Bring voice control to your home on the cheap with a Raspberry Pi

Siri, Cortana and Google Now are all inspired by the computers that Dave Bowman, Captain Picard and Iron Man use on a daily basis. But what if you wanted to turn your home into a voice-activated haven without those sorts of resources? Well, thanks to a Princeton students Charles Mash and Shubhro Saha, you can. The pair developed Jasper, an open-source, always-on voice control system that works on a Raspberry Pi and can easily be customized for your needs. All you need is an internet connection, one of the tiny educational boards and a USB microphone and you can ask the system to do whatever your coding ability allows. All we need now is for someone to kidnap Stephen Fry or Paul Bettany so our computer has the right level of sniffy British snark in its voice. Image credit: Cryteria/Wikimedia Commons (Hal 9000)