Amazon-qualified reference design delivers Alexa to hearables

QuickLogic Corp. has released an Amazon-qualified reference design to help OEMs and ODMs develop their own smart AI-enabled hearable products. This hearables kit integrates the Alexa voice-initiated Close-Talk technology, enabling a range of battery-powered applications to communicate directly with Alexa for a variety of use cases.

The reference design is built on QuickLogic’s Open Reconfigurable Computing (QORC) initiative and its QuickFeather 100% open source development kit, which helps speed time to market and reduce development risk. Developers can use the kit to build their proof-of-concept.

This is the first Close-Talk qualified smart hearable reference design based on QuickLogic’s EOS S3 ultra-low power Arm Cortex-M4-based voice processor + eFPGA system-on-chip. The EOS S3 integrates Sensory’s Low Power Sound Detection (LPSD) technology with DSP Concepts’ TalkTo noise suppression and beamforming technology, and Alexa Wake Word engine technology for long battery life.

In addition to the voice-initiated Alexa voice recognition capability, designers can optionally integrate multiple AI-based motion, sound, and other AI use cases based on SensiML’s AI Software Platform, which already has native support for the QuickFeather development kit.

Other reference design features include an Espressif ESP32-WROVER-E Wi-Fi development kit for Wi-Fi connectivity, and an Adafruit I2S audio decoder for playback from Alexa Voice Service directly to a standalone speaker. It also includes a QuickLogic microphone daughtercard that supports variable microphone spacing.

After evaluation with the QuickFeather Alexa Close-Talk reference design, manufacturers can move into product development using the same QuickFeather dev kit or design their own hardware, said QuickLogic

Available now, the reference design has passed Amazon certification for Close-Talk dev kits, and can be ordered from QuickLogic’s online store.

The company also recently released an open source SoC development kit, based on the QORC and EOS S3, that fits into a USB Type A port for AI/ML development anywhere.