The era of open voice assistants

(www.home-assistant.io)

879 points _Microft | 1 comments | 20 Dec 24 00:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source

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frognumber ◴[20 Dec 24 03:56 UTC] No.42468148[source]▶

I don't fully understand the cloud upsell. I have a beefy GPU. I would like to run the "more advanced" models locally.

By "I don't fully understand," I mean just that. There's a lot of marketing copy, but there's a lot I'd like to understand better before plopping down $$$ for a unit. The answers might be reasonable.

Ideally, I'd be able to experiment with a headset first, and if it works well, upgrade to the $59 unit.

I'd love to just have a README, with a getting started tutorial, play, and then upgrade if it does what I want.

Again: None of this is a complaint. I assume much of this is coming once we're past preview addition, or is perhaps there and my search skills are failing me.

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trb ◴[20 Dec 24 03:59 UTC] No.42468158[source]▶

>>42468148 #

Finding microphones that look nice, can pick up voice at high enough quality to extract commands and that cover an entire room is surprisingly hard.

If this device delivers on audio quality it's totally worth it at $59.

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1. squarefoot ◴[20 Dec 24 23:27 UTC] No.42476174[source]▶

>>42468158 #

In many cases the issue isn't the microphone but the horrid amount of reflections that the sound produces before reaching it. A quite good microphone can be built using cheap, yet very clean, capsules like the AOM-5024L-HD-F-R (80 dB s/n) which is ~$3 at Mouser, but room acoustics is a lot more important and also a real pain in the ass when also not a bank account drain if done professionally, although usually carpets, wood furniture, curtains to cover glass and sound panels on concrete walls can be more than enough.

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