Building Your Own Open Source, Privacy-Protecting Voice Assistant With A Raspberry Pi (pcmag.com) 42
PC Magazine's "tech nerd" Whitson Gordon writes that "Once you start using a smart speaker to set reminders, play the news, or turn the lights on, it's hard to go back."
But if you want the convenience of voice control without the data-collecting tech giant behind the scenes, an open-source project called Mycroft is a great alternative. And you can run it right on a Raspberry Pi.
Mycroft is a free, open-source voice assistant designed to run on Linux-based devices... Mycroft has been around for quite a few years, but it's recently gained a bit more notoriety thanks to privacy concerns surrounding data collection at Amazon and Google. Unlike those assistants, Mycroft only collects data if you opt in during setup. And for the users who do opt in, Mycroft promises never to sell your data to advertisers or third parties -- instead, it only uses it to help developers improve the product. Mycroft even uses the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo as its search engine instead of Google when you ask for information.
Mycroft makes its own smart speaker called the Mark I, though it's currently sold out with a new Mark II (video here) on the way. However, since the project is open-source, you can install Mycroft on just about any Linux machine, including the Raspberry Pi (thanks to a pre-made build called Picroft). Using Mycroft on the Pi is free, but you can also subscribe to a $1.99-per-month plan to help support its development -- you'll even get a few goodies, like other voices that sound more lifelike than the default robotic voice.
But if you want the convenience of voice control without the data-collecting tech giant behind the scenes, an open-source project called Mycroft is a great alternative. And you can run it right on a Raspberry Pi.
Mycroft is a free, open-source voice assistant designed to run on Linux-based devices... Mycroft has been around for quite a few years, but it's recently gained a bit more notoriety thanks to privacy concerns surrounding data collection at Amazon and Google. Unlike those assistants, Mycroft only collects data if you opt in during setup. And for the users who do opt in, Mycroft promises never to sell your data to advertisers or third parties -- instead, it only uses it to help developers improve the product. Mycroft even uses the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo as its search engine instead of Google when you ask for information.
Mycroft makes its own smart speaker called the Mark I, though it's currently sold out with a new Mark II (video here) on the way. However, since the project is open-source, you can install Mycroft on just about any Linux machine, including the Raspberry Pi (thanks to a pre-made build called Picroft). Using Mycroft on the Pi is free, but you can also subscribe to a $1.99-per-month plan to help support its development -- you'll even get a few goodies, like other voices that sound more lifelike than the default robotic voice.
Serious addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's "hard to go back to" flipping a light switch with a finger, then I think the speaker has some serious addiction issues that might need to be addressed by a professional.
Re:Serious addiction (Score:4, Interesting)
Once you start using a smart speaker to set reminders, play the news, or turn the lights on, it's hard to go back
If it's "hard to go back to" flipping a light switch with a finger, then I think the speaker has some serious addiction issues that might need to be addressed by a professional.
It's not that. It's being able to say "turn off all the lights" before you walk out the door, being sure that if any lights were accidentally left on, they aren't. It's being able to say "Play Lindsey Sterling" without having to open an app or grab a CD. It's being able to ask "what's the weather like in Chicago on Wednesday" and getting an answer. It's being able to say "set a 20 minute timer" when you're cooking and your hands are full of cake batter, or "add butter to my grocery list and remind me to go to the grocery store tomorrow".
Yes, these are all conveniences. No, none of them are super difficult to do without a smart speaker. I don't own one myself, half because of what you said, and half because of the privacy concerns listed in TFA. If Mycroft does manage to make a useful, self-hosted alternative to Alexa, I'm very interested.
Finally, if you're still concerned about practical applications, I can't wait for a voice activated IVR that isn't worse than pressing buttons for a menu. Apple, Amazon, and Google don't seem to want to capture this market, instead opting for the automated Google assistant instead. If, however, Mycroft ends up improving its natural language recognition and can integrate with PBX systems, that could really be a game changer.
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Not particularly useful. I mean every so often you might have it do a unit conversation or something but mostly you don't use the voice assistant for searches outside demoing it to others. You are just so much better at searching for information than the AI that it isn't worth it.
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Google assistance is doing automated calls.
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You can also link your phone book to the Echo and it will make calls for you as well. "Alexa, call Shari" will search your phone book and call her. (I assume by "automated" you mean that rather than telemarketing calls.)
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"It's not that. It's being able to say "turn off all the lights" before you walk out the door, being sure that if any lights were accidentally left on, they aren't. It's being able to say "Play Lindsey Sterling" without having to open an app or grab a CD. It's being able to ask "what's the weather like in Chicago on Wednesday" and getting an answer. It's being able to say "set a 20 minute timer" when you're cooking and your hands are full of cake batter, or "add butter to my grocery list and remind me to go
He meant bareback! (Score:2)
It is hard(, ready) to go (bare)back!
It's an iPeople fetish thing, that normies don't understand.
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You are skipping things... like having to get up. For instance you've walked in the room, your spouse is in the bathroom, you collapse on the bed and your spouse climbs in bed without turning off the light you left on for them!!! What are you going to do? GET UP???!!! Hell no, you tell the voice assistant to turn off the light. Similarly you've settled in to watch a movie and some latecoming jerk didn't turn off the light while grabbing snacks and then plopped down. What do you do? GET UP???!! Hell no. Voic
Mycroft is not different from Amazon or Google (Score:5, Informative)
To use this fabulous open-source software you need a mandatory account at the mycroft.ai website. There is no way to actually run the speech recognition yourself. Who owns mycroft ai? A company named Middlebrow LLC. And while they might make all kinds of promises, those promises are utterly worthless when they need to make a profit.
