Ollama on Landry Zetam - Tech Blog

ChatBuddy - Voice AI Companion for Children

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

ChatBuddy is an AI-powered voice companion designed specifically for children aged 3-8. When a child asks “Why is the sky blue?”, they get a fun, age-appropriate answer—not a Wikipedia article.

The system runs entirely on-device with 5 containerized services on hardware with just 8GB RAM, ensuring complete privacy while delivering natural voice interactions with educational content grounded in verified facts.

Why Build This?

Kids don’t want to type. They want to talk. And they need answers that:

Home Assistant Voice Pipeline with Ollama

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This implementation demonstrates a complete voice assistant pipeline using Wyoming Satellite with Home Assistant and Ollama as the AI brain, achieving natural conversation and smart home control entirely on-premises. The system transforms spoken words into meaningful actions through a sophisticated pipeline of AI models, all running locally for complete privacy.

Why Ollama for Voice?

Voice assistants have unique requirements that Ollama handles beautifully:

Speed Requirements

Response Time: < 2 seconds for natural conversation
Model Loading: Pre-loaded models for instant responses
Streaming: Real-time token generation for faster perceived response

Privacy First

Local Processing: No cloud dependencies
Conversation History: Stored locally, never uploaded
Custom Wake Words: Combined with OpenWakeWord for complete privacy

Components Used

OpenWakeWord: Wake word detection (“Hey Jarvis”)
Whisper: Speech-to-text transcription
Ollama (Qwen2.5:3b & Llama 8B): Natural language understanding and response generation
Piper TTS: Text-to-speech synthesis
Home Assistant: Smart home orchestration and pipeline management
Wyoming Satellite: Voice satellite software on Raspberry Pi

Hardware Setup

Raspberry Pi 5 (2.4GHz, 4GB RAM) - Voice satellite device
ME6S USB Microphone - Audio input device
Bluetooth Speaker (88:92:CC:5D:CB:79) - Audio output via BlueALSA
Mini PC - Home Assistant server
Kubernetes Cluster - Container orchestration for AI services
NVIDIA GPU Node (yeezyai) - GPU acceleration for Ollama

The Voice Pipeline Architecture

The voice pipeline runs entirely on the K8s homelab, with Ollama at its heart:

Powering My Voice Assistant with Ollama: Local AI for Home Automation

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ollama has become the AI brain of my home automation infrastructure, powering my voice assistant pipeline and Home Assistant integrations. Running entirely on-premises on my NVIDIA GPU node, it enables natural language understanding and intelligent responses while maintaining complete privacy and control.

The Home Automation AI Hub

My Ollama deployment serves as the AI intelligence layer for home automation:

Ollama serves as the AI brain for voice pipeline and Home Assistant automations