Smart Homes on the Edge

The challenge

With voice, you can simplify almost any imaginable task and add a new way of interacting with the world. It’s intuitive, hands-free, eyes-free, and accessible.

Home automation provides a wide-open landscape for makers and developers. You own the interaction and can develop anything you desire – from voice commands based on daily habits around the home, to inspiring a homeowner to save energy by sharing usage data, or even creating a voice-first quiz for game night where players answer questions about their favorite topic. Whether you are new to voice interface development or an experienced maker – we’ll provide you with the resources and tools to hit a home run!

Home, Smart Home

Use Snips and Seeed to bring to life the hardware you love in your home while keeping your voice private. Set timers, turn on the lights, or start your day with your favorite song. From making a cup of coffee to checking the weather, show us how you bring your connected objects to life with voice.

The Hardware

We encourage you to develop a smart home voice experience using the new Voice Interaction Development Kits, two (2) kits that help you prototype your ideas around voice-controlled IoT. Connect all your favorite devices through this smart hub for your home. The portable, modular design helps you run your household more efficiently.

Both the Base Kit and the Satellite Kit feature Raspberry Pis, Seeed mic arrays, and Grove sensors. Using the Snips Airnet, a local WLAN connection for your home, each Satellite Kit relays commands seamlessly to the Base Kit to unlock multi-room voice control without requiring endless apps, routers, or compatible products!

The Base Kit - The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ & ReSpeaker Pi HAT

The Satellite Kit - The Raspberry Pi Zero W & ReSpeaker Pi HAT

Up-level your voice interaction experience by integrating Seeed hardware add-ons like infrared and light sensors into your dev board or satellite to make it more interactive. You can also enhance your voice project with multi-turn dialogue for a more conversational relationship.

NOTE: you are not required to use the Voice Interaction Development Kits to participate in this contest. The only required hardware to participate is a Raspberry Pi Model 3 B+ (and Raspberry Pi Zero W if you intend to incorporate a Satellite). Feel free to choose your own mic array and sensors or add-ons.

The Software

This contest features the Snips AI Voice Platform - the software behind the first decentralized, private-by-design voice assistant. The entire Snips AI Voice Platform runs on the edge - instead of centralizing user data and processing it in the cloud, Snips processes the user’s voice directly on-device. The full Snips AI Voice Platform is available for free to every contest participant and anyone who wants to tinker with the technology for non-commercial use.

NOTE: You must create a user account in order to participate in this contest and customize your voice app. Your account does not require any personally identifiable information, and you can utilize any email and username you wish--we take privacy seriously!

With an amazing community of over 20,000 developers (and growing) who are using Snips in new ways every day, you can help voice interfaces become more prevalent with your energy, feedback, and ambitious ideas to bring AI and voice to the edge.

Learn more and launch the Snips Console.

No board? No problem!

We’re giving away 20 Snips Voice Interaction Development Kits (your choice of the Base Kit or Satellite Kit) to the best ideas submitted on or before February 20th, 2019. Click over to the Apply for Hardware tab to fill out an application.

Don't worry if you miss the deadline! You can buy your own Voice Interaction Kit here ($85-115 USD).

Prizes

Grand winners

1st Place

1 winner

Maker Faire

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$1,700 value

An all-expense-paid trip to Maker Faire Paris, New York, or Shenzhen (flight, hotel and event admission) AND a one-on-one mentorship session with Snips CEO Dr. Rand Hindi.

2nd Place

1 winner

MacBook Pro 13"

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$1,300 value

3rd Place

1 winner

$500 Seeed Gift Card

Hackster Impact Prize

Join Hackster as we rally with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to make today's world a smarter, healthier place. The Hackster team will select one project that best contributes to any of the SDGs. Please refer to the specific judging criteria for this prize category.

1 winner

$250 Gift card + Video interview + More

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$430 value

The winner will receive the following:
- a $250 gift card;
- a 12-month subscription to Patchr Premium ($180 value);
- last but not least, they will be featured in a video interview with Hackster’s one and only Alex Glow.

Please visit the Hackster Impact Prize page for more information.

Judges

Resources

About us