Build Your Own Amazon Echo with a Raspberry Pi

Amazon announced its home assistant, the Echo, in November 2014, and consumers immediately wanted to know more. Seven months later, the Echo became a full product, and its revised version, the “Echo Dot”, is set to hit the market on October 20. However, you can build your own Amazon Echo with the help of a Raspberry Pi. The tutorial and assistant commands are in English, but the project is another striking proof of the Pi's flexibility, and a point in favor of Amazon for opening up (partially) its Alexa platform.

The Amazon Echo is about to enter its second generation. The new device, dubbed “Echo Dot” is much cheaper than its big brother ($50 vs $180), and although that implies a simplified build, all its major functions are still there. Of course, the real magic behind the Echo is Alexa, and since it's a piece of software, there shouldn't be big obstacles to moving that magic onto another platform. Luckily, Amazon gives access to the necessary resources if you register as a developer, download all the relevant code, and combine a Raspberry Pi 3 (an earlier version works too, but the built-in WiFi is a big advantage) with a good speaker and a good microphone. Alexa needs to hear you, and generic Chinese mics just aren't up to the job.

The whole process is long but simple. Registering as an Amazon developer is divided into thirteen steps, and once you're done, you need to clone and install Alexa's code on the Raspberry Pi with the latest version of PIXEL. If there's a catch in this alternate Amazon Echo edition, it's that the Alexa web service must be started by hand every time you turn on the Pi. The device is supposed to stay online for a long time, but plugging in a keyboard and monitor gets tedious. The last step is to optimize audio quality. Basically, that's where the classic alsamixer comes in, letting you adjust the capture volume. Again: microphone quality matters.

At the end of the day, this experiment, dubbed PiLexa, is really interesting on the software side, though the economics are a different story. As I mentioned above, the Echo Dot will cost $50, a similar amount to what you'd need to spend on components. Still, DIY isn't always about a lower price. What matters here is the experience.

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