12 ms·

The $10 Echo

375 points by espadrine 11y ago

grok2 11y ago
This is another thing that makes you wonder why companies expose APIs to their services that enablenothers to make competing services.
- hiddencost 11y ago
  Amazon doesn't care about selling the hardware. They'd be ecstatic if this caught on. It'd be like owning the kindle ecosystem without having to take a loss on the hardware. They provide Alex-as-a-service: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo... ("Build for Free. Using AVS to power speech experiences on your devices is completely free.") (Note: I'm guessing that this will be lower accuracy than the echo, since the echo's acoustic models are probably tuned for their hardware.)
- sp332 11y ago
  They can revoke your access at any time.
  - optimiz3 11y ago
    Which is why no one is going to use it.
  - notyourwork 11y ago
    Reminds me of twitter awhile back.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
Here's the service that this depends on: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- pbreit 11y ago
  What if it's not a spy device?
- barrkel 11y ago
  If you build the device yourself, you can ensure it only uses the API at a time you control. For example, you might configure a trigger word that is recognized locally.
  - CCoffie 11y ago
    Or in this example you could have a device that only recorded when a button was held.
- notlisted 11y ago
  Silly. The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based. Nothing is recorded and sent until the wake word is uttered and after that only the part until you finish your question. If you are truly worried about spy devices, you should really consider dropping your cell phone in the toilet. (Yes, I love my echo)
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    What do you use it for? I love the idea of Echo, but I can't think of enough I'd do with it to warrant buying one.
    - Pxtl 11y ago
      Ever tried to call somebody while cooking? As a dad who spends most of his home time in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and parenting, hands-free tech is glorious.
      - 11y ago
kovacs 11y ago
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.
- sammachin 11y ago
  I totally agree, hence my comments about artistic license in the title! One of the issues right now is that people kinda assume that Echo and Alexa are the same thing hopefully as more 3rd party devices come to market using Alexa the difference will emerge. I'm thinking of doing a follow on post explaining the differences. Also there's not really a generic name for the type of appliance that the Echo is like smartphone, tablet, browser etc. I wonder if echo will become like hoover in years to come?
  - kovacs 11y ago
    From your lips to Amazon's ears, they sure hope so :)
- praccu 11y ago
  http://www.cobaltspeech.com http://www.cobaltspeech.com ?
  - kovacs 11y ago
    Yes sir
wsr 11y ago
According to Alexa Voice Service page (https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo...) Amazon is starting a $100M fund for anyone building voice related services. This is very interesting. Has any company been funded via this fund?
- cek 11y ago
  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/alexa-fund https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa...
  - scholia 11y ago
    So how does Amazon make money from Alexa running on non-Amazon devices? (Not obvious to me, sorry.)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - bpicolo 11y ago
      It's going to evolve into a massive app ecosystem, surely with paid apps
      - soylentcola 11y ago
        It looks like you can use it for non-commercial purposes but I imagine that they'd make money a few ways: indirectly through publicity and familiarity (the more people are used to having it, the more might use Amazon's commercial version or just Amazon stuff in general), directly (through licensing it for commercial use), and via improvements they make to their service as a result of people using the free version for non-commercial applications (better voice training and interpretation). That's just a guess but it's similar to what Google does with AOSP and Google Android.
zerr 11y ago
I thought it was about experimental startup providing echo service for $10/month subscription :)
colinramsay 11y ago
I'm being a pedant but doesn't an Echo have a mic built in? Buying an equivalent one would be ~£75 I think.
- blhack 11y ago
  OP explained in a comment here that he was taking a bit of an artistic license calling this an echo. Echo also is a pretty nice wireless speaker.
notlisted 11y ago
I love my echo (alexa), especially the convenience of "no button but wake word" when I have my hands full in the kitchen. That said, google voice is so much better at parsing my questions that I'd pay a bunch of money for another standalone device with wake word which would integrate with with google voice. Any chance of hacking that, or linking your device with both? (Ask Amazon / Ask Google)
- frik 11y ago
  Buy an high end phone with a good mic and you can choose between GoogleNow and Siri (and more). Or if you have a SmartTV in your kitchen, you can use that too (Samsung, LG, etc),
  - notlisted 11y ago
    I have all of those, but it really doesn't compare. Echo does an amazing job recognizing every voice (without training) from a great distance.
- squeaky-clean 11y ago
  Google's question parsing is ridiculously good. You can also do neat things like say "When I get to work, remind me to email John" and you'll get a notification when you arrive. I don't have an Echo, but I imagine it can't do such contextual things. You could get a dedicated Android phone/tablet, and leave it always plugged into a charger somewhere. I just tested it on my Phone (LG G3 Android 5.0.1), and I'm able to get my phone to respond to "Ok, Google" questions, even with the screen off. Though the microphone probably won't be nearly as good as the Echo, and from the setup it seems like you have to train "Ok, Google" to respond to your voice, so I don't know if it will work with multiple users.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I love my Nest Thermostat, and I know they've got "Protect" as the smoke/CO detector. I'd LOVE if Google would release an "Assist" product that was the Echo form factor powered by Google's agent engine, and I could mount it on the ceiling in each of my rooms similar to how smoke detectors are (hard wired to mains with battery backup). Too much to hope for I suspect.
