14 DAY TRIAL // Softpedia has been informed by SeeedStudio about an upcoming device that was fully funded in twelve hours on Kickstart, while still having 20 days to go on its crowdfunding campaign.
SeeedStudio ReSpeaker has a modular design and was designed from the offset to act as an IoT (Internet of Things) controller and development board that features voice interaction functionality, allowing you to add voice support to anything you like in your house (make sure you watch the video below to see it in action).
These days, more and more smart devices are supporting voice interaction, such as your Android or iOS smartphone, or Amazon Echo, but it looks like there aren't all that many IoT boards designed specifically for this purpose, and here's where Seeed Studio ReSpeaker comes in.
Interact with the world, just using your voice
Seeed Studio ReSpeaker is a development board like no other. First of all, it's open source, which means that you are free to hack it and modify it the way you like, as well as to install any software and operating system you want. Second of all, it comes with great hardware, such as Wi-Fi connectivity, MicroSD slot, and I/O headers.
It has everything you need to interact with the world just using your voice and start hacking things around your house to add voice interaction support. ReSpeaker is also designed to combine audio capabilities, integrates a lightweight speech recognition engine, and comes with a built-in high-performance microphone.
"With ReSpeaker, you are able to control, or even communicate with your toy robot, your home appliances, your plant, your office, your internet-equipped devices and many other things in your daily life," says Seeed. "Rather than a voice assistant that fulfills simple tasks only when you asked, ReSpeaker provides a hands-free way of voice interaction for you and your surroundings."
Best of all, ReSpeaker is capable of recognizing communications based on some of the most powerful online cognitive services, including Google Speech API, Amazon Alexa Voice Service, Microsoft Cognitive Service, Houndify, and Wit.ai. It also supports wireless music streaming via Airplay/DLNA. ReSpeaker should start shipping around November 2016, and you can still get one for the price of $49 (€44).