Amazon Recipe To Turn Raspberry Pi Into Voice-Controlled Assistant

Amazon has released a perfect guide to build Alexa voice controlled assistant from raspberry pi for users to gain access to the service with simplicity. Since Alexa is restricted to the US therefore Amazon has released a step-by-step guide to build your own companion anywhere in the world, i.e., it explains how to turn the $35 Raspberry Pi into a voice-controlled assistant.

Figure 1: Voice-controlled by Amazon using Raspberry Pi

It demonstrate how to set up the single board computer to use Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service to create a low-cost alternative to the Echo, Amazon’s smart speaker. It is very similar to other online assistants and responds to voice commands and can set reminders, play music, and answer simple questions. This is possible with the help of an extensive post on GitHub by Amazon where all the code required to build a Raspberry Pi version of Alexa is available online.

To build this voice-powered assistant, a second-generation Raspberry Pi, a USB mini microphone, an Ethernet cable, and a MicroSD memory card is required and all of them can be acquired for a lower cost than an Echo. This ‘homemade’ devices, has only one downside according to the GitHub post. The Raspberry Pi version of Alexa is rather than it being fully voice-activated, the user can only talk to the device via the use of a push-to-talk button, meaning it’s not very useful outside of arm’s length.

Alexa on Raspberry Pi is available outside the United States and which increases the chance of service’s reach, while also providing the firm with larger amounts of voice and language data for analysis. The versatility of the Raspberry Pi can be used to build a wide range of things, including a smart rain detector.