Any idea if the zero is strong enough\compatible with this?

This begs to be made into a wearable Echo. I hope someone more productive than I am is thinking along these lines!

Can the normal Echo features be used? Googling around on what the echo service can be used for and a lot mention opening the app and…

Does that all work as well?

Can this work with the first ever Raspberry Pi?

Anyone interested in a “wearable” Echo should take a look at the Pebble Time watch. It has a microphone and a voice recognition API. You can then write an app for the Pi (any model!) to do the controlling. (The Pebble is $150, but hey, it’s also a smart watch.)

I started looking into this a while back but ran out of time. I will take a look at this project and see which works better for me. One advantage of the watch is that you don’t have to deal with the acoustics of the room you are in.

“Our Version of Amazon Echo” can you identify the “AYL” and speaker / “Mic” component?

I don’t think you should have published this picture since there is no button per the Amazon T’s and C’s.

Cheers John

Would be nice if someone could make this a Jasper (http://jasperproject.github.io/) plugin to get the “Always On” function if you wanted. If I get time (Rarely happens) I would love to work on this myself even.

Tony D! at Adafruit Live has done a “really useful” demo video of his experiences of setting up the Amazon GitHub Alexa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fAdBehSYiA. I’ve got it working on an RPi 3 and I now know what the weather in Seattle is like, though its raining here in Manchester UK.

Ah drat! I had been following the process and had started to do a tutorial on the Amazon Echo stuff. I went to a talk at the University of Cambridge given (in part) by Hermann Hauser. It was on the topic of AI and he had bought along his American Amazon Echo. Very cool stuff. You could ask it questions like: “Who was the president of the US when Barack Obama was a teen?”

This is really worrying.
Amazon being one the greatest evil of this time, the company which destroys the public libraries it appears to me to be of the opposite spirit of Raspberrypi.

Hey, I’ve just set up the echo on my new pi 3. After a few hours of scratching my head at certain points, it’s now working a charm.

It was a fun build, now working on a physical button and adding some funky LEDs =).

Peter

The video actually uses a python client and not the amazon java one, two different things! The amazon one doesn’t have a physical button, which is a bummer …

I have amazon prime and a big shout out to Sam Mechin and then Lenny Shirley who took the original python code and expanded it to allow for streaming music. It really works nicely. https://github.com/lennysh/AlexaPi. You also have to use an android or apple device to set some configuration stuff up location and playlists.. like your location.. Yes the button is a pain but it just sits on the kitchen counter and
we can ask it to play a playlist and we have 3 hours of music!

oh yes .. one last thing.. mine has two buttions .. since I run it headless I need a button to signal it is time to shutdown .. otherwise pulling the power tends to corrupt the file system…

I’ll try to help out here on a few of the questions.

I have gotten the system to run on a RaspberryPi v1B+. For all intents and purposes, it works well…in the US at least, with the biggest issue I’ve found is a small amount of audio breakup.

If you follow the GitHub readme.md and keep issue #2 close at hand, you should have no problems.

For all intents and purposes, it follows the standard echo/Alexa commands. There are, however, some things that don’t quite work that well yet…

1) The “wake word” ‘Alexa’ is not currently supported. You must (at this point) use the GUI interface and click the ‘Start Listening’ button to get the system to respond. Please check out issue # 60 on the GitHub site for more information.
2) Some things just are not supported at this point.
3) No languages other than English are supported at this moment. The suggestion by others is that once the Echo is sold in a particular country, that “official” language will be supported, i.e. French when they start selling in France, etc.
4) The Alexa smartphone app does not seem (from what others tell me) to be available outside of the USA. You can do some configuration and settings at the http://echo.amazon.com site. However, if you are outside of the US, it appears that setting your location (postal code, street address, etc) is not supported (again from what others report). Basically that means that if you are outside of the US and you ask for the weather, you will be happily presented with the weather in Seattle. You might be able to workaround this by using the phrase “What is the weather in ?”. I just tried “What is the weather in London, United Kingdom?” and it worked…as far as I know.

My wonderful son just sent me a RPi 3, so I will be happily playing with it and the Alexa app through the weekend and will update here whatever/whenever I can. I will also be adding my experiences in Full Circle Magazine which should be available near the end of April.

Greg

Don,
Thanks to this posting, I found out about it this morning. Really good timing, I must say.

I’ve just downloaded the latest Jessie and will be burning it to a 16Gb SD within the hour and will be playing with the Python version shortly after that.

Since I’m more of a Python guy and the Python version you mentioned seems to be a bit of a step or two ahead of the Java version, I’m really going to dig into it with (as we say here in the USA and especially in Texas) all four feet. ;o)

I will report back in the next day or two.

Greg

The trigger word “Alexa” could be detected by a microcontroller and trip the GPIO trigger on the Pi perhaps.

