Amazon Echo (dot) - how to use without Alexa and offline? Just hardware

Hardware Home Automation
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1

Hello.

I’m new to openhab and maybe this question is dumb, but for me: the Echo dot seems like the perfect piece of hardware for speech control. Good microfone (7 mics for 360°), build-in wifi, small and cheap (the Dot) or with a good speaker for music streaming in all rooms (the normal Echo).
But I definitely won’t have 24/7 room observation from one of the biggest data-collecting companies wordwide within my home.

So: is it possible to use just the hardware without Alexa service as a wlan-microfon with speaker device for openhab or Habdroid?

2

Today it is locked down fairly well, you may want to check out reSpeaker tho. It costs a bit more, but is an open platform.

3

mmh, round about 200 USD just for the microfon-part (without speaker) is a bit more in deed.

4

Well they have come down by now, looks like $70 for the base part and another $70 for a 7 microphone array add on board, plus $10 for a case.

I guess that’s the price we pay for privacy / freedom! :slight_smile:

I for one am glad to have this option, that looks like a nice piece of kit! I also looked very briefly into the open source CMU Phoenix software powering the voice recognition and it sounds very impressive (apparently they have been working on it 20 years already!).

I’m pretty sure I will be picking up one of those at some point! Thanks for sharing that @sipvoip!