A DIY Amazon Echo from Top 10 Raspberry Pi Projects for Beginners

To put together your own Echo, you’ll need a few supplies. The most important thing is a Matrix Creator or Matrix Voice. They’re development platforms that connect to a Raspberry Pi and are designed to help makers test new hardware applications at a low cost. More importantly for us, they feature an eight-microphone array, which is perfect for creating our DIY Alexa. Any microphone will technically work, but the multiple microphone array is the closest you’ll get to Amazon’s own system on a budget. Next, we’ll need the aforementioned Raspberry Pi. If the Matrix is the ears of our DIY Echo, the Pi is the brains. It’ll supply the processing power to run Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service, the audio output to connect a speaker, and Wi-Fi or Ethernet to connect to Amazon’s servers to get the answers to whatever you ask your Alexa. A Raspberry Pi 3 will have onboard Wi-Fi, but if you have an older one, you’ll need to pick up a USB adapter or plug in via Ethernet. You’ll also need a keyboard, mouse, and display to hook up to your Pi for the setup process. Optionally, you’ll want a USB battery pack, to allow for your DIY Echo to work away from a wall outlet, a speaker for improved audio output, and some cardboard and tape to make a case.