cek 11y ago
If you want to try this in your browser, the guy who built this $10 device also used the same APIs to put Alexa/Echo in the browser. http://sammachin.com/hacks-and-projects/alexa-in-the-browser/ http://sammachin.com/hacks-and-projects/alexa-in-the-browser...
dperfect 11y ago
One of the more impressive things about the Echo is its far-field mic. I've used a lot of different voice recognition technologies, but Echo blows everything else away in terms of being able to speak in a normal voice from the other side of the room and have it still understand you. The actual intelligence behind the service may be lacking (or at least behind some of the competition), but for a general-purpose home application, the mic (in my opinion) is a significant part of Echo's reliability and success.
- jrkelly 11y ago
  This is what is going to make Echo the next big computing platform. The voice recognition just works. It's like being on the Enterprise.
  - bitJericho 11y ago
    That's how I felt when using Siri and Cortana the first time. "Wow! Voice recognition actually works now??"
    - balls187 11y ago
      If you haven't tried the latest rev of Echo software, it blows Siri out of the water. Very specifically, you can speak in a conversational tone with Echo, vs barking commands at Siri. I don't have experience with Cortana, but the Voice Recognition capabilities in the XboxOne is garbage.
      - bitJericho 11y ago
        I've used Siri on the iphone and Cortana on a Nokia Lumia 939 and they seem about equal. I'm sure the echo is better due to the superior mic.
- frik 11y ago
  > Normal voice from the other side of the room. High end smartphones have a similar high quality mic. It's no problem at all talking or using e.g. GoogleNow.
13of40 11y ago
If the author of this is reading, it might help to make the first reference to "Alexa" be a hyperlink to "what the heck is Alexa". (I know I can google it, but...)
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  "Alexa" is the assistant-in-the-machine that comes on the Amazon Echo (just as an iPhone 6 comes with Siri). You activate the Echo by saying "Alexa". The author is probably guessing that in context, you'll make the connection between the title "The $10 Echo" and the Echo's hotword (Alexa). I agree it'd be useful if there was a brief explanation at the beginning of the article.
destitude 11y ago
I've heard that the "$10" CHIP has a $20 "shipping" charge. Is that still the case?
- sammachin 11y ago
  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.
- blacksmith_tb 11y ago
  I backed for just one board, and then they offered to let me add more without paying additional shipping, so I added a second, $18 for the CHIPs, $5ish to ship them. They are en route from China. To be fair, I only just succeeded in ordering a Pi Zero from Adafruit, $5 for the Pi, $4 shipping...
crimsonalucard 11y ago
compared with ok google and siri, echo is not much better (if not worse) in terms of intelligence. What made echo was the physical form factor. Intelligence is hard to mimic, but physical form factor is not. All google or apple needs to do is come out with with a similar speaker/mic combo and it will totally blow echo out of the water.
- dominotw 11y ago
  My impression of it was less for answering random questions and more for predefined tasks like home automation,listening to news ect.
- Nicholas_C 11y ago
  I agree. I wish Google would build their own echo. The ability to do things like manage a calendar, text people, and all the other "Ok, Google" functions through an Echo-like device that also does what Amazon's Echo currently does would be fantastic. Alexa can't even tell me what is the stock price of Amazon and can't give me the current temperature without prattling off the entire weather update.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    I guess they've just focused on getting the functionality available on devices you can already find (Android and iOS devices, TVs like the newer Sonys that run AndroidTV, etc). I see the appeal of a standalone device but I find that lots of times, the response may not translate well into audio-only so having a screen helps when you ask something and the best answer is a graph, text, or image. Just a guess though. I'm surprised that wasn't included in that rather pricey wifi router they launched recently. It has a decent sized speaker in it but perhaps they decided not to enable it just yet. My guess is that they wanted to start selling the wifi routers but didn't think the voice stuff was up to snuff for a consumer application/selling point just yet.
chinathrow 11y ago
That's great from the price perspective - I still would not want another active listening device tied to a mega corp within my vicinity. However, I would love to have an Echo like device which does the voice recognition/algo crunching/etc on premise, i.e. on a server/device I control. Is there anything out which does this nicely?
- kordless 11y ago
  > I still would not want another active listening device tied to a mega corp within my vicinity. I wish more people were like you and voiced their concerns about this ongoing problem around centralization of services. However...see http://www.cultofmac.com/264381/hardware-siri-runs-puts-new-mac-pro-shame/ http://www.cultofmac.com/264381/hardware-siri-runs-puts-new-...: > Over on Reddit, a post suggests that there are 3 main ‘instances’ (or server farms) for Siri in the United States, and at least one for every other country. > This information allegedly comes — albeit second-hand — from Apple’s lead cloud architect, who says that every instance of Siri runs on 32 powerful HP servers with a total of 1024 cores and 32 terrabytes of RAM apiece. That certainly makes the new Mac Pro look long in the tooth. > Specifically, each instance of Siri is made up of 4 HP c7k enclosures made up of 8 HP server blades each, with memory upgrades to 1TB of RAM. > According to the post, if one server dies, it’s simply removed and another one slapped in, with no downtime. Granted, there are a lot of people yacking at Siri at a given time, but still. You probably need a fair amount of horsepower to pull this off.
