Hush the room. Listen to the whispers.
OpenHush is an open-source storyteller for children. A small device — Hush — plays audio stories when a tagged card — a Whisper — is placed on top of it. No screen. No cloud. No tracking.
It draws inspiration from products like Toniebox and Toto, but everything here is open: the hardware, the firmware, the card format, and the tooling.
- Privacy by design. No accounts, no telemetry, no cloud. What happens in the room stays in the room.
- Open everything. Hardware schematics, firmware, the Whispers specification, and the companion tooling are all under permissive open licenses.
- Made to last. Repairable, hackable, no vendor lock-in. Cards you make today should still work in ten years.
- Responsible by default. Children are the audience. We pay attention to content suitability, cultural representation, and accessibility.
Early alpha. Expect breaking changes across firmware, hardware revisions, and the Whisper format until v1.0. If you build on top of OpenHush today, expect to keep up.
The current target is the Raspberry Pi family — likely a Pi Zero 2 W class
board. ESP32 is on the table as a possible secondary target later. Neither
choice is final; see hush-hardware
for the live state.
| Repo | What it is |
|---|---|
hush-firmware |
The device firmware. |
hush-hardware |
Schematics, PCB, BOM, enclosure. |
whispers-spec |
The Whisper card format specification. |
hush-companion |
Companion app for managing cards and content. |
docs |
Project-wide documentation. |
- Software — Apache License 2.0
- Hardware — CERN-OHL-S v2
- Content & documentation — CC BY-SA 4.0
🛠️ Build something — pick an issue labelled good first issue.
📖 Improve the docs — typos and clarifications are always welcome.
🎙️ Propose a story — open a story request in whispers-spec.
🐛 Found a bug — open an issue in the repository it belongs to.
🔒 Found a vulnerability — see SECURITY.md.
Before sending your first patch, please read CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct.