Smart speakers are amazing devices, able to answer a near-infinite array of questions, as well as offer a variety of AI services. As shown in this project write-up by Marcelo Rovai, you can emulate a Google Assistant with Raspberry Pi and ReSpeaker 2-Mics Pi HAT, which can be triggered to “wake” and respond to your voice queries with a physical button.

To take this system to the next level, he’s leveraging an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense that replaces the button with a virtual one through keyword spotting. The tinyML-enabled Nano then listens for “yes” using its onboard microphone. When activated, it sends a signal to the Raspberry Pi, which in turn processes subsequent requests via the Google Cloud.

More details on the project can be found in Rovai’s blog post.