The only voice assistant that actually protects your privacy is the one that completely fits in your cupboard at home without any internet connection. Even if you need a dual EPYC 32C 128GB server to run it. Everything else is the same privacy violation no matter if big evil NYSE listed multinational corporation or evil small corporation.
Re:Mycroft is not different from Amazon or Google (Score:4, Informative)
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They need to adjust their sales model. There should be free in domestic as part of the development model and the pay for secure private business services. They should not forget to promote and sell those services to government at all levels. They need secure voice services as well, they should even seek reciprocal development contracts with government, the government helps fund the development in exchange for those services becoming available, secure voice recognition, think fire fighters in the field or am
Wanna bet I could implement it in pure bash? (Score:2)
Just pipe /dev/$audioInput to /net/tcp/mycroft.ai/$somePath and vice versa. There you go!
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Hi there, I wanted to clarify a few things.
Everything in Mycroft is open source and available on our Github except some of the premium pre-trained voice models. The code running on your device is not obfuscated in any way so you can verify that it is the exact code available in the open source repositories.
By default it does require an account on our website to manage devices and access services. You can self-host the backend or an alternative like our community built Personal Backend as they are both also
Welcome to Slashdot, Kris (Score:2)
I put money down for a couple for me and a couple to give away. I'm still waiting on the hardware. Care to comment?
See previous [slashdot.org] posts [slashdot.org] from 13 and 22 months ago.
Oh, and welcome to Slashdot.
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Why do I feel a need for number output in an INTERCAL-compatable number system - badly broken Roman numerals [wikipedia.org], for example. Though Sanskrit might be a good option too.
And I wont... (Score:1)
"Mycroft has been around for quite a few years, but it's recently gained a bit more notoriety thanks to privacy concerns surrounding data collection at Amazon and Google. Unlike those assistants, Mycroft only collects data if you opt in during setup. And for the users who do opt in, Mycroft promises never to sell your data to advertisers or third parties -- instead, it only uses it to help developers improve the product. Mycroft even uses the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo as its search engine instead of Google when you ask for information."
Oh yeah and I wont cum in your mouth either!
Which Raspberry PI are best for Internet access? (Score:1)
(Posted to the previous Slashdot story about the Raspberry PI, also)
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Considering what crap NICs Broadcom used to produce that was probably a wise decision.
Re: Which Raspberry PI are best for Internet acces (Score:2)
Raspberry pi 4 has an out of order superscalar cpu with speculative execution. It's a Cortex A72, which according to arm is vulnerable to spectre-like attacks.
The older pi3 has an A53 CPU which is immune, sue to being in-order with no speculative execution.
Can I run my own back end server? (Score:2)
Rule No. 13 for doing business with the Ferengi: (Score:2)
Whenever something is not clarified, assume the worst possibility. A Ferengi will have made sure that assumtion can still not be as bad as what he wants to sell you.
That it even has a data collecting ability .. (Score:4, Interesting)
... already kills it for me.
That the website ends in ".ai" (apparently, TLDs get dumber everyday), is another huge red flag.
And while technically not necessary, I still find it werid, that I could not find anything explicitly ststing that it is local and offline on the front page or the about-mycroft page.
Not that I am interested in something as cringy and cumbersome as a speech-controlled talking Spotlight search anyway. This is not the 80s, where film directors made us think that was cool. It more something for those Eternal iSeptember people who are just discovering "The Internet" (actually the WWW), and are as new to it as we were in the 80s.
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To be clear, Mycroft does not by default run completely locally or offline. It is possible to do so, but requires you to run a range of services yourself which is beyond the average user. The speech recognition is still cloud based, as it requires more computing resources than the vast majority of people have or are willing to allocate, at least to process the audio in a reasonable time frame and with the accuracy required. Our more robotic sounding voices like British Male are generated on device, but the
I would like to try ... but ... (Score:2)
Re: I would like to try ... but ... (Score:2)
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There is nothing AI about running a bunch of IF ... THEN statements in code.
I believe that's what's known in AI as an "Expert System". ... THEN statements.
You ask an "Expert" what they'd do in a bunch of situations, and encode their responses in a laundry list of IF
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You can use your own Voice to Text server (Score:2)
You don't even have to use Mycroft's online hosted speech to text translation, you can use KaldiSTT or other local hosted speech to text engine: https://github.com/MycroftAI/m... [github.com]
You can end up with a completely offline solution.
Needs a better name (Score:1)
How have they not been sued by Microsoft is beyond me. I'm sure their lawyers could make that case somehow. Also, unless it can sync with my phone, it's useless.
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No. Mycroft, as in Mycroft Holmes, the older brother of Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's series of stories from the late 1800s.
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Actually, yeah, it probably did, for a considerable proportion. Sad, but true.
I think it's a great name, given the associations. I wish the project well. Since I'm not in the market for home automation at all, it's vanishingly unlikely that I'd ever need or use one, but it's still a good name.