A journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant

Nicolas Mowen is switching to a fully local assist backed by local first + llama.cpp (previously Ollama) solution for a voice assistant.

I will share the steps I took to get to where I am today, the decisions I made and why they were the best for my use case specifically.

I have tested a wide variety of hardware from a 3050 to a 3090, most modern discrete GPUs can be used for local assist effectively, it just depends on your expectations of capability and speed for what hardware is required.

I am running Home Assistant on my UnRaid NAS, specs are not really important as it has nothing to do with HA Voice.

Voice Server Hardware is a Beelink MiniPC with USB4 (the exact model isn’t important as long as it has USB4) and a USB4 eGPU enclosure.

Various models are tested for effectiveness.

The End Result

I definitely would not recommend this for the average Home Assistant user, IMO a lot of patience and research is needed to understand particular problems and work towards a solution, and I imagine we will run into more problems as we continue to use these. I am certainly not done, but that is the beauty of this solution – most aspects of it can be tuned.

The goal has been met though, overall we have a more enjoyable voice assistant that runs locally without privacy concerns, and our core tasks are handled reliably.

Check out the details in the post here.

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Refining the design of a 6502 laptop

TechPaula is revising a previous 6502 microcontroller-based laptop.

LT6502b is a second, slimmer, revision of my LT6502 6502 laptop. This is very much a work in progress.

Specs

• 65C02 running at 14MHz (hopefully)
• 46KByte of user RAM
• EhBASIC 22p2
• eWOZMON
• Compact Flash for storage
• Built in battery (7400mAh currently)
• USB-PD Rechargable
• 10.1″ Screen
• nanoSwinSID for sound (as well as beeps)

Features improved on since previous version;

• Better placement of keys
• Use an FFC for the display
• Simpler case
• Battery level indicator (CAPS Lock will flash when getting low)
• USB charge and data on single USB-C connector
• Single PCB for keyboard and logic/processor

Check out the details in the post here.

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How to turn anything into a router

Noah Bailey noted the American government recently releasing a policy effectively banning import of new consumer router models.

This is ridiculous for many reasons, but if this does indeed come to pass it may be beneficial to learn how to “homebrew” a router. Fortunately, you can make a router out of basically anything resembling a computer.

I’ve used a Linux powered mini-pc as my own router for many years, and have posted a few times before about how to make linux routers and firewalls in that time. My personal preference is a purpose-made mini PC with a passively cooled design.

However, basically anything will work. It should have two Ethernet interfaces, but a standard USB-Ethernet dongle will also do the trick. It won’t be as reliable as an onboard interface, but will probably be good enough.

Noah provides all the details on how to accomplish this in the post here.

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Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer-winning author

Tracy Kidder, an award-winning narrative nonfiction writer who turned everything from computer engineering to life in a nursing home into unexpected bestsellers, has died. He was 80.

Kidder won the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award for his 1981 work The Soul of a New Machine, which delved into the work of a fledgling computer company long before most people cared about the inner workings of Silicon Valley.

For 1989’s Among Schoolchildren, he spent a year in a fifth-grade classroom, highlighting the dedication of an inner-city teacher in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Later, for 1993’s Old Friends, he observed the dark side of growing old in America while also chronicling how two friends maintained their dignity in a nursing home despite their infirmities.

Read more here.

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Today in History: Pencil Gets a Built-In Eraser

On March 30, 1858, Hymen Lipman was granted a patent for creating the first wood- cased pencil with aa built-in rubber eraser. CBS Sunday Morning shares the history.

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Decompiling the White House’s new app

Last week the US White House released an app on the App Store and Google Play.  “Unparalleled access to the Trump Administration.” the release said.

People became alarmed when the app requests to bypass security, asking for location and much more.

Thereallo jumped in and did some reverse engineering to see what it does.

The official White House Android app has a cookie/paywall bypass injector, tracks your GPS every 4.5 minutes, and loads JavaScript from some guy’s GitHub Pages.

It’s a content portal. News, live streams, galleries, policy pages, social media embeds, and promotional material for administration initiatives. All powered by WordPress.

It hides:

• Cookie banners
• GDPR consent dialogs
• OneTrust popups
• Privacy banners
• Login walls
• Signup walls
• Upsell prompts
• Paywall elements
• CMP (Consent Management Platform) boxes

It forces body { overflow: auto !important } to re-enable scrolling on pages where consent dialogs lock the scroll.

An official United States government app is injecting CSS and JavaScript into third-party websites to strip away their cookie consent dialogs, GDPR banners, login gates, and paywalls.

Read the entire details on the blog post here.

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Reverse engineering the secrets of an RA-02 LoRa module

The electronupdate blog does a teardown of the RA-02 LoRa module.

Removing the RF shield shows a circuit board with 3 semiconductors:

1. The SX1278 Lora module
2. An RF switch
3. A NPN Transistor

Removing the SX1278 from its package shows the die photo (above).

Catch the video below and the details in the post here.

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