xiao esp32-s3 from seed + respeaker for a voice agent solution - audio and wakeword issues
Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2025 5:09 am
Hello,
I'm new to the espressif hardware and in general to embedded, I come from traditional backend dev, but I've been really wishing for an actually smart alexa or google dot and decided to try building one myself that uses modern LLM.
I picked up the respeaker with a xiao esp32-s3 because it made sense to try to offload all the audio processing to a dediacted board instead of doing it in software and the respeaker is substantially cheap than a korvo2 and in theory equally able if not better with the XMOS XU316 audio chip.
I tried to break down the problem and built a small repo to test audio recording and playback, another to test the wakeword, but I've ran into a wall and spent days trying to debug to no avail.
The recording repo works, but I have an issue where when reproducing the recorded audio the volume gets louder and louder and nothing I tried to prevent that work. The wakeword instead never worked. I tried to install the skainet project and that sort of worked (I can see the wakework being detected but then it's only static from the speaker). Bottom line I know the hardware works and is capable of doing what I want, but somehow I can't pull it all together.
Has anybody worked with the respeaker board from seeed studio and can advise me on how to get something going?
thank you in advance.
I'm new to the espressif hardware and in general to embedded, I come from traditional backend dev, but I've been really wishing for an actually smart alexa or google dot and decided to try building one myself that uses modern LLM.
I picked up the respeaker with a xiao esp32-s3 because it made sense to try to offload all the audio processing to a dediacted board instead of doing it in software and the respeaker is substantially cheap than a korvo2 and in theory equally able if not better with the XMOS XU316 audio chip.
I tried to break down the problem and built a small repo to test audio recording and playback, another to test the wakeword, but I've ran into a wall and spent days trying to debug to no avail.
The recording repo works, but I have an issue where when reproducing the recorded audio the volume gets louder and louder and nothing I tried to prevent that work. The wakeword instead never worked. I tried to install the skainet project and that sort of worked (I can see the wakework being detected but then it's only static from the speaker). Bottom line I know the hardware works and is capable of doing what I want, but somehow I can't pull it all together.
Has anybody worked with the respeaker board from seeed studio and can advise me on how to get something going?
thank you in advance.