I was looking at these. I already have two esp32-s2-box2 but would like to try more things.
Does anyone know the exact SKU of the XMOS chip? There are 14 different versions on the XMOS product page. I don’t know if those numbers would equal better performance as a lot of numbers match, like cores, but others don’t. On another thread someone was saying the XMOS code is proprietary for this device. I’m just going to wait and see what Nabu comes out with because it will just work. Some SKU’s can support external LDDR1 RAM which may or may not be useful but I imagine it would help in being a media player for music at a minimum. On that Summer video when they mentioned the hardware one of them said the XMOS chip had 16 cores so it’s one of the 14 below looking at XMOS’s product page. Not really anything else on there more powerful unless you go to 24/32 cores and this appears to be their newest SKU lineup currently available.
The pic of the xmos chip on the respeaker board deff is not a 60 pin package. So that leaves the 265 FBGA or 128 TQFP package chips, since it has pins, it is not the FBGA packages. So, from your list, by means of elimination, it should be one of the bottom 2 - 128 TQFP package chips.
If so, there is no external memory support :(. The only difference between the 2 is the quality of components used (industrial vs. commercial).
I may have misunderstood though, it sounds like you are wondering about what chip the hass hardware will have in it?
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What picture are you looking at? I’m looking at picture on their wiki, an it looks sharper than the others:
As far as I can tell picture show a 60-pin package, or at least I counted 15 pins on each visable side.
As far as I can tell the chip in the picture look to read this:
XMOS
V16A0
G12342P2
TF1148.00
And if do a search for “V16A0 AND XMOS” I only find the datasheet for “XU316-1024-QF60A” SKU in a 60pin package, and from a cost-effectiveness perspective I guess it makes more sense to use “XU316-1024-QF60A-C24” (offering 2400 MIPS) over the faster “XU316-1024-QF60A-C32” (offering 3200 MIPS) even though from developers and end-user perspective we probably want the faster variant:
And I believe that would also make sense from a hardware developer point-of-view to use either XU316-1024-QF60A-C24 (or XU316-1024-QF60A-C32) since XU316-1024-QF60A-C24 is what is used by XMOS’s “XK-VOICE-L71 Voice Reference Design Evaluation Kit” so it is very well documented and tested:
https://www.xmos.com/file/xk-voice-l71-pcb-design-files/?version=latest
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You are correct, I was looking at the picture above on mobile, which is quite blurry.
Edit: check this out, just saw it on YouTube.
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Wow! So apparently FutureProofHomes has also announced his ”Satellite1 PCB Dev Kit” also sound to use same or similar XMOS chip in combination with an ESP32-S3 module but he has designed as a two-board PCBs voice satellite hardware development kit:
GitHub repository:
Website:
Satellite1 PCB Dev Kit
The Satellite1 PCB Dev Kit contains the two PCBs necessary to build your own completely private voice assistant & multi-sensor with XMOS advanced audio processing & music playback. Add your own speaker and power supplies.
Satellite1 HAT Board:
This board features 4 PDM microphones, 12 NeoPixel LEDs, humidity/temp/lux sensors, 4 buttons (volume up/down, action button & hardware mute), plus the XMOS audio processing chip and a power DAC with for amplified speaker-out connection or 3.5mm headphone connection. All remaining GPIOs are also exposed.
The Satellite1 Hat connects easily to the Sat1 Core Board but can also be paired with a Raspberry Pi or a PC/Mac via USB! Perfect for all your voice assistant and audio projects!
Satellite1 Core Board:
The Satellite1 Core Board contains the ESP32-S3 n16r8, USB-C Power Delivery and 40-pin connection. This board attaches to the companion Sat1 HAT Board.
Looks like he also posted a future roadmap showing that he working on a a nice enclosure (as well as the mentioning of an optional recessed enclosure for in-cealing / in-wall mounting of this smart speaker):
And yeah, I noticed now that FutureProofHomes had posted a preview video on YouTube showing of an early prototype version devkit of that 4-months ago when he at the time called that project “HomeX” (but at that time he had based the prototype on the wyoming-satellite platform running on a Raspberry Pi instead of using Nabu Casa’s upcoming ESPHome-based voice-kit hardware platform that runs on ESP32-S3 and using an XMOS xCORE chip for audio processing):
PS: The new design reminds me of the “Onju Voice” PCB replacement for the Google Nest Mini (2nd gen), which is a open-source hardware project that I hope someone else will pick up and update now:
@FutureProofHomes Can you tell us which exact SKU of XMOS chip your product will be using?
And also wondering if your PBC(s) will be open-source hardware and/or use OSH/OSHW design?
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Here’s the actual XMOS chip we’re using:
I just updated the repo to clarify a bit our open-source strategy. In a nutshell, upon launch all the firmware (ESP & XMOS) will be open source and all our hardware schematics will be published too. The KiCad proj. files will follow a delayed open source model (I’ll publish those dates for us), at which point we will then put out the proj. files too. Open to folks thoughts on this! And again, if you want to work closely with the core-team then please do ping me!
