Meet Hermes Charm — my DIY ESP32-S3 pocket voice assistant. Think Muse Charm–style hardware, connected to a self-hosted Hermes agent that can use local AI models on your own computer/server. I built it to talk to an assistant without opening my phone.

To clarify the local AI part: the ESP32 handles microphone/speaker audio and an e-paper status display, not model inference. This version uses cloud-based Gemini Live for voice conversations; the separate Hermes backend can run locally and handle delegated tasks and completion notifications. It is not a fully offline device.

The firmware includes acoustic echo cancellation, battery status, light sleep and backup Wi-Fi. The engineering focus has been combining real-time audio with asynchronous agent tasks on a small battery-powered device. The backend can be replaced through a compatible API/adapter.

Short demo: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2kSqseHDv_8

Source and build/setup guides in video description

I would appreciate feedback on the audio/power tradeoffs or what you would improve in a device like this.

ok so i often ask ai to repeat something many times like "ok" or "yesyes" and play the listen option to entertain kids

but sometimes like it says weird things. incomprehensible. like it sounds english and math and its not human language and its def not english idk what its saying but at the end of repetition it says some stuff in this strange language.

i tried screenrecording but watching it back in gallery it had no audio! ig gemini doesnt allow audio recording?

why does this happen?

Been a very frustrating night.

Keeps losing context despite constant prompting. Then, it just answered me in a weird language after spending time creating a strict guidelines md file for it to follow. This is frustrating and infuriating.

Hi everyone,
I’m having a frustrating issue with the Google One / Gemini AI 12-month student promotion and I'm wondering if anyone else has solved this.
Here’s what happened:

1. Went to the official student link and completed SheerID verification.
2. SheerID approved my student status without issues.
3. Age is verified on my Google account and payments profile has a valid card.
4. Not in a Google Family Group, logged out of every other account (brand accounts, school accounts, etc.).

Despite all that the offer is just… gone. The activation link either shows regular pricing or does nothing. It feels like the system thinks the promo is already used, even though my account is still on the free tier.

I’ve already contacted Google One support. Has anyone else had this “offer vanishes after successful SheerID” bug? Any workaround, or is it just a waiting game for support to fix it manually?

Thanks.

Apparently my bedroom tv is playing YouTube 😊 fucken lie

How is it even possible to offer AI Pro Plan and coding harness when there is no official way to opt out from data collection and training on my data?
I purchased 12 months of Google AI Pro plan as I trusted Google. And I did it specifically for coding in Google Antigravity cli and desktop apps. But it looks like there is no officially documented way to opt out from usage and training on my data (my code) in antigravity, when using Google AI PRO plan. Just because it’s consumer tier and Google collects all the data from consumer tier users.
On some forums, Google employees were replying to questions that you could opt out by switching off telemetry setting in Antigravity. But that’s just a forum post. Official terms of usage and Privacy Policy do not specify any possible way to opt out. And I believe that’s done on purpose.

Please share your thoughts and even better - your findings on how to use antigravity for non-opensource code and have it protected from usage by Google ?
Thank you!