As much as I’d rather be building supercomputers, there seems to be an increasing need for “smart” devices that respect people’s privacy. I’ve been working on such things, but reached a point where I needed to invest significant time and other resources to continue and I wasn’t sure how valuable the work would be beyond my own interest. It seemed like people were satisfied with the trade-off of surveillance for convenience.
However I’ve had a few conversations lately driven by a continuous stream of escalating nastiness on the part of these “smart device” vendors that has me reconsidering my de-prioritization of these projects.
So I’ve picked up a little bit of hardware and I’m going to set-aside some time to build some prototypes. I was able to find some dev boards that have most of what I need for the initial devices so I can focus mostly on the software for now. Once that’s ready I can turn to designing & building custom open hardware catered to each type of device.
Coincidentally one of these prototypes (a replacement for the Ring doorbell) shares components with another mothballed project, so work here produces double-value. That’s always a nice bonus.