Open-Hardware Board LocalDot Transforms Amazon Echo Dots into Home Assistant Voice Devices
Crowd Supply has launched a campaign for LocalDot, an open-hardware board developed by AAElectronics, designed to convert third-generation Amazon Echo Dots into Home Assistant voice devices. This 83 × 37mm PCB integrates an ESP32-S3 for Wi-Fi connectivity and device control, and an ESP32-P4 for audio processing. The LocalDot board retains the original Echo Dot's microphones, speaker, buttons, and LEDs, allowing users to repurpose their existing hardware. The ESP32-P4 utilizes the Echo Dot’s four-microphone array, offering beamforming support for directional audio capture. This setup enables wake-word detection to run directly on the device, with recognized voice commands forwarded over the local network to a configured Home Assistant server. This approach allows for voice control without dependence on Amazon’s cloud services, ensuring smart-home functions, timers, and notifications can operate even without an internet connection, provided the local server is available.