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@FutureProofHomes Any input on the media playback capabilities for music playback and audio quality via these type of products if using with better speakers?
I read that Nabu Casa’s will have an audio output jack (3.5mm headphone jack) for connecting external speakars.
For reference, I currently have ALL the various Google Nest (and Googgle Home) speakers in different rooms and using them for multi-room music playback.
Nice! Hope that you get more hardware developers onboard!
Cool! So you are using the little faster “XU316-1024-QF60B-C32” (3200 MIPS) SKU and not the “XU316-1024-QF60B-C24” (2400 MIPS) that both the ReSpeaker Lite and XK-VOICE-L71 Voice Reference Design Evaluation Kit are using → Processor Catalogue | XMOS
That sounds awesome! Pun intended 
Open source!
Hell yeah.
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FYI @alextrical also wrote that FutureProofHomes Satellite1 will be using a “B” model in the “XU316-1024-QF60B " chip series s native 3.3v IO, as opposed to the “A” models in the “XU316-1024-QF60A " chip series that would need logic level shifters to convert to 1.8v IO for the ESP32. He also mention that they will go with a C32 (3200 MIPS) variant if the economy of scale looks to allow it without adding too much extra cost to the BOM.
FYI, FutureProofHomes have posted a new video on their YouTube channel showing off the current design of their ESP32-based hardware prototype upcoming FutureProofHomes Satellite1 voice control development board which looks to now be using such a XU316-1024-QF60A-C24 based XK-VOICE-L71 (XMOS Voice Reference Design Evaluation Kit connected externally. XK-VOICE-L71 (XMOS Voice Reference Design Evaluation Kit features 3,5mm line out jack for audio output to external speakers and @FutureProofHomes mentioned that their final dev-kit product will also feature a 3,5mm jack for audio output. Check it out their latest prototype introduction video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp5q4RIwCX4
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I’ve just setup my ReSpeaker.
Is there a way to control the speaker volume?
Additionally, it would be nice to keep the discussion in this thread on topic, it’s confusing to follow with the inclusion of other similar but unrelated developments.
Are you using the components from the esphome “voice-kit” repository? If so then maybe best would be for you to post that question as a new issue there to get the attention of the developers workong on that project? See → Issues · esphome/voice-kit · GitHub
Note that even if they are not using the new ReSpeaker Lite kit themselves the question is perhaps better addressed there as theymentioned tjat one goal for that repo is to not be reliant on specific hardware configurations.
Quoting kahrendt from another issue there in that repo:
"We are moving fast and breaking things as we figure out the best way for these components to interact, but we will add all the code to the base ESPHome project once things are stable and working well. One goal for this repo is to not be reliant on specific hardware configurations. These other boards you linked are quite exciting, and I believe they should be compatible (or relatively easily made compatible) with our changes. For example, all the I2S settings and pins are still configurable in yaml, so it should be straightforward to add support for similar boards.
Very little of the code is reliant specifically on the XMOS chip (and the few lines that are should be adaptable or won’t even be there in the final version as we clean up the code), so it should be possible to add support for other DSPs in the future."
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I used the ESPHome yaml from the Seeed website Voice Assistant System for Home Assitant | Seeed Studio Wiki.
I’ll check out the voice-kit GitHub and see how that compares.
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Tbf, the op can do whatever they want with their thread.
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I would argue that both ESPHome voice-kit development and other hardware using ESP32 and XMOS xCORE chips combination for audio AI acceleration is on-topic as without those these “ReSpeaker Lite” kits will in practice never be useful in the future for anyone who is not a ESPHome developer themselves.
The “bigger picture” to make all these eventually become useful to the avérage Home Assistant user they not only need to be fully supported in the upstream ESPHome project, they also need to standardize those devices in both ESPHome and the Home Assistant core, and ESHome developers are now working on several new components related to this, including a new entity component as assist_satellite platform for that which will represent a standard VoIP-based voice satellite for Home Assistant Assist voice control. Check out this architecture discussion (which sounds like it has essentially been approved)
Initial entity component for this new assist_satellite platform been merged to Home Assistant core:
Bigger picture:
- Standardize how voice satellites expose their capabilities (ie, available wake words)
- Standardize how voice satellites are configured (which wake word to listen to)
- Automate based on the state of the satellite’s pipeline
- Control the behavior of a voice satellite from HA during the setup wizard
- Skip wake word and listen for a command (with or without executing it)
- Listen for a specific wake word (without running a pipeline)
- Control a voice satellite from HA using service calls
- Announce text using the TTS portion of the satellite’s pipeline
Also see related patches with new features submitted to both ESPHome and the Home Assistant core:
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Hi,
I’ve just received mine and I’m trying to modify the yaml to use micro wake word.
It seems to detect when I say the wake word but it stops streaming the audio just after switching to this state.
Is anyone succeeded on making it work ?
“mine” which ? ReSpeaker Lite, or one of the other similar devices mentioned through this thread ?
It would also make it easier for others to assist if you give a bit more information about your configuration (hardware and software). Eg, is the yaml in the ESPHome configuration for the device ?
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