  - cthalupa 11y ago
    They talked a bit more about the Siri setup at a talk they gave for the Mesos guys (Siri runs on Mesos with a custom schedule Apple wrote - one of the biggest Mesos installs out there) https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/04/23/apple-details-j-a-r-v-i-s-the-mesos-framework-that-runs-siri/ https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/04/23/apple-details-j-a-r-v... They say the clusters have 1k worker nodes
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Apple has also said that Siri gets 1 billion requests per week, so by those numbers each core can handle ~10k requests/week, using its share of 32GB of RAM. Doesn't seem that much.
jimrandomh 11y ago
I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones in their homes. Cell phone spying is bad enough. If these become widespread, then ten years from now instead of a political debate about call metadata it'll be a debate about literally every word ever spoken.
- bjt 11y ago
  That's a worry that I share. The good thing about hacks like the OP's is that they push us further in the direction of this technology being open and controlled by the user. We need more of that.
- njharman 11y ago
  > I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones in their homes. That's the problem with progress and technology. It will happen regardless of how comfortable you are with it. In fact, if it helps those with power to maintain or extend their power it will happen. If it tends to limit their power it will be squashed and marginalized.
  - dopeboy 11y ago
    False. Technology can proceed with privacy in mind. The Echo didn't have to push things to the cloud. It was, however, constructed to do so both for Amazon's benefit (data) and the consumer's benefit (ease of setup and use). The trend you cite will happen because of ignorance, not progress.
    - bsimpson 11y ago
      It adds convenience to most services to connect to the Internet, so most of the do by default. So long as the device is connected, state-sponsored actors will find ways to eavesdrop even if the device wasn't originally designed to send audio over the wire. Citizenfour was eyeopening on this point.
- swiley 11y ago
  I wouldn't be so upset if the divice firmware was completely open source and easily user modifiable (android does not meet this, 100gb source download is not easy to modify).
sammachin 11y ago
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.
- vnwarrior 11y ago
  do you have the source for alexa in the browser on github ? that one was a very cool hack!
  - sammachin 11y ago
    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.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Animats 11y ago
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.
- sammachin 11y ago
  Actually the kickstarter did ship hence why I had my hands on one (well two actually) to do this hack. I backed the kickstarter back in May 2015. The June2016 date is for orders placed on their store today which I think is the earliest they currently expect to have filled all the current pre-orders and later stage kickstarter backers. IIRC they're currently producing 5000 units a month.
- ja27 11y ago
  Was a Kickstarter. Got mine in my hands last week.
blhack 11y ago
Cool clock, Sam. I have to be honest, I got an echo for Christmas (thanks Mom!), and while it's really cool, it has only served to highlight how much amazon prime music sucks. In fact, it has only served to highlight to me how disconnected cloud music services are. Google music has just about everything (now that it is connected to youtube), but amazon doesn't want to let its speakers play google music's music service because they want to sell you their own. The future is a strange place right now.
posharma 11y ago
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Jasper [1]. Its a cool little but very well organized project that I put together this Christmas. [1] http://jasperproject.github.io/ http://jasperproject.github.io/
- bgroins 11y ago
  You're surprised nobody has mentioned a project you organized less than 10 days ago?
  - posharma 11y ago
    No, I didn't organize it. The awesome people at Princeton did last year. Its really awesome. I just downloaded and made my own this Christmas.
- shbhrsaha 11y ago
  Thanks for the shoutout! Glad you enjoyed it.
alister 11y ago
Any recommendations for microphones that are (a) high-quality, (b) cheap (under US$5.00), (c) small (under a cubic centimeter), and (d) with analog output (such as a 1/8-inch plug)? Note that high-quality and cheap are not contradictory requirements. iPhones and other smartphones have extremely high-quality microphones (and they are tiny) and must certainly cost much less than $5 as a part, but they seem impossible to find. Every off-the-shelf mic under $5 that I've tried has been garbage in terms of sound quality, and even much more expensive ones have not been great. Good mics certainly exist. Here's a compact analog microphone I own that has fantastic sound quality: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Electret-Condenser-Microphone-ECM-C115/dp/B00012FVRE http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Electret-Condenser-Microphone-ECM... But it's ridiculous that this microphone costs 6x as much as the CHIP and 10x as the RPi Zero. You can't build a product around the CHIP or the RPi if an essential part is that expensive.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  This is my favorite cheap microphone. It does need to be fairly close, I'd say within 5 feet: http://www.amazon.com/Cyber-Acoustics-100Hz-Microphone-ACM-1B/dp/B0000511GQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1451871749&sr=8-4&keywords=cyber+acoustics+microphone http://www.amazon.com/Cyber-Acoustics-100Hz-Microphone-ACM-1...
- jononor 11y ago
  Electret microphone capsule with couple of transistors preamp can give very good results, but requires some electronics skills I guess...

