You walk into your house and issue a voice command to bring up the lights and start a cup of coffee. No big deal, right? Siri, Google, and Alexa can do all that. Did we mention it is 1985? And, apparently, you were one of the people who put out about $1,500 for a Mastervoice “Butler in a Box,” the subject of a Popular Science video you can see below.
If you think the box is interesting, the inventor’s story is even stranger. [Kevin] got a mint-condition Butler in a Box from eBay. How did it work, given in 1983, there was no AI voice recognition and public Internet? We did note that the “appliance module” was a standard X10 interface. Of course, X10 automation was common enough in those days. But the...