Mastodawn

How can I not waste an Alexa without feeding Amazon?

https://slrpnk.net/post/35625763

How can I not waste an Alexa without feeding Amazon? - SLRPNK

A friend was dumping stuff prior to a move. I took all his electro gadgets just to prevent it becoming e-waste. In the pile of stuff is an Amazon Alexa. Fuck #Amazon. I boycott Amazon and also have principled objections to their snooping, business practices, etc. My choices seem to be: * trash the Alexa * donate the Alexa to charity These are both lousy choices. Donating it as-is would ultimately put it in someone’s house which then feeds Amazon. Is there another option? I did a quick search and see no FOSS to replace whatever garbage Amazon has on it. It could be attached to the LAN with an egress firewall that blocks cloud access, but I suppose then it is useless, correct?

Natanael Mar 22

Which model?

androidauthority.com/echo-show-5-jailbreak-lineag…

I installed Android on an Echo Show, and it gave my smart display a new life

Select Echo Show models can now be jailbroken, allowing you to ditch Fire OS for Android and install any app under the sun.

Android Authority

activistPnk Mar 22

I don’t have it in front of me but it’s the cylindrical fabric speaker that looks like this:

cravingtech.com/best-alexa-smart-speaker-for-the-…

That will be nice if I can put Android OS on it, which is at least more liberated than FireOS. Though I have to wonder how useful a headless Android could be… if I could get a remote display on my PC that would be cool.

Best Alexa smart speaker for the price with great sound & bass - Amazon Echo 3rd Gen (2019) Review

Amazon Echo 3rd Gen (2019) Review – Amazon Echo speakers are not new. In fact, this one is the third iteration of Amazon’s smart speakers and it comes with significant upgraded audio quality. With a 3-inch woofer and increased back volume, the bass now feels stronger without having to grab that extra Echo Sub, plus […]

TrackinDaKraken Mar 22

Natanael Mar 22

Theoretically possible

github.com/Dragon863/EchoCLI/issues/15

Repurpose the battery? Short of scraping it for parts, I’m not sure Amazon designed it to be anything other than their spying tool

lemmysmash Mar 22

If it has good speaker in it, in the worst case you can just cut/throw away all the “smart” electronics out of it and place something like a RPi + an amplifier inside to have a mini media center.

I’ve done something similar - repurposing old 90’s boomboxes with hifiberry - it works relatively well (but does require some tinkering.

HiFiBerry – Audiophile 24/96, 24/192 sound cards (Audio DAC and SPDIF out) for the Raspberry Pi, audio out, audio cards, audio projects

rainbowbunny Mar 22

How difficult would this be to do?

lemmysmash 6d ago

Depends on which setup you’d like to go for.

Disassembly aside (no idea how Alexa looks like on the inside), you could go for something simplest: take a RPi 1B/2/3/4, plug in the 3.5mm jack into it and solder the other side directly to the speaker. This, in theory, should work out of the box and give you some decent sound (and probably even okayish volume).

If you want to go more elaborate, you might use some smaller/cheaper computer (e.g. RPi Zero 2W) + some tiny external DAC+amplifier. In this case you will have to ensure that the DAC is compatible with your computer, that the software is there and also handle power supply to both of them, and possibly also take care of the 50/60 Hz hum induced by it (depends on the power supply, the DAC and its wiring).

lemmysmash 6d ago

You could go even cheaper with something like this: arduinoyard.com/dfplayer-mini-with-esp32/

But here you start hitting a limitation that it won’t be a regular Linux machine anymore, but a microcontroller with its own set of capabilities and interfaces that you’d need to handle.

For example, in this configuration it would be able to play MP3 files from an SD card, but probably not the web streams (even direct ones) or something of that nature — for that you’d need a different setup, I guess.

DFPlayer Mini With ESP32 - A Complete Guide - ArduinoYard

In this guide, you’ll learn how to connect and program the DFPlayer Mini with ESP32, prepare the microSD card, and use sample code to start playing MP3 files in minutes.

ArduinoYard

HairyHarry Mar 22

Not sure if you want to do that, but:

Exchange leds, mics and board and build your own localized or cloud based (for example homeassistant) voice assistant.

Or send it to me ;)

WaffleStomper Mar 22

I am currently in the process of de-Alexafying myself, and I had the same question. Unfortunately I haven’t found any real answers.

HubertManne Mar 22

somehow amazon has managed to make fire products that no one seems to be able to jailbreak or such. I mean there is tons out there so its not like its not a good target.

moonshadow Mar 22

Last I checked people were into both their tablets and tv sticks. “Jailbreak” an alexa and you end up with a shitty wireless speaker, not a lot of incentive there

Toneswirly 6d ago

New fire tablets are ostensibly impossible to remove the OS from

JustEnoughDucks 6d ago

You could replace the microcontroller with an ESP32S3 and use the speaker and microphone with Home Assistant/Music Assistant or Willow voice assistant to essentially replace a lot of the real-use functionality: lights, music, and timers that Amazon said itself was almost all of its use according to their data harvesting 😂.

It depends how DIY/electronics savvy you are or if you are looking for a project.

MonkderVierte 6d ago

You mean a alternative firmware that only connects to your home LLM server?