I had a look and the problem is that the Box3 is more expensive than an Echo dot! (If you can find one! - they are all out of stock!)
I don’t see why they only recommend hardware with a colour touchscreen for something that only requires a microphone and speaker. I guess I’ll ask them.
You could build your own using cheap. components
I’m totally with you on the Alexa thing. I don’t want to put on my tin foil hat, but it seems that they are killing off older devices to make you buy new ones/ stop using their resources.
I had an echo show 3, some $429 in Aus and it just stopped responding to requests. and because it was over a year old, Amazon refused to do anything about it (even though it really did seem like a software issue, more then a hard ware problem.
So I turned it into this
Ill be ditching the rest of the Alexa’s as soon as some decent hardware becomes available. I think the software side with the Chat GPT 3.5 backend like here are pretty solid right now; Its just getting reliable hardware… Spoiler, what I cobbled together doesn’t work too well. Its complicated to create, crashes often, and the amp and sound are pretty bad lol
It really is just getting the hardware to work and sound good.
I’ve spent thousands on Alexa devices, just to watch them turn to garbage, so that Amazon apologist really got to me. I think they forgot how stocks work lol.
Anyway, local voice assistants or death! HAHA (cake or death!)
Love what you did with the device. I’m wanting to repurpose some of the subwoofer and higher quality sound amazon speakers by taking out any type of alexa component and connecting to a home network. Maybe locally hosted AI. Not sure yet I’m still very knew to all this.
I couldn’t help but jokingly think that the Amazon apologist you mentioned was just Bezos bored in his retirement defending himself randomly on a HA message board.
Post how you go?
I found the sound is def not as good with the $20 amp I got from Ali, would be interested to see how others go with this. But considering how bad Alexa has gotten. WHich Im sure is a deliberate ploy to drive the sales of Alexa plus or whatever its going to be called. These companies have made me so cynical 