375 points by espadrine 11y ago

grok2 11y ago

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

hiddencost 11y ago
Amazon doesn't care about selling the hardware. They'd be ecstatic if this caught on. It'd be like owning the kindle ecosystem without having to take a loss on the hardware. They provide Alex-as-a-service: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo... ("Build for Free. Using AVS to power speech experiences on your devices is completely free.") (Note: I'm guessing that this will be lower accuracy than the echo, since the echo's acoustic models are probably tuned for their hardware.)
sp332 11y ago
They can revoke your access at any time.
- optimiz3 11y ago
  Which is why no one is going to use it.
- notyourwork 11y ago
  Reminds me of twitter awhile back.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

Here's the service that this depends on: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

pbreit 11y ago
What if it's not a spy device?
barrkel 11y ago
If you build the device yourself, you can ensure it only uses the API at a time you control. For example, you might configure a trigger word that is recognized locally.
- CCoffie 11y ago
  Or in this example you could have a device that only recorded when a button was held.
notlisted 11y ago
Silly. The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based. Nothing is recorded and sent until the wake word is uttered and after that only the part until you finish your question. If you are truly worried about spy devices, you should really consider dropping your cell phone in the toilet. (Yes, I love my echo)
- jon-wood 11y ago
  What do you use it for? I love the idea of Echo, but I can't think of enough I'd do with it to warrant buying one.
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    Ever tried to call somebody while cooking? As a dad who spends most of his home time in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and parenting, hands-free tech is glorious.
    - 11y ago

kovacs 11y ago

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.

sammachin 11y ago
I totally agree, hence my comments about artistic license in the title! One of the issues right now is that people kinda assume that Echo and Alexa are the same thing hopefully as more 3rd party devices come to market using Alexa the difference will emerge. I'm thinking of doing a follow on post explaining the differences. Also there's not really a generic name for the type of appliance that the Echo is like smartphone, tablet, browser etc. I wonder if echo will become like hoover in years to come?
- kovacs 11y ago
  From your lips to Amazon's ears, they sure hope so :)
praccu 11y ago
http://www.cobaltspeech.com http://www.cobaltspeech.com ?
- kovacs 11y ago
  Yes sir

wsr 11y ago

According to Alexa Voice Service page (https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo...) Amazon is starting a $100M fund for anyone building voice related services. This is very interesting. Has any company been funded via this fund?

