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Disclosure: I'm an Amazon Devices PE, but not on Alexa devices. Jeff (and others) have spoken publicly about this in the past, and this teardown is correct. The hardware is designed such that, if the privacy LED is on, the microphone is unpowered. In order to compromise that, one would need to physically alter/damage the hardware.
Tldr; it is real.
Thanks. Annoying that clickbait titles are allowed here.
If it was not a real mute, it would not be a question in the title but a statement such as "Amazon Echo Flex Teardown: The Microphone Mute is Fake".
I'd expect the light to be green when I'm safe from spying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks. Annoying that clickbait titles are allowed here.
The title gives all the information you need : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... If it was not a real mute, it would not be a question in the title but a statement such as "Amazon Echo Flex Teardown: The Microphone Mute is Fake".
Disclosure: I'm an Amazon Devices PE, but not on Alexa devices. Jeff (and others) have spoken publicly about this in the past, and this teardown is correct. The hardware is designed such that, if the privacy LED is on, the microphone is unpowered. In order to compromise that, one would need to physically alter/damage the hardware.
Why not physical debounce switch? I get it is more expensive but no one would question it twice.
Nice to see electronupdate here. For those who don’t know, he also has a YouTube channel[0] where he does teardowns of random ICs. It’s quite interesting seeing the die shots. I’m assuming this post is a continuation of his “part 1” post/video from a week and a half ago[1] about the Echo Flex. His videos are definitely not scripted (and barely edited), which can be off putting to some (hearing “umm”s among other thin…
Part 1 is not "ICFJ", it's "CFJ". The line is the pin 1 marking. This one is the harder of the two; however, if you've been doing this a while, you'd recognize this SOT23-5 as coming from TI, whose online marking code lookup returns "SN74LVC1G14DCK" in just a few seconds. (Incidentally, that means the actual marking is "CF" with a lot/date code marker of "J"; the random-looking lines above and below the text are also a lot or date mark.) No acid needed!
Part 2 isn't marked "COOR", it's "C00" with lot/date code "R". That's decodeable by eye as a TI LVC2G00 dual NAND gate.
The third part, the one marked "JW", is probably an ON Semiconductor dual transistor, but those guys are always harder to track down. The fourth one, the SOT-323 (?) marked "39R"... that one will be hardest of all.
Disclosure: I'm an Amazon Devices PE, but not on Alexa devices. Jeff (and others) have spoken publicly about this in the past, and this teardown is correct. The hardware is designed such that, if the privacy LED is on, the microphone is unpowered. In order to compromise that, one would need to physically alter/damage the hardware.
Why not physical debounce switch? I get it is more expensive but no one would question it twice.
Red light used to indicate recording, traditionally. I'd expect the light to be green when I'm safe from spying.