FutureProofHomes Wants to Boot Amazon's Alexa Out of Your Home with the DIY Satellite1 Smart Speaker
Voice assistant development kit features an Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller talking to an XMOS audio coprocessor.
FutureProofHomes' Brad Davis has opened orders for a development kit designed to make it easier to build your own smart speaker, based on the Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller and an XMOS XU316 16-core audio coprocessor linked to a four-microphone array: the Satellite1.
"I feel really strongly that the world needs an honest AI [Artificial Intelligence]-powered voice assistant that doesn't require an internet connection," Davis says of the driving focus of the project. "That they can talk to in their home with privacy, and they [can use to] control their smart home."
FutureProofHomes, Davis' startup, unveiled the Satellite1 development kit, brought to our attention by CNX Software, late last year with a small-scale pre-launch. The kit is split into two distinct boards: the Satellite1 Core, which is a Raspberry Pi Zero form-factor mcirocontroller board featuring an Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller with two Tensilica Xtensa LX7 cores running at up to 240MHz, 512kB of static RAM (SRAM), 8MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and 16MB of flash plus Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (BLE) connectivity; this links to a larger, circular board dubbed the Satellite1 HAT.
The HAT — inspired by Raspberry Pi's Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) standard, and compatible with a Raspberry Pi Zero-family single-board computer if you need more power than a microcontroller provides — features an XMOS XU316 16-core audio processor driving a 25W monaural speaker output, 3.5mm audio jack, and an array of four on-board microphones, two of which are currently disabled pending a firmware update. There's an ambient light sensor, a temperature and humidity sensor, a rung of 24 RGB LEDs, four tactile button inputs, and support for optional millimeter-wave (mmWave) presence and activity detection radar sensors.
While the company is currently only selling the device as bare boards for early adopters and developers, it has shown off 3D-printable housings — designed to make use of the HAT's circular PCB and mimic the design Amazon's Alexa family of smart speaker systems, with which it's designed to compete. The first of these is already available to download and 3D print, with more to follow, and the hardware is supported in Home Assistant with the promise of a local privacy-focused artificial intelligence model to come in a future update.
The Satellite1 Dev Kit is available to pre-order on the FutureProofHomes website at $79.99; schematics are available on GitHub under the strongly reciprocal version of the CERN Open Hardware License 2, with the 3D print files for the enclosure available in a separate repository.