Product3 publishers2 min readPublished
Meta opens its Muse AI agent to hardware that hobbyists build on ESP32 and Raspberry Pi boards
Meta released open source firmware and a Linux SDK for its Muse agent and is giving subscribers 5,000 Home Link dongles. For now the release suits people who tinker; companies hoping to sell Muse hardware have no published terms to build on.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Meta tells builders to program an off-the-shelf ESP32 board or set up a Raspberry Pi with its SDKs, then wire Muse to displays, buttons, sensors and actuators.
- Its suggested projects include a color E Ink screen for reminders, an HDMI stick that puts Muse on a TV, and a small touchscreen device that looks like the Muse Charm.
- Meta says the Home Link uses community-built skills to let the agent turn on lights, control a TV or send a document to a printer, depending on the setup.
- Subscribers can claim a waitlist spot for a Home Link now, and units are expected to ship sometime this month.
- Mark Zuckerberg showed Meta's own Muse Charm at Connect last week, pitching it as a way to talk to the agent without wearing Meta's smart glasses.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- capability Subscribers can try the agent on screens and buttons made from parts they already own, while little is yet known about Meta's own Muse Charm.
- constraint A device maker can prototype on the firmware today but cannot schedule a product on it until Meta says how sellers may use it.
- exposure A Home Link gives the agent a path to every device on the home network that exposes https, and Meta's at-your-own-risk warning leaves the household responsible for what it switches.
- precedent Hobbyist builds become input to Meta's own hardware decisions, the payoff Engadget suggested the project could deliver.
A Muse subscriber with a spare Raspberry Pi can now load Meta's code onto it and give the agent its own screen or button [16]. Meta wrote this release for that person. "Muse gadgets are open source devices you build yourself," Meta said [3]. Meta also warns builders: "Proceed at your own risk!" [4]
The generous reading is a platform, with Meta's agent running inside hardware that other companies sell. What Meta has actually shipped is a hobbyist kit. According to Nat Friedman, head of product for Meta's superintelligence labs, it consists of open source firmware and a Linux SDK [2], and there is a Discord community for builders [6]. Neither Engadget nor The Verge reports any licensing or commercial terms for companies [1]. Engadget wrote that "It's not clear if Meta has any bigger plans for the initiative," and added that what hobbyists create could inform Meta's own hardware efforts [11].
The Home Link is the piece that reaches furthest into a house. Friedman wrote in an October 2 post that it is "a little usb-c powered device that allows Muse to connect to your home network to talk to smart home devices like TVs and speakers and anything else that exposes https." [7][15] That covers a lot of devices for a free dongle, and what it can do depends on skills written by other users [10]. Units are due to ship sometime this month [9]. Whether people keep them plugged in is a question for retention data from the 5,000 recipients [8].
A hardware team weighing this on Monday can sort its options along two lines. The first is whether the build is a prototype or a product someone will pay for. The second is whether the device only shows and listens, or acts on other things in the home.
A prototype that shows and listens, like the E Ink reminder screen Meta suggests, is the case the kit was built for [5]. A prototype that acts, through actuators or a Home Link that reaches TVs and printers, is fine on a bench under Meta's own risk warning [4][10]. A product in either column means betting a launch on firmware that Meta has so far offered only to people building for themselves [3][1]. The acting product is the hardest of the four. There, the seller would take the support call when a community-written skill switches the wrong device in a customer's living room [4][10].
What to watch
- Whether Meta publishes licensing or commercial terms for companies that want to sell Muse-powered hardware.
- How many community-built skills exist for the Home Link once the 5,000 units ship this month, and whether recipients keep using them.
- Whether designs from the Muse Gadgets Discord show up in Meta's own hardware after the Muse Charm.