Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.
I’ve been wondering this. I have multiple of the older (non-Dot, the tall, cylindrical ones) Echoes. I hate using them. But I do like the form factor and sound quality.
It probably can’t be too hard to gut everything but the speakers, microphone and DC port, then wire in a Pi / Pi Zero, right…?
I assume their motherboard is a write-off. The form factor in speaker are probably all we have to start with. For a few bucks you could turn it into a decent Bluetooth speaker. Want to get a little more intense if you want to do anything interesting like voice control.
I’d really like to find a way to drive the display and touch screen on the shows
There’s projects that fully replace the Google Home Mini mobo. No reason you couldn’t do that with Alexa