Hildegard, the 24/7 Personal Space Protector

This is Hildegard: A delightfully grumpy-looking AI camera companion that anyone can build. Custom-trained to spot the things that infuriate you.

She uses a covert camera placed on your network to protect your personal space.

And she watches for one very specific threat:

The dreaded workplace stop-and-chat.

You know the one.

An approaching coworker… carrying a cup of tea.

Hildegard spots the danger instantly:

Threat detected.
Conversation imminent.

Take fake phone call

Crisis averted.

Origin Story

This is a reboot of one of our most popular projects - refined, rebuilt, and improved.

The original AI camera monitor was featured in magazines, and we were ever so proud of it.

If you fancy a deeper dive into how it worked, here’s the original video.

Hildegard has a better enclosure, a more expressive and informative light system - and thanks to Raspberry Pi’s new AI HAT Plus, she’s significantly faster.

Forty trillion operations per second.

Roughly three times faster than the original.

Which means Hildegard is now even more vigilant.

Side note: the design was inspired by something we spotted on Austrian trams -

a sticker reminding passengers to give up their seat for cool-looking old ladies.

Hildegard has that same energy.

Firm. Unapologetic. Slightly intimidating.

The moment someone with a mug approaches your space,

Hildegard lets you know:

Your territory 👏 is about to👏 be invaded.

Welcome to the age of the antisocial desk guardian.

What a time to be alive.

We’ve open-sourced the entire project on GitHub - completely free - so you can build your own version.
One that keeps an eye out for the things that infuriate YOU.

Video

Credits: 

We based the stl file for the enclosure on the design by Georg Mierau