Merliot Hub is an
AI-integrated device hub.
What does that mean? It means you can control and interact with your physical
devices, your security cameras, your thermometer, seamlessly using natural
language from an LLM host such as Claude Desktop
or Cursor. The hub is a gateway between AI and the
physical world.
What could go wrong?
Which devices? Sorry, not any of the consumer-grade Smart devices such as
Smart security cameras, Smart lights, and Smart thermostats. Merliot Hub only
supports devices you build. You build devices from hobby-grade components
which are readily available, like Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, buttons, relays, and
sensors. You need maker-level skills to build the devices. The hub includes a
parts list and instructions for building each device. There is no software to
write; the hub includes the downloadable device firmware.
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- Merliot Hub uses a distributed architecture rather than a centralized
architecture, eliminating third-party access to your devices’ data. You
install and maintain your own hub and devices. No one else has access. Your
data is private. Your data can’t be sold, shared, stored, analyzed, or
surveilled by third parties. Read more.
- Merliot Hub uses a distributed architecture rather than a centralized
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- Merliot hub is a web app. There is no phone app. You can use any
web browser on any device, including your phone, to access your hub,
locally or over the internet. Try the demo
to get a feel for the UI.
- Merliot hub is a web app. There is no phone app. You can use any
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Merliot Hub is a Model Context Protocol (MCP)
server. The MCP server lets you plug your Merliot Hub into LLM hosts such as
Claude or Cursor. From there, you can chat with the hub using natural language:"List all of the devices in a tree view" "Add a new gps device" "Turn on all the relays" "Show the instructions on how to deploy a qrcode device"
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-
- Merliot Hub is packaged as a Docker image so you can run your hub
anywhere you can run a Docker image, locally on your own laptop or server
using Docker Desktop, or on the cloud. See
install guide for more info. The docker
image requires a minimal VM: 0.1vCPU, 256MB RAM, 256MB disk. Koyeb offers a
FREE VM suitable for running a hub in the cloud.
- Merliot Hub is packaged as a Docker image so you can run your hub
Merliot Hub devices are built from one or more target platforms:
12 Comments
chrisdalke
Cool! As a moonshot fun idea I’ve been interested in MCP as a way to use informal conversations to task robots. I’ll have to play around with this!
One example on unmanned boats: a human could radio to the boat over VHF and say “move 100 meters south”… that speech-to-text would feed to an LLM which extracts the meaning and calls the MCP.
I’ll have to install this and play around.
Kevcmk
"What could go wrong?"
fitsumbelay
very neat.
rybosome
I have far more ideas about this than time to execute it, but for a long time I’ve had this fantasy about a robot bandmate.
The idea is I’d go on stage singing and playing guitar with a looper and some samples, then bring a robot toy and introduce the robot “controlling” the looping and sampling as the bandmate.
It’s a gimmick that’s been done before, but with LLMs driving verbal interaction and now I could use this to animate a robot…it becomes pretty compelling. I’d plug the LLMs into the audio feed so I could banter with it and get responses then have the robot avatar animate accordingly.
If only my full time job saw value in this project.
gitroom
[dead]
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
It is a weirdly exciting time to be alive.
seebeen
[flagged]
alxjrvs
Feels like the kind of headline that would briefly pause in front of the camera to establish how the world got "like this".
imhoguy
"Open the pod bay doors, HAL"…
spaceport
Ive been using the ollama nextcloud integration for a while and while rough at times it does work to control many devices. Lights and music. Very nontrivial to get it working consistantly however so maybe this could work. Not going to connect it to cloud claude however.
Also for the author in case they read this, the central/decentral hub architecture writing in privacy section is overly complex. Simplify it as "locally hosted, not cloud connected"
darkwater
Isn't Home Assistant already doing this?
neonwatty
cue the curb theme song