Kalliope with Nicolas Marcq and Thibaud Buffet

Summary Wouldn’t it be nice to have a personal assistant to answer your questions, help you remember important tasks, and control your environment? Meet Kalliope, a Python powered, modular, voice controlled automation platform. This week Nicolas Marcq and Thibaud Buffet explain how they started the project, what makes it stand out from other open source and commercial options, and how you can start using it today. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon. Your contributions help to make the show sustainable. When you’re ready to launch your next project you’ll need somewhere to deploy it. Check out Linode at www.podastinit.com/linode?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for running your awesome app. Need to learn more about how to scale your apps or learn new techniques for building them? Pluralsight has the training and mentoring you need to level up your skills. Go to www.pythonpodcast.com/pluralsight?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss to start your free trial today. Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch. To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, tell your friends and co-workers, and share it on social media. If you work with data for your job or want to learn more about how open source is powering the latest innovations in data science then make your way to the Open Data Science Conference, happening in London in October and San Francisco in November. Follow the links in the show notes to register and help support the show in the process. Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Nicolas Marcq and Thibaud Buffet about Kalliope, a modular always-on voice controlled personal assistant designed for home automation. Interview Introductions How did you get introduced to Python? What is the Kalliope project and how did it get started? How does Kalliope compare to commercial options such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, as well as other open source projects such as Mycroft or Jasper? The majority of voice assistant projects that I have seen default to interacting in English, whereas Kalliope is multi-lingual. What led you to that design choice and how is that implemented? One of the perennial questions around voice assistants is privacy, so how does Kalliope work to mitigate the issues associated with having an always on device listening in people’s homes? How is Kalliope architected internally and how has the design evolved over time? What are some of the most difficult or challenging aspects of building Kalliope and its associated projects? What are some of the most interesting uses of Kalliope that you are aware of? What are some of the most notable features or improvements that you have planned for the future of Kalliope? How has the choice of Python as the implementation worked for you, and if you were to start over today do you think you would make the same decision? Keep In Touch Nicolas @Sispheor on Twitter Sispheor on GitHub Website Thibaud @Tib_Tac on Twitter LaMonF on GitHub Picks Tobias Kiwi Crate Nicolas Raspberry Pi Speaker Thibaud ReactiveX in Python Links Snowboy Mycroft Mycroft Interview Amazon Alexa Google Home Jasper Kalliope TTS STT CMU Sphinx Abstract Base Class MQTT RxPy Interview The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA