BitMon – A Local, Voice-Driven Animated Desktop Pet with Native Home Assistant Control

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Hi everyone,

I wanted to share an open-source project I've been developing that I thought this community would really appreciate. It's called BitMon, a local, voice-driven desktop companion that lives on your screen as an animated sprite-sheet pet. It listens, thinks, talks back, and—most importantly for us—can control your Home Assistant ecosystem.

I'm a big advocate for keeping smart home tech and AI models running locally, so I built BitMon from the ground up to support a 100% offline workflow.

shaka

:house: Home Assistant Integration

The core reason I’m sharing it here is its built-in Home Assistant control. By connecting it via MCP and the built-in Devices tab, you can ask your BitMon pet to interact with your home. You can use natural language hands-free to say things like, "Hey, turn off the office lights," or ask for the status of specific sensors, and your desktop pet will execute the command and verbally respond to you.

:sparkles: Other Key Features:

  • Fully Local AI Option: You can run it entirely offline using LM Studio for the "brain" and Kokoro for the synthesized voice. No API keys required, and your data never leaves your computer. (It also supports Inworld for a cloud option).
  • Voice Control: Features push-to-talk via hotkey or hands-free activation using a custom wake word (e.g., "Hey...").
  • Speech-to-Text: Powered locally by WhisperX (supports both CPU and NVIDIA GPU acceleration).
  • Screen Vision: You can toggle an option for the pet to "look" at your screen and answer contextual questions about what it sees.
  • Custom Personas & Animations: It comes with a visual editor. You can import your own sprite sheets, so if you want your assistant to look like a retro 90s anime character, a classic video game sprite, or your favorite animal, you can easily build and share it as a ZIP file.
  • Easy Setup: Built entirely in Python, it includes a friendly desktop launcher (install.bat) that handles the virtual environment and dependencies for you, tucking itself neatly into the system tray.

:hammer_and_wrench: Try it out

You can check out the repository, read the documentation, and see a demo GIF of it in action here: :backhand_index_pointing_right: beped/BitMon on GitHub

I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any ideas for expanding the Home Assistant capabilities. If you run into any issues or want to contribute, feel free to drop a message or open an issue on GitHub.

Cheers!