[HN Gopher] Show HN: Merliot - plugging physical devices into LLMs
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Show HN: Merliot - plugging physical devices into LLMs
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?
Author : sfeldma
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-05-17 01:09 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| chrisdalke wrote:
| 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.
| trillic wrote:
| "There's a botter way"
|
| https://www.marksetbot.com/
|
| (not affiliated, just a fan)
| sfeldma wrote:
| Ya, sounds like a good idea to let the LLM do all the
| calculations and send simple instructions to boat. MCP tells it
| what data is available from the device.
|
| I tried the MCP server with the demo (https://merliot.io/demo)
| using Cursor and asked:
|
| What is the location of the "GPS nano" device?
|
| The location of the "GPS nano" device is: Latitude: 30.448336
| Longitude: -91.12896
| speerer wrote:
| This seems like a residential address. Irrespective of
| whether the creator deliberately exposed it, I would be a
| little bit cautious about sharing it further.
| Kevcmk wrote:
| "What could go wrong?"
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| very neat.
| rybosome wrote:
| 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.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Imagine when you don't need money anymore because everything is
| automated to oblivion. Everything is affordable. So the kind of
| people like you won't have to work to make a living, you just
| do your art instead. Better for everyone!
| dathos wrote:
| I cannot understand this optimism, in my industry the profits
| of automation only flow upwards.
| kevindamm wrote:
| My understanding is that you need the optimists to mention
| it enough times before the world is ready, because it
| normalizes the concept in ways that not mentioning it ever
| (or mentioning it only cynically) wouldn't be able to.
| brookst wrote:
| While the profits of tech have also flowed upwards, even
| average to poor people have much improved quality of life
| from tech.
|
| I'd prefer much less wealth inequality, but it's not like
| the only benefit of automation is profit.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| It is a weirdly exciting time to be alive.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| Feels like the kind of headline that would briefly pause in front
| of the camera to establish how the world got "like this".
| hughw wrote:
| Feels like a "what could possibly go wrong" thing.
| imhoguy wrote:
| "Open the pod bay doors, HAL"...
| gus_massa wrote:
| Movie references are usually downvoted here, but since smart
| locks exists and the OP ask what could go wrong, it's a good
| question.
|
| Is there a magic button to shut down the AI and go to 100%
| manual mode?
| sfeldma wrote:
| You don't need to enable the AI; it's optional. The web app
| has a full UI to manually work with your devices.
| spaceport wrote:
| 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"
| ravetcofx wrote:
| do you have more info on this? I'm curious what nextcloud
| integration has to do with smart home stuff.
| sfeldma wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback; I'll revise the privacy section.
| darkwater wrote:
| Isn't Home Assistant already doing this?
| neonwatty wrote:
| sure there's projects like https://github.com/acon96/home-llm
| but its early days for integration like this
| neonwatty wrote:
| cue the curb theme song
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(page generated 2025-05-17 23:01 UTC)