cek 11y ago
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/alexa-fund https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa...
- scholia 11y ago
  So how does Amazon make money from Alexa running on non-Amazon devices? (Not obvious to me, sorry.)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - bpicolo 11y ago
    It's going to evolve into a massive app ecosystem, surely with paid apps
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      It looks like you can use it for non-commercial purposes but I imagine that they'd make money a few ways: indirectly through publicity and familiarity (the more people are used to having it, the more might use Amazon's commercial version or just Amazon stuff in general), directly (through licensing it for commercial use), and via improvements they make to their service as a result of people using the free version for non-commercial applications (better voice training and interpretation). That's just a guess but it's similar to what Google does with AOSP and Google Android.

zerr 11y ago

I thought it was about experimental startup providing echo service for $10/month subscription :)

colinramsay 11y ago

I'm being a pedant but doesn't an Echo have a mic built in? Buying an equivalent one would be ~£75 I think.

blhack 11y ago
OP explained in a comment here that he was taking a bit of an artistic license calling this an echo. Echo also is a pretty nice wireless speaker.

notlisted 11y ago

I love my echo (alexa), especially the convenience of "no button but wake word" when I have my hands full in the kitchen. That said, google voice is so much better at parsing my questions that I'd pay a bunch of money for another standalone device with wake word which would integrate with with google voice. Any chance of hacking that, or linking your device with both? (Ask Amazon / Ask Google)

frik 11y ago
Buy an high end phone with a good mic and you can choose between GoogleNow and Siri (and more). Or if you have a SmartTV in your kitchen, you can use that too (Samsung, LG, etc),
- notlisted 11y ago
  I have all of those, but it really doesn't compare. Echo does an amazing job recognizing every voice (without training) from a great distance.
squeaky-clean 11y ago
Google's question parsing is ridiculously good. You can also do neat things like say "When I get to work, remind me to email John" and you'll get a notification when you arrive. I don't have an Echo, but I imagine it can't do such contextual things. You could get a dedicated Android phone/tablet, and leave it always plugged into a charger somewhere. I just tested it on my Phone (LG G3 Android 5.0.1), and I'm able to get my phone to respond to "Ok, Google" questions, even with the screen off. Though the microphone probably won't be nearly as good as the Echo, and from the setup it seems like you have to train "Ok, Google" to respond to your voice, so I don't know if it will work with multiple users.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I love my Nest Thermostat, and I know they've got "Protect" as the smoke/CO detector. I'd LOVE if Google would release an "Assist" product that was the Echo form factor powered by Google's agent engine, and I could mount it on the ceiling in each of my rooms similar to how smoke detectors are (hard wired to mains with battery backup). Too much to hope for I suspect.

cek 11y ago

If you want to try this in your browser, the guy who built this $10 device also used the same APIs to put Alexa/Echo in the browser. http://sammachin.com/hacks-and-projects/alexa-in-the-browser/ http://sammachin.com/hacks-and-projects/alexa-in-the-browser...

dperfect 11y ago

One of the more impressive things about the Echo is its far-field mic. I've used a lot of different voice recognition technologies, but Echo blows everything else away in terms of being able to speak in a normal voice from the other side of the room and have it still understand you. The actual intelligence behind the service may be lacking (or at least behind some of the competition), but for a general-purpose home application, the mic (in my opinion) is a significant part of Echo's reliability and success.

jrkelly 11y ago
This is what is going to make Echo the next big computing platform. The voice recognition just works. It's like being on the Enterprise.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  That's how I felt when using Siri and Cortana the first time. "Wow! Voice recognition actually works now??"
  - balls187 11y ago
    If you haven't tried the latest rev of Echo software, it blows Siri out of the water. Very specifically, you can speak in a conversational tone with Echo, vs barking commands at Siri. I don't have experience with Cortana, but the Voice Recognition capabilities in the XboxOne is garbage.
    - bitJericho 11y ago
      I've used Siri on the iphone and Cortana on a Nokia Lumia 939 and they seem about equal. I'm sure the echo is better due to the superior mic.
frik 11y ago
> Normal voice from the other side of the room. High end smartphones have a similar high quality mic. It's no problem at all talking or using e.g. GoogleNow.

