[bigfudge]

I really wish someone would make a pendant like this which is focussed on local-only use. It could connect to a mobile app or computer for transcription and summarisation, but using local models or an API key that the use chooses. I would pay serious money for a device high quality that did this (>$500) if it was backed by open-source platform/infrastructure for processing the managing the audio. Even better if it was written as an extension or fork of something like obsidian, or if the data structures were fairly open and there was an API for querying the data in interesting ways.

Recording and processing audio locally is something I already do. But there's absolutely no way I'm EVER going to trust a startup with this sort of data, any anyone in any serious job would almost certainly be unable to use it for work.

I guess the risk is that someone would sell a crappy pendant that uses the same software, but I still think there's a potential niche here for people who want something that just works.

I'd also purchase the software from the App Store if it was otherwise only available as a non-signed binary.

[flax]

Yes, a local-only always-on recorder/transcriber would be a killer product. Combine with a local LLM for summarization, and a simple search engine. But there's no way in hell I'm paying a subscription for this, or letting some 3rd party have this data.

It doesn't seem like this should actually be that difficult to build an open-source version of, modulo battery-life concerns.

[beaugunderson]

> Yes, a local-only always-on recorder/transcriber would be a killer product.

That's exactly what this was (Rewind) before they renamed the company and pivoted to AI.

[fictorial]

Me too! I came across this recently: https://github.com/OwlAIProject/Owl

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39441654

[sippeangelo]

I am personally excited for when the “Humane AI” pendant flops and sells for cheap on Ebay!

[ametrau]

I have been wanting this since I first used whisper and saw it’s capability. Nothing you can buy off the shelf is sufficient at the moment and if you diy it’ll be too big.

[bigfudge]

I actually pitched this idea as a project for students on an MSc EE course a friend runs. Sadly none of the students picked it but we looked at it in some detail and it’s so simple that even the dev boards +battery + mic array could have been made pretty small (according to him anyway). I really hope someone with the hardware chops fancies scratching the itch!