Muse wants a word with your Raspberry Pi

Good news for the drawer full of abandoned electronics, droogies: Meta has found them a supervisor. Muse can now reach beyond its usual screens into the little boards, buttons and contraptions on your workbench. Give the permission slip a read before applauding the puppet show.

What did Meta actually open?

The October 2 release, reported by The Verge and documented on Meta’s Muse Gadgets site, provides device SDKs and firmware for ESP32 boards and Linux computers such as Raspberry Pis. Builders can connect displays, audio hardware, sensors and actuators. Meta’s examples include an E Ink briefing screen and a Pi working with Home Assistant; the suggested HDMI-stick project is still marked coming soon.^[1][2]

The repository publishes the device software under Apache 2.0, with listed third-party exceptions. Each gadget still needs an SDK token and pairing with the Muse phone app. Open-source plumbing is useful. Viddy which service sits at the other end of the pipe.^[3]

How much authority comes with a spare Pi?

Read the Linux SDK’s README. Muse can run shell commands and read or write files with the permissions of the account chosen during installation. If that account can use sudo, Muse can too. The installer asks before giving it that account and flags sudo access.^[4]

That makes account choice rather more consequential than selecting a cute case. The documentation allows a different account, including one without sudo. A dedicated machine and narrowly scoped permissions are sensible starting points for an experiment that can actually change things.^[4]

The same README says pairing creates an encrypted session, but community-device pairing lacks manufacturer verification and cannot prevent an active man-in-the-middle attack. Its advice is to use a trusted network. These are documented limits of the setup; no breach is established by this release.^[4]

And the free dongle?

Muse Home Link is Meta’s own USB-powered ESP32-C5 gadget. It lets Muse reach compatible devices on your home network through community-built skills, including lights, TVs and printers, depending on your setup. Its firmware is based on the open-source SDK, but the supplied Home Link only runs official firmware and cannot be reflashed.^[5]

As checked on October 3, Meta advertises it as free with an active Muse subscription in the United States, one per subscriber, with October shipping on a first-come basis. Claiming a place in line is not an order. The page also warns that community skills can break and must not be relied on for home security, emergencies or medical needs.^[5]

There’s a genuinely interesting maker kit here. There is also a cheerful new route from a conversational request to a physical action or a changed file. Keep the experiment small, the permissions legible and the off switch boringly easy to reach. The horrorshow demo can wait until the house still works.