With the rise of Amazon Alexa and Google Home there has been a rapid growth in voice based assistants to help out with everyday life. The use cases are nearly endless: from scheduling reminders, to reciting new recipes, and ordering takeout sushi. Even better, Amazon has made Alexa available to developers by introducing Alexa Voice Services. There has never been a better time to build cheap & intelligent agents that can utilize cloud-based AI.
With that idea in mind, I decided to try my hand at creating my own intelligent assistant: Synthia, the Synthetic Intelligent Assistant for your home.
Synthia is an application that can integrate the best available AI services and be run on cheap and customizable hardware. Using the $35 Raspberry Pi 3, you can setup an agent in your home that can see, hear, and respond to your commands with a wakeword.
What Synthia will do that others cannot is use a camera pointed at your door to let you know when and who enters your home—and alert you when unrecognized persons are detected. Not only that, but Synthia will greet you and respond to your commands when you get home; from playing music to turning on smart-home lights. Synthia is going to be the digital doorman for your home.
Most importantly, Synthia is and will always remain free. Synthia is open source so that the maker community can extend and contribute to the project. Synthia was kickstarted at a Hackathon with contributors Geoffrey Khorn & Sarah Carroll.
