Member-only story
I Made an Alexa Knockoff That Doesn’t Spy on Me
DIY Raspberry Pi smart screen
Smart assistants come with a lot of baggage.
I like the idea of having a smart screen on my desk. It’s a decidedly sci-fi concept: A little dashboard that’s specifically coded to display up-to-date information from all different sources that I want to see, without distractions or extraneous features.
But I don’t want a device with a microphone or a camera on it. I don’t want Amazon or Google to set what’s on my device, and I don’t trust them with an audio feed in my home.
So, I built my own.
The project took about 45 minutes, and it was shocking in its simplicity. The result is a smart screen that displays the time, my calendar, and a detailed local weather forecast, with room to add more information as I want. It’s also a local server to share some of my noncritical files between computers, after my commercially built NAS was hacked.
The entire project was seeded by a video I saw on YouTube from a channel called ETA Prime. The channel features single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi, and the accompanying accessories that third-parties build to make the tiny computers more useful. ETA Prime suggested this seven-inch touchscreen display, which I bought and has worked flawlessly so…
