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TIL: There is an open source "Alexa replacement" project (www.openvoiceos.org)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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As Snowden told us, video and audio recording capabilities of your devices are NSA spying vectors. OSS/Linux is a safeguard against such capabilities. The massive datacenter investments in US will be used to classify us all into a patriotic (for Israel)/Oligarchist social credit score, and every mega tech company can increase profits through NSA cooperation, and are legally obligated to cooperate with all government orders.

Speech to text and speech automation are useful tech, though always listening state sponsored terrorists is a non-NSA targeted path for sweeping future social credit classifications of your past life.

Some small LLMs that can be used for speech to text: https://modal.com/blog/open-source-stt

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[–] -3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

No, home assistant very much is not ready to replace an Alexa device. Home assistant mainly only does automation of smart devices, and as far as i can see from their website it does nothing else. One of the main things people use Alexa for is to play music from services like Spotify, and home assistant doesn't appear to do that.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Sorry.. my experience has been trying to move my google home to something open with no cloud... it's not been perfect for me after moving. Definitely things missing, but lots of things are better. Spotify does work with home assistant.. maybe look again or send a pr

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    It isn't listed anywhere on their homepage or example demos or anywhere listing its capabilities, so i did a web search to find it and I found that it sorta just kinda can do Spotify, but (1.) that isn't listed anywhere on the home assistant abilities listing pages, which shows just how not ready for the mass market it is, and (2.) takes a ridiculous amount of very techie setup just to get it to work

    https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/spotify/

    And also, out of the box can i ask it to:

    • tell me the weather?

    • set a timer?

    • set an alarm?

    I don't see anything on the website that says it can do these things. And even if it can (which doesn't appear to be the case from their website) then the fact that the website doesn't say it can do these things is a problem in itself that shows it isn't ready for the mass market

    Just look at the webpage for Alexa vs. Home Assistant and it's clear that Alexa has a very wide variety of abilities and is designed to be easy to use by anyone, while the home assistant website only shows it doing smart device automation and looks like it's not for regular folks

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCCNHWV5

    https://www.home-assistant.io/

    I would LOVE to replace my Alexa devices with a local FOSS system, but unfortunately home assistant isn't close to being able to do that yet

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I'm sorry, what?

    Googling "home assistant Spotify" results in the very link you've provided.

    And you can hardly expect a project like Home Assistant, with THOUSANDS of first party integrations, to cater to your specific needs, or to provide preferential treatment to companies like Spotify, who provide absolutely no support to the project.

    It also doesn't require a "techie setup", but following a quite straightforward guide, that culminates in clicking about maybe a dozen buttons (most of them being "I accept" to various terms and policies), then copying a handful of readily provided strings into the right fields. It's simple enough that even my tech illiterate father can do it.

    Home Assistant at the end of the day is NOT an Alexa (or other voice assistant) replacement, but a smarthome control hub OS. That it provides a voice assistant interface is quite secondary to its main mission.

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