I'm half surprised they are still around as they seem to never restock most of their products, and half pleased they are still around and releasing products.
derefr 2 hours ago [-]
> as they seem to never restock most of their products
There is a product development strategy (I'm not sure if there's a formal name for it) where you're given a lead on a finite-but-large supply of parts you can acquire for absurdly cheap; so you buy the batch; develop and price a product around the part; market your product until you run out of the part; and then, rather than switching over to paying retail for the parts and pricing up your product, you just put your product on indefinite restock hiatus (only ever to be fulfilled if you happen to get another lead on a cheap supply of that same part.)
Usually, though, you get a lead on a cheap supply of a different part; and so the cycle begins again.
buran77 49 minutes ago [-]
> There is a product development strategy (I'm not sure if there's a formal name for it) where you're given a lead on a finite-but-large supply of parts you can acquire for absurdly cheap; so you buy the batch;
This is how Aldi and Lidl fueled their growth. Instead of focusing on thousands of different product offerings, they looked at a narrower selection of products (~20 times smaller than their higher end competition) they can buy in very high volumes at substantial discounts. Their offering is defined by what is available for them at the time to buy under those conditions. Instead of ensuring a specific product is always available on the shelves, they might just stock a different product at specific times.
This is less obvious when 90% of their sales are under their private label but the supply behind it is whatever they can negotiate for a better deal.
Their "middle aisle" is the perfect example of this, it really just stocks a mix of whatever is the cheap product of the week and may no longer be available next week at the same price so they stock something else.
someonebaggy 1 hours ago [-]
Apple can manage this, but Pine relies on open-source software that moves pretty slowly.
stuff4ben 2 hours ago [-]
I really wish someone would come out with a $25 "box" that sits on top of my bookshelf speaker that allows me to Airplay to it and power said speaker with a ~50w class-D amp. Then if I have multiple ones, it would allow them to pair and setup stereo or surround sound. I might even pay $50 for it. Kinda like a Sonos Amp but not at that price point.
You're 75% correct, one of the 4 products does have an amp though.
patja 51 minutes ago [-]
Squeezelite-ESP32 is a solution that is sort of aligned with this scenario. No airplay and you would need an amp module to get to 50w.
whywhywhywhy 1 hours ago [-]
Whats the justification for Sonos Amp being 31 times the price you're willing to spend? Niche problem or is the tech inside it worth that?
joshstrange 4 hours ago [-]
I’ll wait for the reviews. I bought the Home Assistant Voice Preview device and it was underwhelming. Bad speaker, bad mic, bad pickup. I really wanted to like it but my Echo blew it out of the water.
I’m deep into the HA system so I cannot wait for Echo-quality that I can attach to my HA.
goda90 1 hours ago [-]
Have you looked into third party firmware for your Echo? I just bought some used Echo Shows that others have figured out how to install LineageOS on.
joshstrange 1 hours ago [-]
I have, but like you mention, it’s only something that can be done on older shows that can be re-flashed. It’s something I’m considering but haven’t pulled the trigger on yet.
Gelob 1 hours ago [-]
same i cant see how the voice preview is even usable
bArray 2 hours ago [-]
> With just 32 MiB of embedded pSRAM memory and 16 MiB of flash, and 128 KiB ROM storage, the specs may sound meagre – although in the current AI climate, generous – but this is an embedded device not a full-blown PC hiding in an aroma diffuser1.
It somewhat reminds me of the PineCube, which had 128MB DDR3. Once the Linux tax was paid it was basically unusable.
> Factory shipped firmware is open-source and provides Wyoming Satellite, compatible with assistence platforms such as Home Assistant.
They are at least supposed to be able to show it working with some factory software [1]. I would have just liked to have seen some edge compute capability.
I don't own any of their products, but I am glad they exist.
NoboruWataya 55 minutes ago [-]
Same. Well, I did buy the PinePhone Braveheart edition a few years ago, but never did much with it. I keep an eye on the PinePhone Pro and PineNote in particular, these could be fantastic but it seems the software ecosystem is quite slow to develop.
What I like about Pine64 is that they go for low price points. Most of their products seems to be priced in line with low- or mid-end proprietary alternatives. Yes you can still complain about the hardware you get for what you pay but IMO for this kind of stuff, it's better to have an accessible price point and limited hardware than to charge a premium price for mid-range hardware that is still limited by experimental software support.
bluGill 31 minutes ago [-]
> What I like about Pine64 is that they go for low price points.
Sometimes I wish they would charge a little more and use that extra $$$ to pay someone to make the things work. there are too many rough edges that a full time developer would just fix, but nobody in the community gets "a round touit". These are things I could fix, but after my day job and getting my kids to everything I don't have energy left to focus.
voakbasda 21 minutes ago [-]
As an embedded engineer, I tend to agree. Their hardware looks good, but I am not going to spend my free time getting their software to work as well as I know it could if they hired someone like me.
