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-------------------- 2576 - Alexis Echo - how does it work?
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- Did you know there is a command called "The Listeners" that lets you know it's always there, listening and watching? Or that Alexa can make crazy animal noises and has a creepy laugh? Watch out it is what my grandkids got for Christmas!
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- The Listeners are always listening and watching if you say, "Alexa, ask The Listeners," Alexa will start saying things like "We are always listening" and will continue speaking in a disturbing manner with awkward pauses. You can continue having a conversation with the voice assistant.
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- Note that this is just a program and Amazon isn't actually watching you.
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- Your Amazon Echo can sneeze, Achoo! There's also a skill called I Just Sneezed that you can enable. When you say "Alexa, I just sneezed," the voice assistant will say "Bless you.”
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- It won't spell everything for you. When you can't remember how to spell a word, like "hippopotamus,"
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- Alexa snores to help you fall asleep. "Alexa, play snore sounds."
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--------------------- More off-the-wall things Alexa can do
--------------------- "Alexa, rap."
--------------------- "Alexa, beatbox."
--------------------- "Alexa, sing."
--------------------- "Alexa, laugh for me."
--------------------- "Alexa, make fart noises."
--------------------- "Alexa, make monkey sounds."
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- This is th fun stuff, unless you re an engineer and you must know how it works? Here is what the engineer wants to learn:
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- The main objective is to convert speech to text or a computer command. A computer has to go through several complex steps. When you speak, you create vibrations in the air. The analog-to-digital converter translates this analog wave into digital data that the computer can understand.
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- To do this, it samples, or digitizes, the sound by taking precise measurements of the sound wave at frequent intervals. The system filters the digitized sound to remove unwanted noise, and sometimes to separate it into different bands of frequency. Frequency is the wavelength of the sound waves, heard by humans as differences in pitch.
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- The computer program normalizes the sound, or adjusts it to a constant volume level. People don't always speak at the same speed, so the sound must be adjusted to match the speed of the ‘template sound samples” already stored in the system's memory.
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- Next the signal is divided into small segments as short as a few hundredths of a second, or even thousandths in the case of consonant sounds. The program then matches these segments to known “phonemes” in the appropriate language.
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- A phoneme is the smallest element of a language. It is a representation of the sounds we make and put together to form meaningful expressions. There are roughly 40 phonemes in the English language.
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- The next step seems simple, but it is actually the most difficult to accomplish and is the is focus of most speech recognition research. The program examines phonemes in the context of the other phonemes around them.
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- It runs the contextual phoneme plot through a complex statistical model and compares them to a large library of known words, phrases and sentences. The program then determines what the user was probably saying and either outputs it as text or issues a computer command.
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- Amazon Echo has built-in omni directional speakers that play music and other audio. It is also like your smartphone nd has voice-recognition capabilities.
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- You can ask Echo to play music, tell you the weather forecast, add to your to-do list, read you your schedule or the news, and much more. If you have compatible smart-home devices, you can tell Echo to dim the lights or turn appliances on or off.
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- Echo connects to the Internet via your home WiFi network. It is always on and listening for the magic word to wake it up. Once it hears that, the device gathers the voice commands that follow and sends them to a natural voice recognition service in the cloud called “Alexa Voice Service“, which interprets them and sends back the appropriate response.
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- The device has an array of microphones that can pick up your voice from across the room, even over music and other environmental noise.
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- Amazon Echo has a microphone off / on button and an action button at the top. They rest on a ring you can rotate to adjust speaker volume. But the main control is the seven-microphone array built into the top, which uses beam forming technology and noise cancellation to "hear" your voice to record it and to send it to the “cloud‘.
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- What is the cloud? The cloud is just another computer that is located somewhere else and is connected to your echo via the internet.
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- A light ring at the top outer edge of the Echo provides status information, such as the volume level and whether the device is streaming audio or the microphone is turned off, via various light colors and motions.
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- The device incorporates two downward-firing internal speakers. It contains 3 circuit boards. A small board at the bottom contains Texas Instruments power and speaker drivers. A circular board at the top houses components for the control buttons, volume wheel, status LEDs and microphones. A rectangular, side-mounted board above the speakers contains the brains and communication components, including the following :
--------------------------- A8 Core Digital Media Micro-Processor
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-------------------------- 4 gigabytes flash memory
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-------------------------- 256 megabytes random access memory (RAM)
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------------------------- A Qualcomm dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth module.
------------------------- But, the real brains behind the device rest in the cloud.
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- Without a connection to a home WiFi network, it'll be impossible to use your Echo. The device supports dual-band WiFi network connectivity.
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- Echo sends your voice commands via your WiFi network to “Alexa Voice Service” to be interpreted and acted upon. Alexa is a cloud service, which means it's a software-based service running on a lot of powerful servers in one or more data centers, accessed via the Internet.
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- Alexa parses your spoken words, interprets the commands and routes them to the appropriate web service to get the right response. Alexa then converts the response and sends it back via audio to your Echo.
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- Echo connects to other devices (like your smartphone) via Bluetooth. It supports audio streaming from smartphones and tablets via and voice control.
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- You can manage Echo remotely with the Alexa app, which you can download to devices. If you don't want to use the app, you can visit Alexa's Amazon homepage.
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- Well I hope you learned a little engineering and technology from this Review. The technology is advancing so fast we will have robots running our households and work place very soon. I might even live to see some of this. My grandkids definitely will.
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- Just remember grandkids, that technology can be used for good or evil. Take care, it will not be easy to control, but it will be your responsibility to make the world you live in!
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- January 5, 2019 2576
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--- to: ------ jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
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--------------------- Sunday, January 5, 2020 --------------------
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