HACKER Q&A
📣 sircastor

Home Voice Assistant Recommendations


My Wife and I have had various Amazon Echos in our house since 2015. We like it, and have used it daily. Mostly for timers, shopping lists, conversions, radio playback, and as a bluetooth speaker. We understand and acknowledge the privacy concerns.

Our only remaining echo failed recently when I restarted our wifi network, and appears unrecoverable. We want something to replace it. Amazon and Google have not impressed us with their deteriorating privacy and consumer practices over the years so we're hesitant to go with a device from either. I like Apple stuff, but my Wife uses Android so the ecosystem is a bit of a bust.

I know about Mycroft, but they want $500 for their device. And DIY is fine but Raspberry Pis are tough to find these days. Are there good options outside of the big three? Is anyone using anything else?

  👤 iamsrp Accepted Answer ✓
I wrote a toy one which works well enough for me:

  https://github.com/iamsrp/dexter
It'll run on a cheap Ubuntu box if you can't get a Pi.

And lots of people seem to like Rhasspy too:

  https://github.com/rhasspy/rhasspy
which does rather look more polished than my efforts (though I've not tried it myself).
👤 __d
FYI, Mycroft is bankrupt. They might still be selling their devices, but don't expect any future support.