Show HN: Open-source real-time talk-to-AI wearable device for few $ (opens in new tab)

It does kinda send an interesting message to a child, doesn't it? "You're not worth the time of anybody human, so here's a machine instead."

And that's before the chat even starts (and eventually goes off the rails).

I never forget one of his remarks: There can be only one thing that is worse than someone not having a mother - that he has one.

So maybe a chatty LLM is not the worse thing that can happen with someone.

You're asking us to trust you, but why should we trust you in this matter? Regardless of if I think ChatGPT is any good at those things, you'd need some supporting evidence for that one way or another before continuing.

Again, not shitting on the people creating this and this is the forum for it, but I feel all of this is just such a wrong direction for people and humanity in general.

I mean doctors and play therapists still have to do their job, We have interviewed some doctors who feel particularly frustrated about how to comfort children before tests or surgeries. They hope for a tool can help building comfort for kids -> which means time is faster to run tests.

OP, I would implore you to not listen to any of this "advice" at all and just keep on building really nice things.

I can already think of a dozen valuable applications of it in a therapheutic context.

Ignore those who don't "do".

The platforms (ios, Android, etc.) are very limiting. It is hard to have something always on and listening. Especially apple is aggressive with apps running in the background.

You need constant permissioning and special privileges. The exposed APIs themselves are not enough to build deep and stable integrations to the level of Siri/Google Assistant.

Other problems are persistence. Have you looked at how hard it is to keep an app running in the background on an iPhone? on a Samsung phone? For an app that needs to be always-on, it's a non-starter unless you're Apple or Google respectively.

Because people have agency and hobbies, and they're free to decide what to spend their money and time on.

``` /* * @file streams-i2s-webserver_wav.ino * * This sketch reads sound data from I2S. The result is provided as WAV stream which can be listened to in a Web Browser * * @author Phil Schatzmann * @copyright GPLv3 /

#include <WiFi.h> #include "AudioTools.h"

const char

I2SStream i2sStream; ConverterFillLeftAndRight<int16_t> filler(LeftIsEmpty); // fill both channels - or change to RightIsEmpty

void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); AudioLogger::instance().begin(Serial, AudioLogger::Info);

    //   // Connect to Wi-Fi
    Serial.println("Connecting to WiFi...");
    WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
    while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED)
    {
        delay(1000);
        Serial.println("Connecting...");
    }
    Serial.println("Connected to WiFi");

    // Print the IP address
    Serial.print("IP address: ");
    Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());

    // start i2s input with default configuration
    Serial.println("starting I2S...");
    auto config = i2sStream.defaultConfig(RX_MODE);

    // working well
    config.i2s_format = I2S_STD_FORMAT;
    config.sample_rate = 44100;  // INMP441 supports up to 44.1kHz
    config.channels = 1;         // INMP441 is mono
    config.bits_per_sample = 16; // INMP441 is a 24-bit ADC

    config.pin_ws = 19; // Adjust these pins according to your wiring
    config.pin_bck = 18;
    config.pin_data = 21;
    config.use_apll = true; // Try with APLL for better clock stability
    i2sStream.begin(config);
    Serial.println("I2S started");

    // start data sink
    server.begin(i2sStream, config, &filler);

// Arduino loop void loop() { // Handle new connections server.copy(); }

```

This code just listens to audio you record on a microphone (INMP441 MEMS microphone used here) and streams it to an endpoint of the microcontroller's IP address. If you would like more help on this give me a shout anytime. my email: akash at starmoon dot app

For example, I spent 20 minutes the other day talking through some software architecture decisions for a solo project. That was incredible. No way I would have typed out my thoughts as smoothly.

To me, it looks like you have some experience with the topic and believe that it is very hard to build something like the device in question, but which properties of the solution make you so certain?

> Do you have a single psychologist on your staff that signed off on any of this?

We've been talking to pediatricians at portland hospital and cromwell hospital in london to support the "safe for all ages" claim but I agree that we want to back all our claims with data

> It is not acceptable for AI hucksters to lie about their product in order to make a quick buck

You created a fake/throwaway just to make posts with this kind of cheap insults?

[1] https://lmstudio.ai/

Since you can use docker for our backend, you can self-host your own service with our hardware. You can use our subscription only if you want us to handle the STT/TTS/LLM costs

> A lot of the subscription based pull ins could be replaced by networking into a machine running whisper/ollama etc anyway.

could you clarify this point? I think local LLMs are great for us to reduce cost and improve privacy concerns. For conversational AI however, is there a better way to run STT and TTS models?

Would you like to try building it with our devkit? We will prioritize raspberry pi firmware support if there is enough demand around this.

The interesting thing to do with this project would be to fork it and run it with open inference models.

…buuuuuut, this is one of those “modern” web apps that has a dozen third party api dependencies to worry about, built on non-self-hostable platform (superbase) so even if you wanted to, it’s probably actually impossible to run in an isolated sandbox you completely control.

/shrug

But I agree with your thought, I think this is a big fear with google home and alexa as well. ie. Are home automation tools always listening to our conversations. IIRC pre-wake word detection, none of the audio recorded is used to market products to you.