I'll go against the grain and say that I like this, I genuinely don't think this is anything but some internal team being excited about their product and giving you some firmware to connect stuff to their agents. Meta the trillion dollar company will not move at all from this.

The general theme of meta's approach across the board here is interesting - basically, they are trying to win in part by taking risks others aren't willing to. I can imagine they saw that all the success is coming so far when a someone is willing to cross a boundary that wasn't previously thought acceptable - from releasing ChatGPT in the first place, to things like OpenClaw.

So now they are actively distributing SDKs and to let people "hack" custom hardware integrations to their already risky AI agents unleashed on the general public. Giving agents abilty to control things in the physical world - what could possibly go wrong?

But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.

This and the Meta VR stuff - I would be all over it if it weren't Meta. It's objectively cool tech.

But you're handcuffed.

I'm generally skeptical and critical of most things that Meta is doing ("fool me once...") and I definitely won't trust them enough to use their agents and give them any more data than I already do, but this is a super cute and fun idea!

I love microcontrollers and DIY IoT as a hobby, a huge fan of ESP32s (so affordable and perfectly packaged in ready-to-use boards), and I can see how such easy, vibe-coded projects can inspire more people and show them how easy it is to get started with them today. (I remember my first experiments with microcontrollers and DSPs at college in 00s - the nightmare of even just flashing those devices, not to mention the almost-prohibitive cost to get them and the sometimes required JTAG programmers I faced in Poland... My BSc thesis project was reduced in scope a few times because my professor couldn't get some purchases and shipments approved on time)

A toy with not much value? Sure. But who cares, it's fun and inspiring! They even recommend vibe-building so that the user doesn't need to download or configure SDKs. Awesome stuff for complete beginners to this area.

Over a decade ago, I could see Google releasing such a whimsy, hackersy fun toy project. Sadly, not anymore... (Saying this as a former Google employee in 2017-2022, witnessing in person the sad, gradual change from hacker culture to corporate culture)

A Meta ecosystem is definitely not coming to my household.

“ Connect Muse to your home Wi-Fi so it can reach compatible devices you already own, or anything you build with a local HTTP API. Community-built skills can let Muse turn on a light, control your TV, send a document to a printer, and more, depending on your setup.” What a great way to give Meta your lan information, wifi password, and free research for future product development ideas for mass market products.

It says make it your own. Then

Gadgets you build with the Muse Gadget SDK need a token. Add it to your SDK configuration so your gadgets can pair with the Muse app.

Each token can be used by a limited number of devices.

The Muse Gadget SDK is intended for personal tinkering and is not a supported product or developer platform. The SDK can change, break, or stop functioning without warning.

Doesn't really feel like it's my own.

Please do not waste hardware (nowadays valuable) on Meta's privacy-leaking garbage.

Literally yesterday I ordered an ESP32-C5 board to build a home network proxy for cloud agents (including but not limited to Muse), and today they announce this. I guess this is confirmation I'm on the right track.

This being Facebook is hard to trust with everything even considering they already have a lot of info on you

I like the idea of having a simple display telling me what to remember every morning. Having kids in kindergarten and school comes with daily planning, like remember a bycykel, drop them off at a different because it is tour day, etc. All that information comes as emails once or twice a week. Basically I want to feed that information into an agent that can make a summary every day and put it on a display. I find it hard to figure out what model to use since it will get a lot of knowlige about my kids and that is a little unsettling.

What an interesting timeline, I bought an Seeed reTerminal E1001 just few weeks ago and loaded it with ESP Home for my daily morning brief, and here Meta is advertising support for this niche hacker product.

I applaud the direction (and like muse spark 1.3), but I'm still not hooking meta into my life.

That Muse firestick clone they've got at bottom is interesting though...wonder if it'll be jailbreakable

No way in hell will I give Meta access to my IoT network.

Neat idea, but I don't know how it would work to let non-deterministically led software/hardware hang out on private home networks.

Interestingly, although this is about hardware, it contains the protocol for communicating with Muse, so I packaged them into a separate TypeScript SDK, https://github.com/wong2/muse-client

The simplest use case: you can chat with Muse in your favorite IM.

Just think of the possibilities—previously Muse invited someone to the user's house from Facebook Marketplace, but sadly the user wasn't home, and so got angry. But if you connect Muse to your Internet of Things—why, Muse could just unlock the door for your guest! You don't even need to be aware that they're coming. Surprise guests!

This took no time to flash onto a Stick S3 using codex to pull everything. The interface is interesting. I can't get it to respond to a voice message though.

Here are some fun things I've worked on for the S3: https://rillsound.com

It's a matter of time until Alexa, Google Home, and Siri leverage their device ecosystems to pull users into their Muse/Instinct alternative (whatever we end up calling this market).

This looks like a really smart way for Meta to bootstrap a hardware ecosystem around Muse.

100% vibe coded page

The name of the game with AI is capturing context. With each product announcement ask “What proprietary data access will they get with this.”

I said it before, and I'll say it again. The winners of the AI race are going to be the ones who control the products to deliver the AI features to the end users. The obvious ones are Google with its myriad of consumer tech, then we have Apple, Meta, Microsoft, etc. That's why OpenAI, Anthropic are desperate to build the applications themselves than being just an API provider. Meta is better off focusing on such initiatives than trying to complete with the labs on the model strength. They seem to have realised that finally, so that's refreshing. Whether the solutions they bring are useful or not is a different question, but this is definitely how you reach the end users, not with the strongest models.

I am gonna be so pissed if ESP32 prices spike

My hope is that, like Jev, we're going to see Open alternatives to Muse using this framework within days

Thats very @dps

i made a similar device as this Muse stick idea but using TrustedRouter for the ai instead of something loooking at your prompts

fanless, quiet, no dust

wonder if i should do a kickstarter for it

the Quill Feather: https://quill.lorehex.co/

Why would I ever want Facebook to have access to anything I own, think, or post if I could avoid it?

An AI from Meta on my house… FEAR!!!

Zuck realized the metaverse wouldn’t work, so now he’s creating the Musiverse.

I honestly don’t think I would have any gadget from meta even if they payed me.

As for AI, I would only use it for work and as a substitute for google search and don’t want it to do anything else in my personal life

So many possibilities, especially connecting to the real agent :D

Muse(um) of gadgets. Anachronistic on arrival.

yeah right like I'm gonna willingly let meta on my wifi beyond my laptop & phone lol

ill wait for the inevitable "foss community open source alternative" version

Commodify the complement?

Was this the AI that gives strangers your home address or am I confusing it for something else?

typical... will use the will power of open source tinkerers and enthusiasts to build goodwill and then enshittify. this is meta.

I wish Anthropic would robustify their bluetooth implementation (Developer > Hardware Buddy...)

The larping as a grassroots/open source product is really off-putting. The only reason anyone would use this is that its "free" and comes with preloaded prompts for non-technical people.

No thanks.