13of40 11y ago

If the author of this is reading, it might help to make the first reference to "Alexa" be a hyperlink to "what the heck is Alexa". (I know I can google it, but...)

cookiecaper 11y ago
"Alexa" is the assistant-in-the-machine that comes on the Amazon Echo (just as an iPhone 6 comes with Siri). You activate the Echo by saying "Alexa". The author is probably guessing that in context, you'll make the connection between the title "The $10 Echo" and the Echo's hotword (Alexa). I agree it'd be useful if there was a brief explanation at the beginning of the article.

destitude 11y ago

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

sammachin 11y ago
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.
blacksmith_tb 11y ago
I backed for just one board, and then they offered to let me add more without paying additional shipping, so I added a second, $18 for the CHIPs, $5ish to ship them. They are en route from China. To be fair, I only just succeeded in ordering a Pi Zero from Adafruit, $5 for the Pi, $4 shipping...

crimsonalucard 11y ago

compared with ok google and siri, echo is not much better (if not worse) in terms of intelligence. What made echo was the physical form factor. Intelligence is hard to mimic, but physical form factor is not. All google or apple needs to do is come out with with a similar speaker/mic combo and it will totally blow echo out of the water.

dominotw 11y ago
My impression of it was less for answering random questions and more for predefined tasks like home automation,listening to news ect.
Nicholas_C 11y ago
I agree. I wish Google would build their own echo. The ability to do things like manage a calendar, text people, and all the other "Ok, Google" functions through an Echo-like device that also does what Amazon's Echo currently does would be fantastic. Alexa can't even tell me what is the stock price of Amazon and can't give me the current temperature without prattling off the entire weather update.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  I guess they've just focused on getting the functionality available on devices you can already find (Android and iOS devices, TVs like the newer Sonys that run AndroidTV, etc). I see the appeal of a standalone device but I find that lots of times, the response may not translate well into audio-only so having a screen helps when you ask something and the best answer is a graph, text, or image. Just a guess though. I'm surprised that wasn't included in that rather pricey wifi router they launched recently. It has a decent sized speaker in it but perhaps they decided not to enable it just yet. My guess is that they wanted to start selling the wifi routers but didn't think the voice stuff was up to snuff for a consumer application/selling point just yet.

chinathrow 11y ago

That's great from the price perspective - I still would not want another active listening device tied to a mega corp within my vicinity. However, I would love to have an Echo like device which does the voice recognition/algo crunching/etc on premise, i.e. on a server/device I control. Is there anything out which does this nicely?

kordless 11y ago
> I still would not want another active listening device tied to a mega corp within my vicinity. I wish more people were like you and voiced their concerns about this ongoing problem around centralization of services. However...see http://www.cultofmac.com/264381/hardware-siri-runs-puts-new-mac-pro-shame/ http://www.cultofmac.com/264381/hardware-siri-runs-puts-new-...: > Over on Reddit, a post suggests that there are 3 main ‘instances’ (or server farms) for Siri in the United States, and at least one for every other country. > This information allegedly comes — albeit second-hand — from Apple’s lead cloud architect, who says that every instance of Siri runs on 32 powerful HP servers with a total of 1024 cores and 32 terrabytes of RAM apiece. That certainly makes the new Mac Pro look long in the tooth. > Specifically, each instance of Siri is made up of 4 HP c7k enclosures made up of 8 HP server blades each, with memory upgrades to 1TB of RAM. > According to the post, if one server dies, it’s simply removed and another one slapped in, with no downtime. Granted, there are a lot of people yacking at Siri at a given time, but still. You probably need a fair amount of horsepower to pull this off.
- cthalupa 11y ago
  They talked a bit more about the Siri setup at a talk they gave for the Mesos guys (Siri runs on Mesos with a custom schedule Apple wrote - one of the biggest Mesos installs out there) https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/04/23/apple-details-j-a-r-v-i-s-the-mesos-framework-that-runs-siri/ https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/04/23/apple-details-j-a-r-v... They say the clusters have 1k worker nodes
- icebraining 11y ago
  Apple has also said that Siri gets 1 billion requests per week, so by those numbers each core can handle ~10k requests/week, using its share of 32GB of RAM. Doesn't seem that much.

