Open source voice assistant platform 'Willow' developed as a rival of Amazon Echo and Google Home
An open source project `` Willow '' developed as a voice assistant platform that competes with Amazon Echo and Google Home has been released. Willow runs on low-cost hardware and open-source software, and there is no risk of sending voice data to a large company's server.
GitHub - toverainc/willow: Open source, local, and self-hosted Amazon Echo/Google Home competitive Voice Assistant alternative
Show HN: Willow – Open-source privacy-focused voice assistant hardware | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35948462
Willow is an open source voice assistant platform that uses the open source home automation service ' Home Assistant ' and the IoT development platform ESP BOX of Espressif , a manufacturer of smart displays. The ESP BOX series can use voice assistant functions, touch screens, sensors, infrared controllers, etc. to build interactive devices and control panels between humans and computers.
GitHub has a lecture on the software architecture of Willow's voice assistant and how to build and set it up, and users can purchase and configure ESP BOX to build a voice assistant at a low cost. increase.
``Our goal is to provide a voice assistant that competes with Amazon Echo / Google Home in performance, accuracy, cost, and features on Home Assistant and other platforms,'' said developer tovera. It's 100% open. It's source and fully self-hosted by the user, enabled on low-cost off-the-shelf hardware on the kitchen counter.'
Willow can purchase the necessary hardware for about $ 50 (about 6800 yen) except for the USB Type-C power supply, and the power consumption is not high. In addition to being able to perform speech recognition completely on the device, it is planned to support an inference server based on OpenAI's transcription AI '
Toreva et al.'s team tested thousands of cycles of voice commands, and it seems that the failure rate was less than 1%, and it also appeals that the wake word has high accuracy and few erroneous actions.
Below is a video that actually compares the response speed to instructions with Amazon's Alexa and Willow.
(1) Willow vs Alexa-YouTube
Give instructions to Willow and Alexa-equipped devices in front of you, 'Alexa, turn on upstair's desk lamp'.
Then, each device starts almost at the same time.
Willow reacted slightly faster and lit the desk lamp. According to tovera, Willow has a faster response time than Alexa and Google Home, and takes action within 500 milliseconds from the end of the utterance.
At the time of writing the article, Willow is positioned as a ``very early release'', but it is said that further functions will be expanded in the future.
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