The Google Nest Mini is a popular smart speaker, but it’s very much a cloud-based Big Tech solution. For those that want to roll their own voice assistant, or just get avoid the corporate surveillance of it all, [Justin Alvey’s] work may appeal. (Nitter)
[Justin] pulled apart a Nest Mini, ripped out the original PCB, and kitted it out with his own internals. He uses the ESP32 as the basis of his design, since it provides plenty of processing power and WiFi connectivity. His replacement PCB also interfaces with the LEDs, mute switch, and capacitive touch features of the Nest Mini, for ease of interaction.
As a demo, he set up the system to work with a custom “Maubot” assistant using the Matrix framework. He hooked it up with Beeper, a messaging client that collates all your other messaging platforms into one easily-accessible place. The assistant employs GPT3.5, prompted with a list of his family, friends, and other details, to enable him to make calls, send messages, and handle natural language queries. The demo itself is very impressive, and we’d love to try setting up a similar assistant ourselves. Seeing two of [Justin’s] builds talking to each other is amusing, too.
If you’re more comfortable working with Google Assistant rather than dropping it entirely, we’ve looked at that kind of thing, too. Video after the break.
I “jailbroke” a Google Nest Mini so that you can run your own LLM’s, agents and voice models.
Here’s a demo using it to manage all my messages (with help from @onbeeper)
🔊 on, and wait for surprise guest!
I thought hard about how to best tackle this and why, see 🧵 pic.twitter.com/rUBGoM1pO0
— Justin Alvey (@justLV) July 18, 2023
If it can work with AnyList, I’ll have to try this.
The only “smart” thing in my home is a printer, and I keep a Fiskars 28″ axe under my bed in case it ever starts acting funny.
Reminds me of a funny meme that went around about ten years ago – slightly edited – “I asked my girlfriend why she was armed in the house. She looked at me straight in the eye and said, ‘The frakkin’ Toasters!’ She laughed, I laughed, the printer laughed, she shot the printer, it was a good time!”
That’s like “jailbreaking” an old console TV to make an aquarium:
Step 1: Remove all of the guts that made the thing what it was.
Step 2: Install completely new guts that do something very different. Bonus points: Re-use the original knobs to operate the lights and pumps.
Step 3: Publish it. Remember to misuse the term “jailbreak” for extra clickbait, or nobody will care.
You must be great at parties.
I haven’t seen a better clown since Bozo….
🤡HONK! HONK!🤡
At least it’s closer to form than the people stuffing Raspberry Pis in everything and calling it a hack.
I thought this was about the Nest, which is a THERMOSTAT. A thermostat with a shitty UI, so I thought hey this might be interesting.
But no… Google named a speaker after a thermostat. I don’t know who does branding at Google, but everyone involved should have been fired after the “Google Video” fiasco. Instead, Google has put on a clinic of how to do the worst branding on Earth ever since. Incredible.
Nest isn’t a thermostat. You are thinking of the company “Nest Labs”. Their product, named the Nest Learning Thermostat, was popular enough that Google purchased the company.
Nest is now a subsidiary of Google and makes a variety of products. Thermostat, wifi base stations, and smart speakers like the one pictured above.
If you are gonna be angry and rude, at least get your facts somewhat correct.
>If you are gonna be angry and rude, at least get your facts somewhat correct.
That’s not how the internet works nowadays…
Nest IS a thermostat. I have one 10 feet away from me. All you did was repeat what I just said, and then whine that I’m “rude.” Google bought a THERMOSTAT company and has now tried to use the THERMOSTAT’s brand for a SPEAKER.
This is STUPID. You can whine and flail all you want, but the fact is that people know Nest as a THERMOSTAT. If you work in Google’s marketing department, don’t blame me for the fact that you suck.
Why should Google brand anything, when the product will get axed in 7 years?
“Liberated” it from the evil(tm) google cloud and hooked it right up to GPT3.5….. good one.
Yeah,my thoughts exactly.
They could al least have implemented a local solution like Home Assistant’s new voice assist.
I took out the guts that made it useful, placed new semi useful guts into it, and contributed to adding more e-waste!
Hey William, it’s not like your company is sell so many e-waste products, right ?
Not a problem with his operating system products. Just replace them with better ones. No waste.
Dure, more e-waste, nut less overal waste maybe?
He Trier tot jailbreak it from what I gatheres but failed andere gave up. So tien o stad of trashing the entire thing, he reused the shell.
I thought that connecting other speakers than the internal was a hack already. I have built a few nest-minis in the ceiling of the shop where I also have built in speakers. It works like a charm. Fairly good audio for background music. Just remove the internal speaker, solder wire to the socket and connect them to 4 or 8 Ohm speakers and voilá.