When devices like Alexa and the Google equivalent came out, it seemed like we were finally entering the Star Trek era of assistant technology: where one could tell one’s computer to do something, and it would do so. Sadly, this seems to have been limited to functions that further corporate interests such as purchasing BrandItem from Storefront, streaming PopularSong from StreamingService, and for everything else it will action a web search on ContinuouslyDegradingSearchEngine.
I have some support needs that would be fulfilable by a technological assistant similar to what was envisioned in the 2013 movie Her, something that is able to process verbal requests into something that actually ties into apps and completes tasks. For example, I need a lot of reminders, but setting up those reminders in an app is a barrier due to how long it takes and how easy it is to select the wrong date. I would like to be able to press a button on my phone, say “please remind me to wash my interview clothes on Sunday”, and then have the assistant set up a reminder to do that.
I’m willing to do some initial setup for such a thing, such as pointing it at API endpoints for my tasks app, reading out words and phrases so it understands my accent, etc. But once specific tasks are set up, I’d like them to work without barriers, meaning that generative AI is probably not the right solution (?) since it seems to react differently to prompts every time.
Last time I looked, there was an open source project available but it was only able to tell you the current time and weather.
I dont use it but I think the major project is https://github.com/home-assistant. It seems to have a large and active community of users/devs.
Yeah, that’s the big one. I use it at home for controlling zigbee lights (old but still valid comment on the basics) like Philips Hue and Ikea Tradfri without having to have any proprietary hardware or any online account. It’s 100% local to my LAN. The internet could vanish tomorrow and I would still be able to set it up from scratch and use all my lights’ features.
been using that one for a while and while i fully support using it and find it great, it is important to warn that the voice assistant is very limited by design. it responds to specific phrases (like “turn off the lights of the bathroom”) well but it will not understand variants of the same phrase (turn on the lights that are on the bathroom)
i don’t use reminders but i have read that they are supported so maybe they could work? it should also be possible to connect them to llms but i also haven’t tried it.
it responds to specific phrases (like “turn off the lights of the bathroom”) well but it will not understand variants of the same phrase (turn on the lights that are on the bathroom)
This is true (if not using an llm fallback), but its sentence matching algorithm is pretty powerful, so if you find youself saying thing in a way that its not catching out of the box, there is a good chance you can write a rule to catch it yourself
I use home assistant, and its probably the best you’re going to find. Its sentence matching is really powerful, so you probably wont need an LLM. There are also some add-on you can use that are helpful: ViewAssist makes setting up satillites with helpful view easy, and it comes with blueprints (templates for automation) for a bunch of stuff. You can turn an old android device into a satillite with the ViewAssist Companion App. Of course there will need to be some work to set up, but I’ve been using HA for years and it works really well for me.
Home Assistant for Android requires that you have access to a Home Assistant instance.
Unfortunately this appears to be a non-starter. Is there really nothing that runs as a standalone app 100% offline?
Home assistant is heavy (due to being a whole iot control hub) but it can be run offline completely, it just needs its own hardware. I understand that hardware is hard to come by now, but if you were able to get your hands on an old computer, it’s very effective.
That will not help me when I’m not at home.
Gotcha, that would take a bit more set up. I use the vpn tunnelling service tailscale, it lets you pipe your internet through your home server, then you can redirect it to your services. If you wanted to go for the whole shebang, you could run other webserivces as well, like adblock and file syncing.
That doesn’t help because I don’t have an internet connection. The whole reason I need it to run on-device is because half the time I’m using my phone, it has no internet connection.
I thnk for totally offline on Android, Dicio Assistant may be the best you can do. It has timers, but not reminders, unfortunately. It can open your calendar app, but that’s not much help. It seems like a skill someone should write for it.
You look for an assistant on phone without connection to a PC ? If yes the only way I see is onstallain a Linux phone, run a LLM stack on it like ollama and develop a webui to interact with. I am not aware of an open source android tool to do want you seem to want. I ran a speech to text engine on steal deck for a while, to be able to write fast in chats.
I’ve not done it myself but there are folks who have tied a voice agent into n8n.
$companyiworkfor uses this for a shit load of stuff. its pretty powerful.
Been around for a while too. They pivoted into AI because of how modular it is, but it’s got a solid history.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Here are some other projects, I can’t comment on any of them: https://alternativeto.net/software/siri/?license=opensource
The first one on the list is the one I mentioned that could only tell the time and weather. The ones that actually look useful all have mentions of pricing and “credits” on their websites, implying they require an internet connection and account. (I do not have a data plan)
