Seeed Studio launched ReSpeaker Core board designed for voice interaction in 2016. The board was based on a Mediatek MT7688 MIPS WiSoC running OpenWrt, and came with a single built-in microphone, although a microphone array board with 7 microphones and 12 LEDs was also offered as option.
The company is now back with a more powerful update of the board – called ReSpeaker Core v2 – featuring Rockchip RK3229 quad core Cortex A7 processor, running Debian Linux, and with 6 on-board microphones. Beside WiFi connectivity, the board also adds Ethernet and Bluetooth 4.0, as well as a USB hot port compared to the previous version.
ReSpeaker Core v2 specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3229 quad core Cortex A7 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM
- Storage – 4GB eMMC flash, micro SD card slot
- Video Output – HDMI 2.0 (but drivers not available yet)
- Audio
- 6x Microphone Array with 5 meters detection range
- 8 channel ADCs for 6 microphone array and 2 loopback (hardware loopback)
- 3.5mm audio jack
- 2-pin JST connector for 8Ω speaker
- Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, WiFi 802.11b/g/n and BLE 4.0 (AP6212 module)
- USB – 1x micro USB OTG port, 2x USB host type A port
- Expansion – Grove socket for external I2C sensors, unpopulated headrr with 6x GPIOs, 3-pin UART header
- Misc – 12x programmable LEDs ring, power LED, 2x user LEDs
- Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port
- Dimensions – 100 x 96 x 18 mm
The kit ships with an SDK for speech algorithm with full documentation, a C++ SDK and Python wrapper, speech algorithms and features such as keyword wake-up, BF (Beam-Forming), DoA (Direction of arrival), NS(Noise suppression), AEC (Acoustic echo cancellation) and AGC (Automatic gain control). More details and instructions to get started with Amazon Alexa can be found in the Wiki.
ReSpeaker Core v2 board targets the development of smart speakers, intelligent voice assistant systems, voice recorders, voice conferencing system, meeting communicating equipment, voice interacting robot, car voice assistant and other applications relying on voice commands.
Seeed Studio will start taking (pre-)orders on March 19 for $99.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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