Today is pretty exciting for makers like myself who are interested in creating their own voice-activated Raspberry Pi project. Since the last Raspberry Pi tutorial was published in March, the Alexa Voice Service API has been updated to enable you to build a voice-activated project that responds to the “Alexa” wake word. This eliminates the need to press a button prior to speaking commands.
Another interesting new feature is the integration of “cloud endpointing.” This automatically detects the end-of-user speech, again eliminating the need for any type of push-to-talk system, and making your project much more elegant to use. Best of all, these new capabilities are available through the existing AVS API, so there is no need to upgrade.
And if all of this sounds complicated, it’s not. Any maker with a basic knowledge of programming can get started right away. The Alexa team even created a new step-by-step guide for building your own hands-free Raspberry Pi project which also integrates the third-party wake word engines from Sensory and KITT.AI.
The project only requires a few inexpensive components, and you should be up and running in about an hour. And best of all, it doesn’t cost anything to use the Alexa Voice Service on your personal project. Check out the complete build by visiting the Alexa GitHub page.
The Alexa Voice Service team is always looking to share some of your projects on the Alexa Blog, so be sure to tag your projects on Twitter using #avsDevs.
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