“Make an open source smart speaker for daily use The project is about to make an affordable, open source smart speaker. It should be able to run Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, MyCroft, Home Assistant, Mopidy and etc. A case is required to make it suitable for daily use.
Why should we make an open source smart speaker when there are so many smart speakers on the market? Because these smart speakers are designed from vendors’ perspective, not from users’ perspective. These smart speakers have two issues:
+ privacy - these speakers are always-listening black boxes which scare lots of people
+ functionality - these speakers can be more powerful but are limited by the vendors
In 2014, the Amazon Echo was released. The new species of smart speakers is rapidly expanding since then. Although there are tons of smart speakers made by a variety of vendors, but they are basically the same as the Echo. All these smart speakers use a keyword to wake up, do speech recognition in the cloud and extend their skills in the cloud. Their software and software updates are controlled by the vendors. They all have the two issues.
One best way to eliminate privacy concerns is open source.
Most of smart speakers have very powerful ARM processors. Some even run Android OS just like an Android phone. The smart speakers only is limited to run only one app, but they have the ability to run thousands of applications.
I want an open source smart speaker which can run Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant at the same time, and also is able to run Home Assistant, Mopidy, Snapcast, Nextcloud and etc. Maybe you want one too.”