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Setting up your own Smart Speaker Assistant as Fast as Possible

If you’re worried about privacy concerns when using smart assistants or just want to build your own one with complete freedom then this guide will help you. SUSI.AI provides Artificial Intelligence for Smart Speakers, Personal Assistants, Robots, Help Desks and Chatbots. SUSI.AI is a completely free and open source software.

In this guide, we will be building our own smart speaker assistant which will talk to the user just like Alexa or Google home. The keyword will be “SUSI”.

Things you will need

  • Raspberry Pi
  • ReSpeaker 2-mics Hat / USB mic / USB sound card
  • SD card
  • speaker
  • 3.5mm Aux cable/ JST PH2.0 connector

Step 1 Download and flash the image

  1. Download the latest Susibian image from https://github.com/fossasia/susi_installer/releases. The downloaded image will look something like susibian-xxxxxxxxxxxx.img.xz
  2. Insert the SD card in your PC
  3. If you’re on Linux, open up a terminal window and go to your downloads folder(or the place where the image is downloaded) and type the following commands

Extract the image 

unxz susibian-<timestamp>.img.xz 

Example:

unxz susibian-201905170311.img.xz

Write the image to SD-card 

Find the Disk Name of your SD card device by typing lsblk into a terminal window.

Here, for me, SD card disk name name is sdc.

sudo dd if=<path_to_downloaded_image_file> of=/dev/<disk_name> bs=4M status=progress

Replace <path_to_downloaded_image_file> to path to susibian image.

Replace <disk_name> with the disk name found in the before mentioned step.

NOTE: In the example command above, sdc is the device name for my scenario only, please check your device name before executing the command as it can result in loss of data!

Or

Use balena etcher :

  1. Select the image
  2. Select SD card device
  3. Flash!

Step 2 Setting up the hardware

  1. Insert the microSD card into your raspberry pi
  2. Attach ReSpeaker Hat to your Raspberry Pi
  3. Connect your speaker through the 3.5mm jack on ReSpeaker Hat or connect your JST PH2.0 speakers using the onboard JST connector
  4. Plug in the power supply to your raspberry pi. 
  1. If you’re using a USB sound card make sure to follow – Audio Debugging

Step 3 Setting up the speaker

  1. Download SUSI-AI android app. https://github.com/fossasia/susi_android/releases/download/1.1/susiai_20180826.apk
  2. Create an account or log in.
  3. In the app, go to settings -> Devices -> click here to move to device setup screen
  4. Wait for your device to show up and then click on setup. 
susi.ai smart speaker
  1. Chose the wifi network you want your speaker to connect to and enter the password.
  2. Add credentials.

OR

  1. Connect your computer or mobile phone to the SUSI.AI hotspot using the password “password”.
  2. Open http://10.0.0.1:5000 which will show you the set-up page as visible below: 
  1. Put in your Wifi credentials. For an open network set an empty password. The device should connect automatically to any open network, leave SSID and password empty.
  2. Click on “Reboot Smart Speaker”

Testing

  1. Wait for reboot of the speaker, SUSI will say “SUSI has started” as soon it is ready.
  2. After the setup, three LEDs on top of ReSpeaker Hat should light up.
  3. Say “SUSI” and wait for a bell sound.
  4. Speak your query!!
  5. Enjoy your new personal assistant

Tags

SUSI Smart Speaker, SUSI.AI, FOSSASIA, GSoC19

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