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Update / Warning: Until now, I was not able to get this project working. So if You are looking for a working solution, this is none. Maybe You do not need to read the following part of this project, because they were written, before I figured out, that this will not work. As it turned out, the Rock Pi S cannot run Snips.ai any more (after a Kernel update to get the sound working).  (Original Article Starts Here) With the progress of my smart home assistant project , I finally found an adequate hardware with the possibility to connect up to eight microphones: the Rock Pi S from Radxa . What sounded like a promising small device turned out to be a little bit tricky. Inspired by an interesting  article of the german IT publisher heise.de , I decided to order a Rock Pi S for my project. So I took the version with 512 MB RAM, Bluetooth and WiFi (ordered at the at this time point only available store n Germany, maker-store.de ). After delivery and unboxing of the de...

Smart Home voice assistants (also known as "smart home", "connected home") are still very much on vogue. But, regarding to Gartner's hype cycle  for emerging technologies, it's already on the falling edge of the curve and on the road to its plateau of productivity. Which means: the hype is almost over and the technology will get mature in approximately less than five years. Controlling devices at home with the voice is no future any more. It is presence. While Amazon's Alexa and Google Smart Home already recognize your wishes by voice commands in the cloud, there is a small place, where some offline voice assistants have emerged. These can process voice commands without a connection to the Internet, which is a major advantage for your private sphere - especially, if you consider that e.g. the German Home Office plans to listen to such devices to enlighten crimes. Fortunately, there is a way to protect your private sphere though you want to use smart...