jimrandomh 11y ago

I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones in their homes. Cell phone spying is bad enough. If these become widespread, then ten years from now instead of a political debate about call metadata it'll be a debate about literally every word ever spoken.

bjt 11y ago
That's a worry that I share. The good thing about hacks like the OP's is that they push us further in the direction of this technology being open and controlled by the user. We need more of that.
njharman 11y ago
> I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones in their homes. That's the problem with progress and technology. It will happen regardless of how comfortable you are with it. In fact, if it helps those with power to maintain or extend their power it will happen. If it tends to limit their power it will be squashed and marginalized.
- dopeboy 11y ago
  False. Technology can proceed with privacy in mind. The Echo didn't have to push things to the cloud. It was, however, constructed to do so both for Amazon's benefit (data) and the consumer's benefit (ease of setup and use). The trend you cite will happen because of ignorance, not progress.
  - bsimpson 11y ago
    It adds convenience to most services to connect to the Internet, so most of the do by default. So long as the device is connected, state-sponsored actors will find ways to eavesdrop even if the device wasn't originally designed to send audio over the wire. Citizenfour was eyeopening on this point.
swiley 11y ago
I wouldn't be so upset if the divice firmware was completely open source and easily user modifiable (android does not meet this, 100gb source download is not easy to modify).

sammachin 11y ago

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.

vnwarrior 11y ago
do you have the source for alexa in the browser on github ? that one was a very cool hack!
- sammachin 11y ago
  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.
deleted 11y ago
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Animats 11y ago

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.

sammachin 11y ago
Actually the kickstarter did ship hence why I had my hands on one (well two actually) to do this hack. I backed the kickstarter back in May 2015. The June2016 date is for orders placed on their store today which I think is the earliest they currently expect to have filled all the current pre-orders and later stage kickstarter backers. IIRC they're currently producing 5000 units a month.
ja27 11y ago
Was a Kickstarter. Got mine in my hands last week.

blhack 11y ago

Cool clock, Sam. I have to be honest, I got an echo for Christmas (thanks Mom!), and while it's really cool, it has only served to highlight how much amazon prime music sucks. In fact, it has only served to highlight to me how disconnected cloud music services are. Google music has just about everything (now that it is connected to youtube), but amazon doesn't want to let its speakers play google music's music service because they want to sell you their own. The future is a strange place right now.

posharma 11y ago

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Jasper [1]. Its a cool little but very well organized project that I put together this Christmas. [1] http://jasperproject.github.io/ http://jasperproject.github.io/

bgroins 11y ago
You're surprised nobody has mentioned a project you organized less than 10 days ago?
- posharma 11y ago
  No, I didn't organize it. The awesome people at Princeton did last year. Its really awesome. I just downloaded and made my own this Christmas.
shbhrsaha 11y ago
Thanks for the shoutout! Glad you enjoyed it.

alister 11y ago

Any recommendations for microphones that are (a) high-quality, (b) cheap (under US$5.00), (c) small (under a cubic centimeter), and (d) with analog output (such as a 1/8-inch plug)? Note that high-quality and cheap are not contradictory requirements. iPhones and other smartphones have extremely high-quality microphones (and they are tiny) and must certainly cost much less than $5 as a part, but they seem impossible to find. Every off-the-shelf mic under $5 that I've tried has been garbage in terms of sound quality, and even much more expensive ones have not been great. Good mics certainly exist. Here's a compact analog microphone I own that has fantastic sound quality: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Electret-Condenser-Microphone-ECM-C115/dp/B00012FVRE http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Electret-Condenser-Microphone-ECM... But it's ridiculous that this microphone costs 6x as much as the CHIP and 10x as the RPi Zero. You can't build a product around the CHIP or the RPi if an essential part is that expensive.

bitJericho 11y ago
This is my favorite cheap microphone. It does need to be fairly close, I'd say within 5 feet: http://www.amazon.com/Cyber-Acoustics-100Hz-Microphone-ACM-1B/dp/B0000511GQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1451871749&sr=8-4&keywords=cyber+acoustics+microphone http://www.amazon.com/Cyber-Acoustics-100Hz-Microphone-ACM-1...
jononor 11y ago
Electret microphone capsule with couple of transistors preamp can give very good results, but requires some electronics skills I guess...