Using OpenVoice as an all local voice operated agent.

General Impressions

OpenVoice OS is an interesting project that runs on relatively lightweight hardware and lets you retain local voice processing. The most obvious use cases are Home Automation or local voice bot. AI has everyone's attention and all the voice agent work is now happening around AI integration for smarter responses. OpenVoice feels small as it currently exists.  It is mostly a curiosity on its own. OpenVoice LLM integration requires you to know something. IMO the best thing would be to have a zero-config Ollama or LocalLLM that is part of the default extended skill set. 

The Raspberry Pi was great but it felt constrained. The most cost-effective and full-featured hardware setup for completely local voice recognition and processing is probably a Mac desktop.  It would be capable of running OpenVoice and local MLX-based LLMs.

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Created 2024 04

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