Hi, HN! I built a proactive open-source AI necklace that transforms your conversations into summaries, proactive feedback, and insights<p>I built this because I want to use it myself: many companies are advertising such technology but no one is shipping<p>The app can work with or without wearables so you can try the experience without buying anything<p>---
Update: wasn't expecting this post to get attention, so please let me know if I need any special tags like Show HN
Omni (necklace)<p>+2 Charisma
+1 Intelligence<p>A necklace with a helpful spirit living inside a silicon crystal. The spirit grows with every word it hears.<p>"First you wear it, then it wears you"
Although people here are focusing on the conversation part (understandably, as it is part of its marketing), I also find the voice memo part interesting, especially for situations where you are working with both your hands but need to remember something. E.g., while driving, doing carpentry, working in a fume hood, and so on
Genuinely curious if people think this is a product, solving a real problem? My mind goes to critical privacy rights and would likely require offline use?
This is awesome! I have been thinking about what I'd want in an open source product after feeling unhappy trying to mess around with Bluetooth devices and overriding the assistant on an Android.<p>I really think an open source experience is going to be the only way this specific area will advance (wearable voice assistants). Apple/Google/Amazon are always going to very conventional in how they think about the purpose of their products, how personalized they can be, how much they can be expected to understand the user.<p>Looking at the Apple prompts, it's notable how <i>uninteresting</i> they are. There is no real theory of function, no sense of relationship or roles. They are just letting that all default to some unspecified common sense (as found in the model), handling only the surface level of these interactions. And they don't appear to bake that into the model because that wouldn't be enough, because those deeper interactions require state that seems pretty clearly to not be specified. Anyway, I'm really going off on a prompting tangent.<p>I think there is _really_ deep stuff people could be creating using these building blocks. The kinds of developments that are a synthesis of modified personal behavior and the tools provided. A tool this powerful is being wasted (theoretically and right now in actuality) if you don't modify behavior when using it. But that's a terrible way to make a commercial product, you can't expect people to change for you. And so they create these very bland experiences that are the projection of their current apps onto a voice or AI interface.<p>And they aren't wrong to take this conservative approach... it's very boring but very rational. I think this is a particularly opportune moment for people with their own very personal and specific ideas about how integrate AI into a particular part of their life to try to actually build that experience, with an authentic goal of just improving their own life. An open source stack makes that possible... including the device, because Google and Apple just won't let you use a phone that way.<p>So this is very exciting! My dev kit is ordered, and I await it eagerly
Omi has a pretty interesting architecture that has been completely open-sourced:<p>- The device itself is a Nordic Semiconductor BLE chip with GPIO, mic, and BLE.<p>- Audio is streamed (as OPUS) via BLE to the associated mobile device where some initial processing is handled.<p>- The audio is then passed to a FastAPI-based backend API service that handles integrations with Deepgram, etc.<p>Overall I think it's a clever way to handle this: you get to use very cheap hardware that sips power (battery) while utilizing the connectivity of the associated mobile device whether it be WiFi or cellular.
<a href="https://www.surveillancewatch.io/" rel="nofollow">https://www.surveillancewatch.io/</a><p>--<p>I personally have wanted something like this for <i>years</i> -- but at the same time im anti surveillance - what would be interesting is "anti-surveillance surveillance"<p>Imagine placing these in the planter in a conference room... board room, green room. Stick one in the head-liner of an SUV used by political folks.<p>---<p>(also not sure why "LED" is listed as a feature on the "connectivity" section...<p>I had posted earlier about a redditor who wanted to make a thing similar to this with whisper and such, for transcribing conversations at a corporate conference...
This is super interesting IF they add an clear option to configure the providers so it's possible to only use on-device processing / self-hosted providers.<p>EDIT: from the FAQ in their discord:<p>> Q6: Will there be other STT (Speech To Text) Services allowed?<p>> Yes! We currently use Deepgram while we are developing the app but we plan to update the settings so users can choose a wide range of STT services like OpenAI's Whisper, Deepgram and we want to allow users to use there own hosted server for this.
> Open-Source: Fully open-source, empowering you to customize and enhance your experience.<p>Fully open source? So the AI models used are all free software with everything available?<p>> Live Transcription: Capture live voice and audio with human-level accuracy using OpenAI Whisper and Deepgram.<p>> Efficient Summarization: Get instant insights and summaries powered by ChatGPT in just 5 seconds.<p>Nope.
In the end this is relies allmost completely on proprietary AI as a service services, right? I think the exact services should be advertised as well to help understand the limitations of the device.<p>E.g. Can I use this device for any language or is it just English. Can it do translations?
Super interesting product! I like the pivot from mentor to friend. How is this different from the Humane pin? cheaper + open source/ no projector?
I can't wait for stuff like this to become more common, and then the inevitable data leaks. Instead of SSNs and emails it'll be the private conversations of millions of people, many of whom didn't agree to this.
Aren't a lot of y'all in California? Because wearing a wire is generally illegal there...<p><a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=632" rel="nofollow">https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...</a>
The intentions seem genuine, and the ideas are good for what you would want people to use it for, but what about people like me?
Recording data on and around you especially without their consent is not something I'm okay with. I'm against Windows adding in their 'Recall' feature highly, I don't want somebody's computer taking screenshots and transcribing my encrypted chats on all of their computer usage, I sure as hell don't want to be around somebody who's too lazy to take notes or be present in the moment with their friends to solidify memories within themselves that they can just go back on and get transcripts of who and what was said as they traversed the day.<p>So again, what about people like me?<p>Sorry, but this is spyware in every sense of the definition. There's no argument against that there.<p><a href="https://notfriend.org/" rel="nofollow">https://notfriend.org/</a>
The privacy issues with this and the inevitable data leaks and blackmail potential is staggering.<p>Please consider whether you should publish something instead of just whether you can.