Home bots are all the rage right now, but they often come with significant down sides, like having companies listening to everything in your house, collecting large amounts of personal data on you.

That's why I designed this prototype which I call the Pi Pyramid, a beautifully simple open source alternative. It's not the first attempt at something like this, but I think it's form is definitely unique.

- Youtube link
- Archive.org mirror
- Torrent
- Keybase mirror


I settled with a simple pyramid design, as it has a few aesthetic and functional benefits over something like a standard box shape.

The angle of the pyramid gives the screen a natural viewing angle when on a desk or shelf.

It has a mini magic mirror on the front, meaning it doesn't look like a computer, and can easily blend in with other household decor.

The underside has a removable section which gives access to the internals. In here you'll find an Adafruit PiTFT screen, a Raspberry Pi A+ with all components removed, a wifi dongle, and a mini speaker.

The case itself is made from MDF triangles that were simply sanded down, and glued in place. You can buy these precut on Ebay. I then used sugru to attach the mirror to the case and innards.

Besides that, there's a simple hole at the back for the USB power cable.


The first and most obvious use would be as a clock. You could even switch between other information, like the current bitcoin price for example.

It would also be used for general notifications, like email and social media.

Perhaps with an upgrade to the Pi 3 it could also work as a Bitcoin node, with specific vital information being displayed.

Like other uses for the Pi, it could be either a streaming media server, or something that can play music or podcasts directly through the speaker.

If you added bigger amplified speaker and microphone into this, you could also enable voice interaction. Tools such as OpenAssistant could allow it to be used like an Amazon Echo, or Google Home Bot.


The point is that since this uses the Pi for it's brain, you can pretty much do what you want with it, within limits.


What do you think of this prototype? What uses could you see for it, and how could it be improved?

If you're interested, I may develop this further, so let me know in the comments what you think. Thanks for watching.