Modular Smart Speaker
MoSS aims to be a feature-rich and capable platform, that packs ideas and concepts that have been collected and developed over the duration of the vocal project, in a modular format.
MoSS was conceived with several objectives in mind. Firstly, MoSS was created as an exploratory tool for the investigation of human/machine interfacing with voice controlled smart home objects and as an inspiring tool for hands-on creative idea development in Workshop 2.
For the purpose, it needed to both resemble and function as an intelligent smart speaker, while also feature extended functions, based on concepts and ideas developed in the project. The most obvious of which was the idea of fusing the smart speaker with a modular synthesizer. Other extended function include: multichannel audio with the option to connect up to eight speakers, inputs for external modulation – sensors etc., and more.
The design of the units hints to traditional smart speaker design, with symmetric fabric surfaces and rounded corners. It also adapts animated LEDs for visual feedback.
The flat panels on the front and back refers to classic ‘eurorack’ style modular synthesizer design, with rotary knobs, buttons and minijack connections. Minijack patch cables can be used to connect its in- and outputs.
The case is composed of two identically shells, held together with friction fit pegs and sockets. The friction fit keeps the shells together firmly, but comes apart with little force, making it simple to access the insides without the requirement of tools.
Inside the case, a Raspberry Pi along with a custom build interface controller and an audio interface is the base of the system.
On the software side, the units, as configured for workshop 2, uses: Microsoft Azure for speech recognition, OpenAI ChatGPT as interactive assistant and Amazon Polly for Text-to-speech.
Audio recording as well as processing is done with Puredata.
Everything is tied together with a python-script.