One custom-made JARVIS, Stark family fortune not required

It may not be able to help him construct an armor suit — not yet, anyway — but Chad Barraford’s Project Jarvis greets him and his dog by name, controls his apartment lights and temperature, and can even cook a hot dog.

Inspired by, and named after, JARVIS, Tony Stark’s personal artificial intelligence computer system from 2008′s Iron Man, Barraford’s “digital life assistant” (DLA) runs on a four-year-old Mac Mini with built-in speech recognition.

The 27-year-old tech-support worker, who communicates with Jarvis via RFID tags, microphones, webcams, tweets and instant messages, has spent a grand total of $691.98 on his DLA. The Boston Globe has the full story (with video).

(via TUAW.com)