正文 · AI 翻译
It can direct Agents to work and control smart home devices
By Yunzhong, reporting from Aofei Temple
QbitAI | WeChat account QbitAI
By Yunzhong, reporting from Aofei Temple
QbitAI | WeChat account QbitAI
A small screen, three buttons, and a joystick: the little West Highland terrier on the screen is sometimes busy, sometimes worried, and sometimes celebrating.
This is HachimoDock (the Hajimi machine), an open-source AI device recently incubated by Xiaomi, with a DIY hardware cost of about 150 yuan.
At first glance, this highly popular product looks like a mini game console with a virtual pet inside.
But this little dog can do far more than help you pass the time. It is, in fact, a versatile desktop companion that combines a personalized desktop pet, voice control of computer-based Agents, smart home integration, and custom component creation, among other capabilities.
Its very low DIY cost, polished appearance, broad compatibility with various Agent tools, and wealth of ways to tinker with it to suit personal tastes drew users from different communities soon after its launch. Numerous guides and tutorials for recreating it have also gradually appeared on social media and in open-source communities.
For some, it prompted their first attempt at making their own AI hardware. Amid this surge of interest, components it uses, including the development board and screen, still face price increases and shortages.
HachimoDock comes from a small innovative product team within Xiaomi. Their initial focus was this: as AI Agents such as Codex and WorkBuddy rapidly become widespread, how can people interact with them more efficiently?
Following that line of thought, the most obvious approach was to make a voice-input device combining a microphone and buttons to meet a concrete need: voice input.
In office settings, speaking is often several times more efficient than typing.
But a voice-input tool alone seemed somewhat lacking in originality, and many similar products had already appeared on the market, such as ChatGPT's official Codex Micro. Even Xiaomi's Bluetooth remote control had found a new lease on life.
What the team wanted to explore instead was whether an AI device could offer more room for imagination and creativity beyond being a simple tool, so that everyone could truly enjoy playing with it and find it novel and cool.
So they began thinking more broadly about Vibe Coding/Working scenarios:
Is button-activated voice input really the simplest way to interact?
Beyond improving input and interaction, are there new possibilities for creation?
Must the product be limited to Coding/Working, or could it serve a broader range of scenarios?
As their understanding of these questions deepened, HachimoDock's form became increasingly clear.
The answer was no. A simpler, more natural interaction is real-time voice communication that requires only speaking, without using your hands. HachimoDock should be a companion that interacts with users in real time, rather than merely a voice-entry tool.
Whenever you have an idea, you can tell it in a conversational way, and after assigning the task to an Agent, it can quickly relay the result back to you.
The user is the one making a request, not the one dictating text. That is where HachimoDock's positioning as a “companion” comes from.
Defining it as a “companion” meant HachimoDock needed its own appearance, personality, and voice. It is both an assistant and a supervisor: it can direct various Agents to research information, organize files, and write code, while showing task states such as thinking, executing, and awaiting confirmation on its screen and signaling progress through the desktop pet's expressions, movements, and sounds.
Say to it, “Help me sort the files on my computer desktop into categories and change to a nice wallpaper,” and an Agent on the computer takes over the task. The dog on HachimoDock changes its movements as the task progresses and reports back through text and sound.
The ability to customize its appearance, both the hardware and the pet character, grew out of the “companion” concept and is another major reason HachimoDock has appealed beyond its original audience.
People are naturally a little particular about a small companion that will live on their desk: why must it be a West Highland terrier? Why can't it be their own cat or their boyfriend or girlfriend?
HachimoDock leaves that choice to users. Besides the built-in dog, pet photos, couple photos, cartoon characters, and more can be used as source material for a companion. Users can also pick a favorite from tens of thousands of characters created by community members and apply it with one click.
With keycaps and shells that can be printed as desired, the character on the screen can also be coordinated with the device's colors, further enriching its visual appeal as a desktop ornament.
Once HachimoDock becomes a character users know and like rather than just a tool, its polished appearance can make simply having it sit on the desk while they work, or occasionally chatting with it by voice, feel emotionally rewarding. This has also won it a large following among young users outside geek circles.
Improving input and interaction makes communication more efficient during Vibe Coding.
The greater value of Vibe Coding lies in making the things each person imagines a reality, turning ideas into works people can use and experience.
Vibe Coding has already shown a wide range of possibilities in computer software and mobile app development, while exploration of its use in hardware is only just beginning.
People have far more embedded devices around them than computers and phones. What would change if those devices, too, could be freely customized through Vibe Coding?
Ten thousand people would have ten thousand ideas and ways to use them. The prospect of personally customizing everything from smart home devices to wearables is exciting.
HachimoDock embodies that hope. It includes a feature for creating personalized components in minutes and aims to become the first AI device through which the general public gets started with Vibe Coding. The team hopes everyone can begin with this small device and experience the fun of hardware Vibe Coding at a relatively low cost.
Its retro mini game console design is intended to open up more creative possibilities. Combining four ways to interact—buttons, a joystick, voice, and a touchscreen—allows almost every type of game and tool to be implemented effectively.
Users can use natural language to turn ideas into components that run directly on HachimoDock: a watchlist for checking stock prices and changes; to-do lists, computer status displays, and Token usage dashboards for showing work information; and an almanac, Pomodoro timer, weather display, and water reminders for daily routines. During breaks, they can also listen to programs from different cities through a radio component or play daily news updates.
Games and playful tools can also be creations. Users can try Snake, mazes, ball-catching, fruit-slicing, and other games, or experiment with components such as virtual pets, spinning wheels, drawing lots, coin flips, tarot cards, and wooden-fish tapping, then modify them as they like.
The community also offers creations by open-source enthusiasts to try and discuss. Users can share components they make themselves so others can use and improve them.
Programming and office work are only part of life. Another important setting is the home. In this area, another Xiaomi open-source project, xiaomi Miloco, provides strong support for HachimoDock.
Through xiaomi Miloco, HachimoDock can become a personalized smart home manager, connecting to and controlling smart devices in the home.
At the same desk, whether you want to ask your computer to handle work or have devices at home respond to a need, you can simply speak to this little dog.
Looking back, beyond its appealing looks and low cost, the team's deep understanding of different use cases also played a key role in HachimoDock's popularity. Its capabilities correspond to different scenarios:
To improve work efficiency, users can give it tasks and check an Agent's progress. Those who enjoy decorating their desks and having a character for company can change the desktop pet and coordinate the shell and keycaps. Those interested in hardware and programming can start by making components, then gradually try more extensive modifications.
Having it is like having endless possibilities:
A microphone for quick voice input
A mini game console supporting tens of thousands of games
A small radio that can tune in to a wide range of FM stations
A secondary desktop display for checking AI task progress and computer status
A desktop control hub connected to the smart home ...
HachimoDock has now made its software source code public on GitHub and provides a hardware bill of materials, structural-part models, and assembly tutorials on the JLC platform. Interested users can follow these materials to build their own version and then continue modifying it according to their ideas.
The little dog on the screen is the starting point of the story. What it becomes next and what new abilities it learns are left for everyone willing to make something with their own hands to write.
Xiaomi's Technology Committee innovative products team said:
“We hope to leave room for every user to define HachimoDock, allowing more people to enjoy creating AI hardware at a relatively low cost.
At the same time, HachimoDock is only the beginning of Xiaomi's and the team's exploration of novel and cool AI hardware. More imaginative new products will be launched soon.
Letting passion circulate and creativity continue is the most moving value of open source.”
GitHub address: https://github.com/YizhengWw/HachimoDock
*This article is republished by QbitAI with authorization. The views expressed are solely those of the original author.