enhance your smart home’s intelligence through countless methods to improve your bedroom – but one specific GitHub contributor surpassed expectations. Simone Marzulli took the initiative to create his own local AI agent and subsequently trained it to operate on a Raspberry Pi 5. Quite remarkable, if you ask us.
Marzulli’s primary objective was straightforward, at least theoretically: nothing should exit the Raspberry Pi. This literally meant he aimed to prevent any AI tasks from being transferred to third-party services; he aimed to protect his personal data, and we understand his reasoning. Additionally, Simone desired all these in-house scripts to utilize open large language models (LLMs), and he wanted his AI assistant to respond to vocal commands.
Marzulli then acquired a compact chassis, screen, and cooling fan for his Pi-based agent. His final product — a smart display he refers to as Max Headbox — is truly remarkable.
Max Headbox was crafted to be an expressive, screen-driven AI assistant that showcased a face (designed using GIMP to animate one of Microsoft’s Fluent Emojis) and would respond to vocal commands upon hearing a trigger word. Marzulli even incorporated touchscreen features, where a tap would activate the system’s microphone to initiate his voice instructions.
Another tap would terminate the recording, and he could also tap while the LLM was replying to cancel the request entirely. He chose a minimalist interface, too, featuring rotating, colored ribbons as his three main indicators: ready for trigger word (blue), voice is currently being recorded (red), and LLM is active (rainbow).
Regarding the open models that were employed
