Before we purchased our home in 2002, I told my wife, "I'm going to make our home talk to us like Jarvis, HAL 9000, TARS, or Auto." She didn't get those references—Iron Man, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, and WALL-E didn't make an impression on her like they did on me (I'm a bit of a movie nerd). But I was determined to build a smart home that didn't require 20 different user interfaces from 20 different cloud-based companies. Instead, I wanted our smart home to be 100% voice-based, brutally smart, and capable of doing intelligent things without even being asked. For years, I had been dreaming of how I would combine Home Assistant, Alexa, a whole-home in-ceiling audio system, and Apple Watches to build my vision. Now that we owned a home (which was not easy), it was time to execute.
I spent six months hacking away and eventually arrived at something that worked reliably. The voice assistant knew who was in any area of the home at any given moment, and even what that person was doing. For example, our smart home knew my wife was in the master bedroom listening to music, I was in the media room watching TV or in a meeting, and our kids were in the loft running around. Knowing the state of the home like this enabled me to create a "voice of God" user experience, where the assistant would speak to the occupant in the room when it felt necessary to do so. We didn't have to scream out, "Alexa, shut the garage door!" Instead, her voice would gently speak over the nearest in-ceiling speaker, saying, "Excuse me, Brad, but the garage door is open. Would you like me to close it?" All we had to do was say, "Yes, thank you."
The low-voltage company that did some work in our home spread the word about my project. Soon, I had people calling me, wanting to demo my home and asking for the same solution to be installed in their home. On July 1st, 2023, I started FutureProof Homes LLC and went into business installing custom voice-controlled smart homes on the weekend while juggling family, identical twin toddlers and my full-time job in the blockchain industry.
I knew what I had built was similar to a car enthusiast building a hot rod in his garage—hard to replicate, likely to break down, and sometimes dangerous. I spent a lot of time "productizing" my smart home as best I could so installation could be streamlined and easier to debug. However, there were still some fatal flaws in the components I chose—namely, the Alexa/Amazon implementation was clunky and violated my core principle of building private and local smart homes that did not require an internet connection.
The moment I experienced ChatGPT, I began searching for local LLMs, GPUs & MCUs to replace Alexa in my smart home. I knew that having a completely private and intelligent voice assistant was the holy grail, and the tech was finally within reach.
I started the FutureProofHomes YouTube channel around Christmas 2023. To my surprise, the algorithm was kind to me and the channel kind of blew up. My wife was very happy that I had an audience and was no longer pacing at night in our master bedroom, telling her how much potential this technology had.
By May of 2024, I had begun searching for key team members to join the company and help me transform into a hardware/software startup building and selling our own devices. I've built two software startups in Silicon Valley, but hardware was new to me. I've learned a lot over this past year, but I believe that my team and I have built something special. Our product, the Satellite1, will be completely private and extremely intelligent, with local AI running in the home.
Our roadmap and mission are clear. I feel grateful to have gotten this far, and I'm certain we have a bright future ahead of us. We may be a small hardware startup today, but watch out, world—the best is yet to come.
Thanks for reading.
Now get back to work, Brad!