Build Your Own Voice Assistant (with Artificial Intelligence)
Spencer is a DIY voice assistant that talks, lights-up, connects to the internet, and understands simple voice commands. You build this custom electronics kit yourself and code him to do a wide variety of functions! Equipped with a microphone which allows him to understand what you say (REALLY understand), Spencer has a funny personality, tells jokes, and finds new ones online. He also has an LED display with a colorful RGB grid consisting of 128 pixels that shows data, custom icons, animations and scrolling text.
Requires soldering (iron not included). Includes 4GB MicroSD card and USB power cord. Average assembly time: 4 hours. For ages 14+.
Some out-of-the-box things Spencer can do as soon as you assemble him:
Read the news
Tell you the weather forecast for your area
Memorize the things you say
Set an Alarm or reminder
Tell you the upcoming calendar meetings
What you can do with Spencer:
Make Spencer fetch news from the internet and read them in his funny robot voice
Code spencer to display a funny 8-bit picture of a banana on his LED display every time someone Tweets something funny
Teach Spencer to recognize basic voice commands
Make Spencer happy or sad (we’ve implemented a tiny bit anxiety in his base firmware, that’s why you need to talk to him)
What you learn
How to solder and assemble your very own personal voice assistant
How to code a microcomputer and make it do smart things such as voice recognition
What is IoT and how to connect your microcontroller to the internet
How to use an RGB LED grid to display things
What is artificial intelligence and how to make Spencer smart
How to use voice synthesis in order to make Spencer talk
How to teach Spencer more corny jokes
What’s inside the box
Spencer’s circuit board that includes a pre-soldered 128-pixel RGB LED grid
The brain board – does smart stuff and includes a dual-core processor, an SD card socket, and power-management circuitry
4GB Micro SD card needed for Spencer to work properly
The sound board – has a 32-bit DAC and a 3W class D amplifier
3W speaker – Spencer uses this to talk
Acrylic casing – this protects spencer’s innards from the outside world
A big red button
A bag of other small components such as resistors, pushbuttons and a microphone
An instruction booklet – ready for your offline knowledge consumption
Highly Recommended:
Make sure you have all of the tools you need to complete your project with the Electronics Tool Pack (#315723). Included are a soldering iron, diagonal cutter pliers and everything else you’ll need for this project.