Spencer the DIY Personal Voice Assistant

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

WARNING CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS: Cancer and Reproductive Harm-www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.