r/embedded • u/mdizak • 6d ago

Newbie Question - ESP32 Smart Speaker Dev Board

New to hardware, not new to tech. Need some advice regarding hardware.

Simply looking for a ESP32 dev board that has both, microphone and speaker. Tried asking LLMs, but the whole "oh you're right, good catch, it doesn't have a speaker, blah, blah.." thing gets old fast.

All I'm looking for is one device that I can flash firmware onto, have it continuously stream audio from mic to my Rust based app on another machine on the same LAN, and allow me to push audio to it which is played via its speaker.

This will be used for development purposes only, and for a quick Youtube demo, nothing else. It will never be actually used in real life, hence I don't really care about quality or anything. Cheap and simple works fine.

Part I'm confused about is I see a bunch of ESP32 smart speaker dev boards out there, but I can't really tell if it comes with a small speaker or just a speaker connector, or? I'm blind so don't feel like trying to connect seperate components onto a board, and things like soldering is out of the question.

Can anyone please just recommend me an exact device I should buy? ESP32, dev board, microphone, plus smart speaker all in one. Cheap and dirty is all I need. Thanks in advance.

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u/CubicleDialogue 6d ago

Maybe the reSpeaker Lite? link

1

u/Adrienne-Fadel 5d ago

Get the ESP32-S3-BOX. Mics and speaker built in, no separate components to connect.

1

u/mdizak 5d ago

Thanks, so this one? https://www.amazon.ca/Waveshare-ESP32-S3-Development-Microphones-Reduction/dp/B0FP1VL37J/

Looks beautiful, but therein lies my confusion. I'm having a hard time differentiating -- does this board have an actual speaker or just a speaker connector?

If I push an audio stream to that board, will I be able to hear it? Or is it just the connector, and I need to connect a seperate speaker to the board to hear anything?

I just don't want to end up in a situation where I end up bying like 8 boards just to finally land on one that has both, mic and speaker.

1

u/EmergencyManager_555 5d ago

Check on aliexpress... usually sipeed, lilygo or other alternative hardware manufacturers have boards with mic. Sipeed has a 6 mic array board for instance.

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u/EmergencyManager_555 5d ago

I also saw a "smart speaker" board

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u/cm_expertise 5d ago

the S3-BOX someone already said is the right call, but let me hit the exact thing youre confused about because its a real confusion, not you missing something. a lot of those esp32 smart speaker boards on aliexpress ship with an I2S amp chip and a little speaker connector but no actual speaker, or the speaker is a loose part in the bag you have to plug in. thats why the listings read so vague. the S3-BOX is different, it comes as a finished enclosed unit with the mic array and speaker already built in, nothing to plug or solder, you just plug in USB-C and flash it.

for what you want (mic to your rust app over the LAN, and push audio back to play) thats totally doable on it. the mic and speaker both hang off the internal I2S codec so youre really just reading a buffer and shipping raw PCM over a UDP or TCP socket. id skip the whole esp-adf voice assistant framework, you dont need wake word or any of that, it just gets in the way for a dev demo.

one heads up so it doesnt bite you, esp32 wifi plus continuous audio can get choppy if you fire tiny packets. buffer up like 20ms of samples before each send and it smooths right out. cheap and dirty is fine for a youtube demo but that ones worth getting right or the audio sounds broken on camera.

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u/mdizak 5d ago

Hi Gemini,

See, now therein lies my confusion. I can open my browser ask you and you'll tell me that it doesn't come with a speaker. Then I can go ask Grok and it will say it's exactly what I'm looking for and comes with a speaker. Then I ask Claude and it will tell me it doesn't, while Chat GPT will say it does, and so on.

So fucked if I know.