Intel releases devkit for Amazon Alexa speakers

Intel has released a Speech Enabling Developer Kit for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. This allows manufacturers to quickly and easily build their own speakers with Alexa support.

The Intel Speech Enabling Developer Kit consists of a round disk with eight microphones and two DSPs with an inference engine. This engine interprets and evaluates the audio signals to give meaning to them. The algorithms support beamforming, to identify the speaker’s location, auto-echo cancellation, to prevent interference from the microphone input by the speaker output, and keyword spotting.

The devkit also includes a cable for connection to a Raspberry Pi. Intel does not include a Raspberry Pi 3, although it is required, and it also lacks, among other things, a necessary Ethernet cable, external speaker and micro-SD card. Intel charges $499, temporarily $399, for the bundle. Converted, that is 422 and 338 euros respectively. Amazon also has a devkit for its Alexa voice service. It offers seven microphones.