Just got mine up and running, but don’t have a microphone yet. Looks like I’ll be waiting until May 9th for that to arrive via slow boat from China… :(

just attempted this project, install went with no problems, no luck when trying it out
using https://github.com/lennysh/AlexaPi
as soon as i press the button to talk before i can even say anything i get this error.

Recording…
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “./main.py”, line 410, in
start()
File “./main.py”, line 384, in start
l, data = inp.read()
alsaaudio.ALSAAudioError: Capture data too large. Try decreasing period size

any suggestions?
fresh updated jessie (tried full and lite) install on a pi2 with webcam mic

Does this work in India?

Trying to get this project (Amazon GitHub flavour) to work on an RPi3 with the latest Jessie has been a “steep learning curve” shall we say. Despite the latest GUI audio settings I cannot for the life of me get a USB mic and a separate USB audio card output to my speaker to work at the same time. It appears to be one or the other. The only way I could get this project to work was headless (so no default to HDMI), USB mic, speaker on the audio jack (very very hissy). Things have got so desperate now that I have ordered a Cirrus Logic Audio card!!! Wish me luck.

Is there an option instead of a USB mic and button to use an app to trigger the echo and capture / send the voice command? It would make the project cheaper and more usable

Other activation processes, other than the simple switch, would need 2 states, to trigger the EchoPi, when asking a question … voice activation would not really work or be efficient enough (imho) because of the required 2 states, to make the EchoPi work properly.

iR could work if you have one button for activate and one for de-activate, you then have your 2 states, other than that it will be the same as the voice activation issue.

EXAMPLE (Using voice activation):

State 1:
Using a button: Button is pressed – Amazon is now waiting for your question.
Using Voice Activation Process: Voice activation has been initialised with a voice command – an electronic switch (transistor or whatever you decide to use) is engaged (closes the button circuit).

Intermediate state: Ask a Question: “Alexa what’s the weather like……..”

State 2:
Using a button: Button is de-pressed – You’re now waiting for the response from Amazon.
Using Voice activation process: Voice activation is still on (active) – therefore the electronic switch (transistor or whatever you decide to use) is STILL engaged (a closed circuit, i.e. button still pressed).

One workaround for voice activation, for it to work properly, would require a set time-delay (window) in which your your question is asked … then after that set time-delay it would switch off the electronic switch (transistor or whatever you decide to use), then ‘State 2’ would kick in and take effect and you would get your answer from Amazon.

I can see this to be a pain if you want to be quick and have a short question, plus getting in a long question (within that set time) may not be good enough for Amazon to process and could lead to errors. Even if you have another voice command to end the question, that could then be mistaken as part of the main question.

Just a thought … but would love to hear any work arounds

Really excited to try this version: https://github.com/lennysh/AlexaPi

Has anyone gotten this to work with a Bluetooth speaker? I’ve been having a devilish time getting a Bluetooth speaker working with my Pi3. Getting both of these things working together would be fantastic!!

I got it to work with my Bluetooth microphone but the Bluetooth speakers don’t work. I had to plugin the earphone to hear the response.

So. . .the Amazon “ALEXA VOICE SERVICE PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS” say:
“(m) you will not implement far-field voice recognition or use of a spoken word to trigger the activation of the Alexa Service in Your Products without Amazon’s prior written approval and any such implementation may be subject to additional terms and conditions;”,
which of course is the gotcha regarding initiation with the “Alexa” voice trigger.

How about using an infra-red trigger in conjunction with just about any remote-control “clicker”? You would still have the advantage of remote access, while adhering to the above rule. And lots of folks have made infra-red receivers work with a Pi. Some code mods might be needed, but probably nothing too difficult. Thoughts?

Rats! I can’t get this to work. When the scripts run, I get the following error:

Object “=” is unknown, try “ip help”.
python: can’t open file ‘./auth_web.py’: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Open http://:5000

Parsing the setup script, it looks like this is expecting an ethernet connection and not a wireless one. Can anyone troubleshot this for me?

Jack

Got the original novaspirit version to run. Pretty exciting that it works, but it is severely crippled. No music, etc. When I use the configuration app it says that my AlexaPi is disconnected. I don’t think this version is much different. In the video, the poster says he didn’t bother configuring Amazon music service. I went ahead and did it. Seems like there might be some kind of waiting period.

Not much use without the ability to play music but fun project nonetheless. Looking forward to getting the real thing.

Hi, got this working using NovaSpirit instructions plus hrs of pulling hair. As far as the button you can use a combination of wiringPi and Voicecommand. script for wiringPi gpio mode 1 output, gpio write 1 0, sleep 6,gpio write 1 1
that grounds GPIO 18 for 6 seconds, still trying to get Voicecommand to hear my commands but it should in theory call the script with your keyword, the script does work, Alexa’s audio is not triggering Raspberry Pi audio out fast enough to hear the first bit of what she is saying any ideas?

