#dectalk

Disclaimer: This is all theory and speculation. I have not tested anything or made my own home assistant yet, I just looked around for libraries and hardware that are likely compatible. I have not fully tested the compatibility or quality of these, this is simply the first iteration of an idea I have.

I just got news that Amazon Alexa has lost 10 billion dollars because their business model failed. This makes me happy, and has also made me realise that you can make your own home assistant.

Here are some of the links to things (I am aware that some are amazon, but it's the most global I could find. I encourage you to find other sellers, this is just what you should need. If you find anything cheaper or more local to where you are, go for it):

Hardware:

Raspberry Pi 4: https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-2gb.html (RAM requirements may differ, I may do testing to see what comfortably runs)

8GB MicroSD: https://www.amazon.ca/Verbatim-Premium-microSDHC-Adapter-10-44081/dp/B00CBAUI40/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3CTN6X9TJXRR2&keywords=microsd%2Bcard%2B8gb&qid=1699209597&s=electronics&sprefix=microsd%2Bcard%2B8gb%2Celectronics%2C91&sr=1-3&th=1

Microphone: https://www.amazon.ca/SunFounder-Microphone-Raspberry-Recognition-Software/dp/B01KLRBHGM?th=1

Software:

Coqui STT: https://github.com/coqui-ai/STT

Coqui TTS: https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS

If you have it set up correctly, you should be able to run both the STT and TTS in realtime (see https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS/discussions/904).

After all of them are set up, the only thing to do is bridge it all together with software. There are bindings to Rust for both Coqui libraries (https://github.com/tazz4843/coqui-stt and https://github.com/rowan-sl/coqui-rs), and all that's left to do is implement parsing.

The libraries can also be swapped out for different ones if you like. If you can find and implement a DECtalk library that works for the Raspberry Pi, you can use that.

If I ever figure out how to manifest this idea, I will likely make the project modular so that you can use whatever library you want. You can even fork the project and include your own library of choice (if you can bind it to Rust).