With the Echo, Dot and Assistant now becoming well-known brand names, voice enablement currently seems to be on everybody’s mind and more importantly, their lips.
With many analysts making predictions such as, by 2020 50% of searches will be by made by voice or over 40 million smart speakers will be sold*, it’s understandable why many companies are investigating how to add voice to their next generation devices.
The challenge for most companies is understanding how to take the first step. Unless a company has experience with audio in their device, evaluating how to piece together both the hardware and software needed to enable voice on a device is a puzzle beyond both their resources and level of investment.
Realizing this, NXP has teamed up with Arrow Electronics, Synaptics and
Amazon to develop
the Synaptics AudioSmart™ 2-Mic and NXP Pico i.MX7Dual Development
Kit for Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS). This newly available development kit is one of the first to be qualified
with production-ready system-on-chip (SoC), voice processor and the AVS
Device SDK. It enables device makers to quickly and cost-effectively
integrate Alexa into a fully functioning prototype and then take that work
into design for manufacturing and production.
The kit hardware features the Synaptics’ CX20921 Voice Input Processor and the PICO-PI-IMX7 i.MX 7Dual development board, a purpose-built small-footprint platform which features NXP’s i.MX 7Dual dual-core applications processor. Both processors are in full production and available for commercial designs. The kit also includes: stereo microphones with a microphone holder board, a micro USB cable, a Type-A to Type-B cable, cable assembly and a +5V power supply. The kit also features a reference software client built using the AVS Device SDK and an Alexa tuned wake word so commercial device makers to get to market faster with Alexa-enabled products.
The Synaptics AudioSmart 2-Mic Dev Kit for Amazon AVS with NXP SoC is
available exclusively from
arrow.com
for $375. To learn more, or to purchase the kit, visit:
https://www.arrow.com/
*Source: Strategy Analytics
Robert Thompson is Global Director i.MX Ecosystem. He focuses on developing the ecosystem to enable customers to get to market as fast and competitively as possible. Robert is an industry expert in consumer electronics with over 20 years of experience in diverse regions, including Europe, Brazil and the US.
