Today I ran into an interesting article about the Amazon Alexa voice service (AVS). This used to be available only on the Amazon Echo device but is now also available for non-Echo devices. In this case they run it on a Raspberry Pi 2!

A while back I wrote a blog about the Homey from Athom and I have ordered this device, still waiting for delivery ;-)

What is the Amazon Echo?

Amazon Echo is a wireless speaker and voice command device from Amazon.com. The device consists of a 9.25-inch (23.5 cm) tall cylinder speaker with a seven-piece microphone array. The device responds to the name “Alexa”; this “wake word” can be changed by the user to either “Amazon” or “Echo”.
price: $ 179
available: not in Europe

What do you need?

1. Raspberry Pi 2 (Model B) – Buy at Amazon
2. Micro-USB power cable for Raspberry Pi (included with Raspberry Pi)
3. Micro SD Card – To get started with Raspberry Pi you need an operating system. NOOBS (New Out Of the Box Software) is an easy-to-use operating system install manager for the Raspberry Pi. The simplest way to get NOOBS is to buy an SD card with NOOBS preinstalled – Raspberry Pi 8GB Preloaded (NOOBS) Micro SD Card
4. An Ethernet cable
5. USB 2.0 Mini Microphone – Raspberry Pi does not have a built-in microphone; to interact with Alexa you’ll need an external one to plug in – Buy at Amazon
6. A USB Keyboard & Mouse, and an external HDMI Monitor – we also recommend having a USB keyboard and mouse as well as an HDMI monitor handy if for some reason you can’t “SSH” into your Raspberry Pi. More on “SSH” later.
7. WiFi Wireless Adapter (Optional) Buy at Amazon

Instructions

Extended instructions are available on the following Github page.

I’m planning to test this if I have time ;-)  Of course I will document & share experiences.