←back to thread

The era of open voice assistants

(www.home-assistant.io)
878 points _Microft | 2 comments | 20 Dec 24 00:29 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
Jarwain ◴[20 Dec 24 04:02 UTC] No.42468180[source]▶
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

replies(5): >>42468413 #>>42468436 #>>42468945 #>>42469600 #>>42470457 #
Brendinooo ◴[20 Dec 24 05:01 UTC] No.42468413[source]▶
I invested in Mycroft and it flopped. Here’s hoping some others can go where they couldn’t.
replies(5): >>42468709 #>>42469160 #>>42470293 #>>42470771 #>>42473432 #
1. tacticalturtle ◴[20 Dec 24 18:23 UTC] No.42473432[source]▶
I believe Mycroft was killed in part due to a patent troll:

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/02/13/linux_ai_assistan...

Hopefully the troll is no longer around

replies(1): >>42474797 #
2. NoNotTheDuo ◴[20 Dec 24 20:39 UTC] No.42474797[source]▶
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-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.