Ananthu Ashok, writing at Open Source For You, covers Hermes, an open source push-to-talk voice assistant that pairs an ESP32 with a Windows PC. The project comes from developer ROHITCRAFTSYT and is released under the MIT license, with firmware, wiring details and setup instructions published. The listed build cost is roughly ₹1,500 to ₹3,000 depending on parts.

The hardware is an ESP32 development board, an INMP441 digital microphone, a push-to-talk button, and an optional MAX98357A I²S amplifier with an 8Ω speaker. Holding the button captures audio. Releasing it sends the clip over WiFi to the PC, which replies with speech through the computer’s speakers or the ESP32 speaker. The documented firmware targets the standard ESP32, and the repository also has a schematic for the ESP32-S3.

On the PC side, Hermes runs on Python 3.11 or newer and uses Groq for transcription and model processing, with NVIDIA as an alternative. Commands can open apps and websites and talk to smart home devices.…