Amazon tells people how to build their own Echo

Amazon has published instructions to help people build their own Echo device. More accurately, Amit Jotwani, an employee at Amazon who helps people put Alexa into third-party devices, published instructions on GitHub on how to make something similar to Echo using Raspberry Pi.

In addition to the $40 Rasperri Pi computer, users need a USB-powered microphone and some other components to get it up and working. The end result is still getting Amazon's personal assistant Alexa at a fraction of the Echo's $180 price tag. Even the cheaper Amazon Tap is $130. One pitfall of going this route, though, is that it requires users to push a button before talking to Alexa, rather than waking it up by voice. This is a limitation in Amazon's terms of use for third-party developers, which helps Amazon keep that kind of feature exclusive to its own hardware.

As the Verge points out, the GitHub instructions from Jotwani could be a response to other similar tutorials cropping up on YouTube. By publishing instructions himself, Jotwani is essentially putting Amazon's stamp of approval on this practice and showing people how it should be done.

The Amazon Echo is already being used by many as a primary means of controlling their smart homes. For people who want to primarily use Alexa for this function, building a custom device for less money could make sense. This could also have implications for hardware manufacturers as Amazon allows device makers to use Alexa Voice Services "to add voice-powered experiences to (their) connected devices." This is important for a manufacturing market like China, where hardware prowess lags far behind software development, especially in artificial intelligence. This is also why promises of open voice control platforms, like Project Vaani from Mozilla, are important to small- and medium-sized hardware makers.