The Digital Hearth: An Automated Group Speech-to-Text System for Community Conversations

Explore the development and implementation of the Digital Hearth, an innovative group conversation recording device designed to capture underrepresented voices and issues in local communities. Delve into the technical aspects of this offline-capable system, including its custom 8-channel microphone, Raspberry Pi integration, and Raspbian-based software stack. Learn about the hardware configuration's impact on automated speech recognition and speaker identification. Discover the processing pipeline, from raw audio compression to transcription services and topic indexing. Gain insights into the project's goals, challenges, and future directions in amplifying diverse perspectives for public discourse.