Raspberry Pi smart speaker hat lets you change its name and protects your privacy

Designers Bjørn Karmann and Tore Knudsen have created a new Amazon Echo and Google Home hat called Project Alias which is capable of hacking the personal assistants to allow you to enjoy a little more privacy and also change their name to anything you desire.

Raspberry Pi smart speaker

Created using a Raspberry Pi mini PC, microphone and a 3D printed out a housing Project Alias is fully open source and sits on top of the smart speakers disabling its always on and listening feature. Watch the demonstration video below to learn more about the awesome device.

Raspberry Pi smart speaker (2)

Tore Knudsen explains a little more about the inspiration behind the device. “We wanted to take that as an analogy and show how DIY and open source can be used to create ‘viruses’ for big tech companies.”

Project Alias has been created as a defence tactic, and modelled it on a fungal species that aptly captures the way the parasitic product behaves. “This “fungus” is a vital part of the rain forest, since whenever a species gets too dominant or powerful it has higher chances of getting infected, thus keeping the diversity in balance,” says Tore Knudsen. “We wanted to take that as an analogy and show how DIY and open source can be used to create ‘viruses’ for big tech companies.”

If you’re interested in building your very own the code is available via GitHub and the 3D printed casing covers the microphones and produce a white noise that prevents the Google home assistant from hearing anything. For full instructions and the complete list of everything you need to create your very own for either the Google Home or Amazon Echo devices jump over to the Instructables website via the link below.

Source:Raspberry Pi smart speaker hat lets you change its name and protects your privacy


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