believe Mycroft was killed in part due to a patent troll: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/02/13/linux_ai_assistant_killed_off/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/02/13/linux_ai_assistan... Hopefully the troll is no longer around
  - NoNotTheDuo 2y ago
    I think another part is that there is a failure mechanism on their boards that was recently identified: https://community.openconversational.ai/t/sj-201-sj201-failure-mechanism-identified/15299 https://community.openconversational.ai/t/sj-201-sj201-failu... The short version, from the post, is that there are 4 capacitors that are only rated for 6.3v, but the power supply is 12v. Eventually one of these capacitors will fail, causing the board to stop working entirely. It would be hard for a company to stay in business when they are fighting a patent troll lawsuit and having to handle returns on every device they sold through kickstarter.
IgorPartola 2y ago
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 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.
- bhaney 2y ago
  > I am not prepared to buy one and hope I’ll get the opportunity to buy more later 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.
  - Jarwain 2y ago
    I agree! I mean, just look at the market for Meshtastic devices! So many options! Or devices with WLED pre-installed! It'll take a Lot for Esp32 to go out of style
- ascorbic 2y ago
  Kickstarter shows that a lot of people feel different.
  - IgorPartola 2y ago
    Kickstarter isn’t a group buy. Similar, but not the same.
- esperent 2y ago
  > 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. I used to think so too. But then Kickstarter proved that actually, as long as you have a good advertising style, communicate well, and get lucky, you can get people to contribute literal millions for a product that hasn't even reached the blueprints stage yet.
interludead 2y ago
Your idea about group buys is really intriguing. I wonder if the community might organically set something like that up once there’s enough interest
choffee 2y ago
Not really sure what the benefit of group buy would be here. Nuba Casa, the company that supports the development of home assistant and developed this product, already has a few products they sell. They had this stocked all over the world for the announcement and it sold out. I assume they had already made a few thousand. They will get more stock now and it will sell just like the other things they make. Any profit from this will go back into development of Home Assistant.
- Jarwain 2y ago
  Heh thus far I've been an excited spectator of HomeAssistant, and wasn't aware of Nuba Casa until doing research for a different comment on the thread. I do love and appreciate their model here I guess the benefits that came to mind are - alternative crowdsourced route for sourcing hardware, to avoid things like that raspberry pi shortage (although if it's due to broader supply chain issues then this doesn't necessarily help) - hardware forks! If someone wanted a version with a more powerful ESP32, or a GPS, or another mic, or an enclosure for a battery and charging and all that, took the time to fork the design to add these features, and found X other users interested in the fork to get it produced... (of course I might be betraying my ignorance on how easy it is to set up this sort of alternative manufacturing chain or what unit amounts are necessary to make this kind of forking economical)
pimeys 2y ago
I'm also very excited. I've had some ESP32 microphones before, but they were not really able to understand the wake word, sometimes even when it was quiet and you were sitting next to the mic. This one looks like it can recognize your voice very well, even when music is playing. Because... when it works, it's amazing. You get that Star Trek wake word (KHUM-PUTER!), you can connect your favorite LLM to it (ChatGPT, Claude Sonnet, Ollama), you can control your home automation with it and it's as private as you want. I ordered two of these, if they are great, I will order two more. I've been waiting for this product for years, it's hopefully finally here.
- nine_k 2y ago
  As a side note, it always slightly puzzles me when I see "voice interface" and "private" used together. Maybe it takes living alone to issue voice commands and feel some privacy. (Yes, I do understand that "privacy" here is mostly about not sending it for processing to third parties.)
  - staunton 2y ago
    > Yes, I do understand that "privacy" here is mostly about not sending it for processing to third parties. Then why does it puzzle you?
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      Because you wouldn't ask it deeply private questions in front of your mom, for instance
      - inquirerGeneral 2y ago
        [dead]
      - xandrius 2y ago
        There are levels of privacy. Because I'm not going to ask deeply private questions, it doesn't mean that I want everyone to be snooping into what I'm planning to eat tonight.

