PerliSmart: Voice Assistant

PerliSmart turns an Android tablet or wall panel into a voice assistant and a home screen for the house. Say "Okay Pearl" and it listens. Ask for a timer, the weather, the news, a song or the camera at the door, and it answers out loud and on screen. READ THIS FIRST — IT NEEDS A HOUSEHOLD BEHIND IT PerliSmart is not a standalone app. The voice loop, the shared timers, the cameras and the intercom all run against the PerliSmart service, and a device has to join a household before any of that works. - A device finishes setting itself up while on that household's own Wi-Fi, or by scanning a pairing code from a panel that is already set up. - Until it has joined one, PerliSmart shows the clock and little else. If you do not have a PerliSmart household, there is nothing here to connect to. THE MICROPHONE — WHEN IT IS ON, AND WHAT IS SENT This is a listening device, so here is exactly how it behaves. - The wake word is spotted on the device. A small model inside the app listens for "Okay Pearl" and nothing else. That audio never leaves the device. - Only after the wake word, or a tap on the screen, does a listening window open. By default the audio of that one command goes over an encrypted connection to the PerliSmart service to be turned into text. A setting can recognise speech on the device instead. - Nothing is recorded. The app never writes audio to a file, here or anywhere. There is no recording to play back, and no rolling archive of household speech. - While the microphone is open a notification says so, and it cannot be swiped away. - Mute means mute. It releases the microphone and stops the service and its notification, rather than holding the mic open and throwing the audio away. - Background listening is a switch. Turn it off and the microphone is shut down every time you leave the app. - The speech log keeps the text of what was recognised — a hundred entries, for a day, on the device — so you can see what it misheard. Never audio, and you can clear it. WHAT IT DOES - A clock and the weather, readable from across the room. - Timers and alarms shared across the household: set one anywhere, and one panel rings rather than all. - Shopping list, notes, calendar and tasks, shared between panels. - The news read aloud, internet radio and Spotify Connect control, with a sleep timer. - Recipes, with video, for the kitchen panel. - Your own IP cameras, live, with motion alerts and a still when something moves. - Intercom: announce to the house or call one panel, with sound and optional video. - On a wall panel it can be the device's home screen, open other apps by voice, and be chosen as the system's assistant app. TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF CAMERA - House cameras are yours. Their addresses and passwords live in the device's encrypted keystore, never in plain settings. - Separately, the panel's own camera can watch for a person, with face detection that runs on the device. It is off until you arm it. Saved stills are off by default; when you turn them on they go to the app's private storage, never your gallery, and are deleted with the alert. - The microphone is never opened for that feature. OTHER PERMISSIONS - It starts at boot and holds the screen awake: a wall panel you have to wake is not a wall panel. - It can see the list of installed apps, because it can be the launcher and open them by name. - It can draw over other apps, so it can come to the front when you speak to it. It paints over the screen and cannot read what is underneath. WHAT IT COSTS PerliSmart is free. Nothing to buy, no subscription, and no advert anywhere in it — a microphone in someone's kitchen is not an advertising surface. PRIVACY - Optional usage counts are off until you turn them on, and this build uploads nothing even then. They count that a timer was set, never what for. - No advertising SDK and no crash-reporting SDK is in the app. - No contacts and no location. Made in Ireland by Perlicom Systems Limited. Support: [email protected]