Huh, maybe I should contact them, since I am freelancing now….
aquariusDue 2 hours ago [-]
I have their Pinecil and PinePower Desktop. They're really great products, I use the PinePower daily to charge my stuff at my desk and the Pinecil made soldering a joy, now I no longer dread it and can enjoy tinkering with hobby electronics again.
prepend 2 hours ago [-]
It’s funny that it comes with a 30 day warranty.
I love that this is out and one day hope to replace my alexas and whatnot so I can turn on my lights without hearing an ad for amazon prime.
amelius 4 hours ago [-]
Does this use _local_ processing of voice commands?
segbrk 4 hours ago [-]
This is just a satellite device for Home Assistant (self-hosted) which you can set up to do processing however you’d like. There are cloud options for each stage of the pipeline (speech to text, LLM to turn text into tool calls, text to speech), but there are local options for all of that: https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/voice_remote_loc...
rjsw 4 hours ago [-]
My reading of the documentation [1] is that everything is local.
i just wonder how good it sounds. open audiophile grade hardware is something of a gap.
loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago [-]
Nah. A true audiophile would be analog only - no room for anything digital, smart or connected. “Wifi EM interferes with the sound”
mghackerlady 45 minutes ago [-]
No, I don't know any audiophiles who think analog is superior. Digital is objectively better sounding
bluGill 28 minutes ago [-]
Maybe not anymore, but that used to be a thing. I suspect some are still left, but I stay away from the places where audiophiles hang out.
voakbasda 19 minutes ago [-]
It’s still a thing, but it is no longer based in objective reality.
itomato 3 hours ago [-]
It’s an off the shelf SOM.
Audiophiles are safe from this device.
paulcole 2 hours ago [-]
> PineVoice is in an early-stage development and early adopters will encounter quirks and performance issues. Future firmware updates should resolve issues in time, but like all of Pine64’s products, you’re not buying a consumer-grade product.
Like the Penny Arcade comic about a director who’s making a movie that’s not meant for the critics. “Wait, you can do that?”
Does this device allow raw access to the microphone array? Considering the SoC I might want to stream it elsewhere for processing. How many independent channels does the array provide?
https://www.thirdreality.com/products/voice-music-assistant-...
There is a product development strategy (I'm not sure if there's a formal name for it) where you're given a lead on a finite-but-large supply of parts you can acquire for absurdly cheap; so you buy the batch; develop and price a product around the part; market your product until you run out of the part; and then, rather than switching over to paying retail for the parts and pricing up your product, you just put your product on indefinite restock hiatus (only ever to be fulfilled if you happen to get another lead on a cheap supply of that same part.)
Usually, though, you get a lead on a cheap supply of a different part; and so the cycle begins again.
This is how Aldi and Lidl fueled their growth. Instead of focusing on thousands of different product offerings, they looked at a narrower selection of products (~20 times smaller than their higher end competition) they can buy in very high volumes at substantial discounts. Their offering is defined by what is available for them at the time to buy under those conditions. Instead of ensuring a specific product is always available on the shelves, they might just stock a different product at specific times.
This is less obvious when 90% of their sales are under their private label but the supply behind it is whatever they can negotiate for a better deal.
Their "middle aisle" is the perfect example of this, it really just stocks a mix of whatever is the cheap product of the week and may no longer be available next week at the same price so they stock something else.
[0] - https://audiocast.io/
I’m deep into the HA system so I cannot wait for Echo-quality that I can attach to my HA.
It somewhat reminds me of the PineCube, which had 128MB DDR3. Once the Linux tax was paid it was basically unusable.
> Factory shipped firmware is open-source and provides Wyoming Satellite, compatible with assistence platforms such as Home Assistant.
They are at least supposed to be able to show it working with some factory software [1]. I would have just liked to have seen some edge compute capability.
[1] https://pine64.org/documentation/PineVoice/
I don't own any of their products, but I am glad they exist.
What I like about Pine64 is that they go for low price points. Most of their products seems to be priced in line with low- or mid-end proprietary alternatives. Yes you can still complain about the hardware you get for what you pay but IMO for this kind of stuff, it's better to have an accessible price point and limited hardware than to charge a premium price for mid-range hardware that is still limited by experimental software support.
Sometimes I wish they would charge a little more and use that extra $$$ to pay someone to make the things work. there are too many rough edges that a full time developer would just fix, but nobody in the community gets "a round touit". These are things I could fix, but after my day job and getting my kids to everything I don't have energy left to focus.
Huh, maybe I should contact them, since I am freelancing now….
I love that this is out and one day hope to replace my alexas and whatnot so I can turn on my lights without hearing an ad for amazon prime.
[1] https://pine64.org/documentation/PineVoice/Software/
Audiophiles are safe from this device.
Like the Penny Arcade comic about a director who’s making a movie that’s not meant for the critics. “Wait, you can do that?”
https://en.bouffalolab.com/product/?type=detail&id=16
voice processing is in hardware unfortunately, but it exposes some things like DOA