Brendinooo 2y ago

I invested in Mycroft and it flopped. Here’s hoping some others can go where they couldn’t.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bdavbdav 2y ago
I guess the difference here is that HA has a huge community already. I believe the estimate was around 250k installations running actively. I suspect a huge chunk of the HA users venn diagram slice fits within the voice users slice.
- balloob 2y ago
  Our estimates are more than a million active instances https://analytics.home-assistant.io/ https://analytics.home-assistant.io/
  - emsixteen 2y ago
    More than a million? It says on the page: "424,548 Active Home Assistant Installations" Am I missing something? Is it that these are just those you know are sharing details, and you can scale that up by a known percentage? :)
    - schnapsidee 2y ago
      > Analytics in Home Assistant are opt-in and do not reflect the entire Home Assistant userbase. We estimate that a third of all Home Assistant users opt in.
    - alias_neo 2y ago
      I'm a big fan of home assistant, and use it to control a LOT of my home, have done for years, have tonnes of hardware dedicated to and for it, and I've also ordered some of these Voice devices. I'm also opted OUT of the analytics.
  - bdavbdav 2y ago
    Wow- good on you guys, and kudos for such an amazing project!!
bronco21016 2y ago
I think Mycroft was unfortunately just ahead of its time. STT was just becoming good enough but NLU wasn’t quite there yet. Add in you’re up against Apple Google and Amazon who were able to add integrations like music and subsidize the crap out of their products. I just think this time around is different. Open Whisper gives them amazing STT and LLMs can far more easily be adapted for the NLU portion. The hardware is also dirt cheap which makes it better suited to a narrow use case.
geerlingguy 2y ago
IIRC one of the main devs behind this device came from Mycroft.
- dole 2y ago
  OP's username checks out.
- robotfelix 2y ago
  Yep, Mike Hansen was on the live stream launching the new device. He also notably created Rhasspy [1], which is open-source voice assistant software for Raspberry Pi (when connected to a microphone and speaker). [1] https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
tacticalturtle 2y ago
I believe Mycroft was killed in part due to a patent troll: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/02/13/linux_ai_assistant_killed_off/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/02/13/linux_ai_assistan... Hopefully the troll is no longer around
- NoNotTheDuo 2y ago
  I think another part is that there is a failure mechanism on their boards that was recently identified: https://community.openconversational.ai/t/sj-201-sj201-failure-mechanism-identified/15299 https://community.openconversational.ai/t/sj-201-sj201-failu... The short version, from the post, is that there are 4 capacitors that are only rated for 6.3v, but the power supply is 12v. Eventually one of these capacitors will fail, causing the board to stop working entirely. It would be hard for a company to stay in business when they are fighting a patent troll lawsuit and having to handle returns on every device they sold through kickstarter.

IgorPartola 2y ago

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 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.

bhaney 2y ago
> I am not prepared to buy one and hope I’ll get the opportunity to buy more later 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.
- Jarwain 2y ago
  I agree! I mean, just look at the market for Meshtastic devices! So many options! Or devices with WLED pre-installed! It'll take a Lot for Esp32 to go out of style
ascorbic 2y ago
Kickstarter shows that a lot of people feel different.
- IgorPartola 2y ago
  Kickstarter isn’t a group buy. Similar, but not the same.
esperent 2y ago
> 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. I used to think so too. But then Kickstarter proved that actually, as long as you have a good advertising style, communicate well, and get lucky, you can get people to contribute literal millions for a product that hasn't even reached the blueprints stage yet.

interludead 2y ago

Your idea about group buys is really intriguing. I wonder if the community might organically set something like that up once there’s enough interest

choffee 2y ago

Not really sure what the benefit of group buy would be here. Nuba Casa, the company that supports the development of home assistant and developed this product, already has a few products they sell. They had this stocked all over the world for the announcement and it sold out. I assume they had already made a few thousand. They will get more stock now and it will sell just like the other things they make. Any profit from this will go back into development of Home Assistant.

Jarwain 2y ago
Heh thus far I've been an excited spectator of HomeAssistant, and wasn't aware of Nuba Casa until doing research for a different comment on the thread. I do love and appreciate their model here I guess the benefits that came to mind are - alternative crowdsourced route for sourcing hardware, to avoid things like that raspberry pi shortage (although if it's due to broader supply chain issues then this doesn't necessarily help) - hardware forks! If someone wanted a version with a more powerful ESP32, or a GPS, or another mic, or an enclosure for a battery and charging and all that, took the time to fork the design to add these features, and found X other users interested in the fork to get it produced... (of course I might be betraying my ignorance on how easy it is to set up this sort of alternative manufacturing chain or what unit amounts are necessary to make this kind of forking economical)

pimeys 2y ago

I'm also very excited. I've had some ESP32 microphones before, but they were not really able to understand the wake word, sometimes even when it was quiet and you were sitting next to the mic. This one looks like it can recognize your voice very well, even when music is playing. Because... when it works, it's amazing. You get that Star Trek wake word (KHUM-PUTER!), you can connect your favorite LLM to it (ChatGPT, Claude Sonnet, Ollama), you can control your home automation with it and it's as private as you want. I ordered two of these, if they are great, I will order two more. I've been waiting for this product for years, it's hopefully finally here.

nine_k 2y ago
As a side note, it always slightly puzzles me when I see "voice interface" and "private" used together. Maybe it takes living alone to issue voice commands and feel some privacy. (Yes, I do understand that "privacy" here is mostly about not sending it for processing to third parties.)
- staunton 2y ago
  > Yes, I do understand that "privacy" here is mostly about not sending it for processing to third parties. Then why does it puzzle you?
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Because you wouldn't ask it deeply private questions in front of your mom, for instance
    - inquirerGeneral 2y ago
      [dead]
    - xandrius 2y ago
      There are levels of privacy. Because I'm not going to ask deeply private questions, it doesn't mean that I want everyone to be snooping into what I'm planning to eat tonight.