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The $10 Echo

sammachin.com

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Re: The $10 Echo

#41

Post by freyr »

cs2818 wrote: post #32
Bjartr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my limited experience using Echo at my parents house over the holidays I was distinctly not impressed by the Echo's abilities to understand voice from across the room. We often had to repeat ourselves, only louder and slower to get the Echo to understand us. We do not have strong accents.

Exact opposite for me, does a great job at recognizing speech but a horrible job providing answers to even simple questions.

> a horrible job providing answers to even simple questions.

If you think of it as a device that performs specific actions (i.e., plays audio, gives a weather forecast, sets a timer, etc.) via an voice interface, rather than a general intelligence that can answer random questions, you're going to have a better time.

Re: The $10 Echo

#42

Post by sammachin »

Thanks for all the upvotes folks,

I should clarify that there is a bit of artistic license on the title calling this a $10 Echo, there are 2 caveats;

Its only about $10 the CHIP is a "$9 Computer" plus tax & shipping etc. and this hack then requires a speaker, microphone and a button, however you may well have these lying around of have another device like an old speakerphone or something that you could gut and put the CHIP into as a new brain.

The other point is that its not really a full Echo, the Echo is a hardware appliance that implements Far Field Voice Technology, Wake Word Detection, A High Quality Bluetooth Speaker, Support for various media service (Prime Music, Audible, Pandora etc) and finally the Alexa Voice Assistant. This hack is really just access to the Alexa Voice Assistant without the wake word or far field tech.

So its about 90% of the functionality for a much lower price. Personally I have an Echo in my dining room which is great when walking around the house but I built this to use on my desk when I want to trigger home automation features without shouting downstairs.

Re: The $10 Echo

#43

Post by sammachin »

destitude wrote: post #26

I've heard that the "$10" CHIP has a $20 "shipping" charge. Is that still the case?

Can't quite remember what I paid for shipping, taxes etc but I just tried adding one to my cart and it was only $6.22 shipping to the UK now.

Re: The $10 Echo

#44

Post by optimiz3 »

sp332 wrote: post #11
grok2 wrote: post #2

This is another thing that makes you wonder why companies expose APIs to their services that enablenothers to make competing services.

They can revoke your access at any time.

Which is why no one is going to use it.

Re: The $10 Echo

#45

Post by vnwarrior »

sammachin wrote: post #42

Thanks for all the upvotes folks, I should clarify that there is a bit of artistic license on the title calling this a $10 Echo, there are 2 caveats; Its only about $10 the CHIP is a "$9 Computer" plus tax & shipping etc. and this hack then requires a speaker, microphone and a button, however you may well have these lying around of have another device like an old speakerphone or something that you could gut and put t…

do you have the source for alexa in the browser on github ? that one was a very cool hack!

Re: The $10 Echo

#46

Post by polymathist »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38
Igglyboo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often are you talking to your smartphone from the other side of the room? Usually it's a few inches from your face.

Not to mention smartphones seem to be explicitly designed to not provide this use case. Where is my always listening Google Now? If I have to take my phone out of my pocket and unlock it, I may as well type the question myself.

The Moto X and its successors have had this feature for a while. Your phone can be sitting on the other side of the room, completely off, and you can say a certain catch phrase to activate Google Now.

Re: The $10 Echo

#47

Post by kovacs »

This is a pretty cool experiment. As someone that recently worked on an app that was doing speech to text in near and far field, calling this a $10 echo is like calling a Honda Civic a $15K Ferrari. I'd love to see the video of the author speaking to this microphone from 10' away, or even 5' away in a room with no padding.

The Echo's ability to do voice to text is like nothing that's ever come before it based on my experience building, and speaking with a consultant in the field that worked on the Echo team.

Re: The $10 Echo

#48

Post by [deleted] »

scholia wrote: post #39
cek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Alexa Fund page lists a sub-set of the companies that have received funding from the fund so far: https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa...

So how does Amazon make money from Alexa running on non-Amazon devices? (Not obvious to me, sorry.)

[deleted]

Re: The $10 Echo

#49

Post by Animats »

The $10 CHIP will be a $10 CHIP when and if it ships. Right now, it's a Kickstarter claiming they will ship the thing in June 2016.

Re: The $10 Echo

#50

Post by sammachin »

vnwarrior wrote: post #45
sammachin wrote: post #42

Thanks for all the upvotes folks, I should clarify that there is a bit of artistic license on the title calling this a $10 Echo, there are 2 caveats; Its only about $10 the CHIP is a "$9 Computer" plus tax & shipping etc. and this hack then requires a speaker, microphone and a button, however you may well have these lying around of have another device like an old speakerphone or something that you could gut and put t…

do you have the source for alexa in the browser on github ? that one was a very cool hack!

Yeah I just need to strip out the auth keys etc. and rebase it before i make it public. I'll try and get it posted this week sometime, check back on weds.
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