I have this working on a Pi3 following the example from Amazon on GitHub. Didn’t really take that long as its basically following directions. I got it all working on a Saturday morning. I don’t care about the button because the walk through includes TightVNC. Load that and you have a remote button through the VNC connection on your phone/tablet/PC.

Everything works except Amazon Music. There is an approval process that can take 10 business days. We’ll see if they approve me. If not, I might not use it because having a Bluetooth media center with Alexa, Pi3, and Bluetooth speakers is my goal.

The only complaint I have so far is that the device does not listen for a long enough time. I get cut off if the command is too long.

I got it to work with my Bluetooth microphone but the Bluetooth speakers don’t work. I had to plugin the earphone to hear the response.

However, I’ve not tried the technique on Amazon’s github site. It’s far more complicated and has more steps. I simply skimmed through it, so I’m uncertain if what NovaSpirit does (or alternatively Rob Mercer) is merely make it easier by creating the program, but I haven’t tried out to find that out. I may make an effort to do it, bt my real-deal Echo will come tomorrow,

I managed to get it working on a Raspberry Pi model 1 B. I had to try several different methods of loading the correct JAVA version, but it works great. I also had to force the output to the 3.5mm jack. first thing i did was to use my RasPi Eco to order an Echo Dot (since you have to use voice ordering to buy it). Even on the older version pi it works pretty well.

Can you order via voice command from Amazon with this?

I reported earlier the idea of using VoiceCommand but turns out they are out of sync with reality which the project should be removed from the Internet “Steve” as it can no longer work since Google shutdown its “free” api to do voice recognition. So there is no Voice recognition working for Rasbian Jessie. But my alternative was to create a script(GPIO) and an html file to activate Alexa, it works. Just use my phone to send request to activate Alexa and she answers. The thing is Amazon could pull the plug at any time so is it really worth investing time in this. I ordered an Amazon DOT it runs $90 which is twice what I got invested in raspberry pi setup and far more robust. I found out the Raspberry echo is very limited by Amazon, “your device is not capable of that function”. Like ask it to set a timer for 10 minutes, no music either.

Hi, does anybody get the Alexa Pi together with fauxmo (virtual WeMo devices) on the same RaspberryPi? I tried but the Alexa does not detect the device(s).

Hi!
Is it possible to get Alexa Echo to control lights on and off when its installed on Raspberry pi?

I got Alexa Echo working on my Raspberry pi 3 and was hoping it would be possible to control my lights with Alexa.

help!
i get the following error – brand new Raspi 3 and Jessie 3/18s

Checking Internet Connection
Connection OK
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1667:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “./main.py”, line 156, in
start()
File “./main.py”, line 124, in start
inp = alsaaudio.PCM(alsaaudio.PCM_CAPTURE, alsaaudio.PCM_NORMAL, device)
alsaaudio.ALSAAudioError: No such file or directory

My request to include Amazon Music Service on my AlexaPi was rejected by Amazon!! Curious whether others have had the same experience. I think Amazon is crippling it on purpose so people will buy the Amazon products. Lots of other features of the Echo also disabled (such as timers and alarms). At the end of the day, this build is no substitute for the real thing (although it is a cool way to control my Nest thermostats!). BTW, be careful about enabling the 3d party “services”. I tried using one and it ruined my build. Couldn’t get the service to quit. Couldn’t fugure out what it changed. Had to go back and start all over again.

I just build my Alexaberry…my fist Raspberry Pi project. Here is what I discovered: https://medium.com/@geoffbourne/i-built-my-own-amazon-echo-alexa-with-a-raspberry-pi-alexaberry-4248f1ed4340#.1s1lzjh9y

how do i get the alexapi to run some python scripts when i say a command. I have written python scripts to control my garage doors and lights and i would like to use my voice to launch the scripts….any ideas?

Hey, I’ve been working on a project on the Raspberry Pi creating a voice controlled home automation system. Here’s a link to a video showing a few features:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D1SN6S6k1s

Thought it was worth sharing with the community to get some feedback.
Hope you like it.
Greg
http://www.theadrianproject.com

I made it with a pi2!

Just set this up and it works really well. Just to let it set my location to England!

Does it work in other Euro countries (besides UK?)

It also appears to work with my Pi B+!

I have a Sense Hat attached to my Pi, so can’t get to GPIO18 to hook up a button.

But the Sense Hat has a joystick and so maybe it is possible to use the center click of the joystick (which emulated pressing ENTER) instead of the button on GPIO18.

Can anyone suggest how to I could mod main.py to sense the joystick instead of requiring the button press on GPIO18.

I built one of these things!

I tried mimicked Amazon’s design a little bit :)

I can’t get it to read audiobooks or play radio as I think those services are reserved for Echo users.

Here is a video of it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9Ii44HXaQA

Great work, very clear and helpful Thanks!!