Smart hearable reference design speeds development of voice-initiated, hands-free Alexa built-in devices

QuickLogic Corporation announced it has released an Amazon-qualified reference design that empowers OEMs and ODMs to evaluate and develop their own smart hearable products quickly and easily. This kit integrates the Alexa voice-initiated Close-Talk experience, enabling a broad set of battery-powered applications to communicate directly with Alexa for a multitude of use cases.

This is the first available, 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 reference design is built on QuickLogic’s Open Reconfigurable Computing (QORC) initiative and QuickLogic’s QuickFeather 100% open-source development kit. 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 to enable a superior user experience and long battery life.

In addition to the very low power, voice-initiated Alexa voice recognition capability enabled by the EOS S3 platform, OEMs and ODMs can optionally integrate multiple AI-based motions, sound and other AI use cases based on SensiML’s AI Software Platform, which already has native support for the QuickFeather development kit.

Following evaluation with this reference design, manufacturers can take the next step in product development using the same QuickFeather development kit, or design their own hardware.
The QuickFeather AVS Reference Design Features:
Alexa Wake Word Engine (WWE) running in the EOS S3 voice processor
Hardware-optimized Low Power Sound Detection (LPSD) technology from Sensory
Support for one or two microphone use cases with DSP Concepts’ TalkTo noise suppression and beamforming technology
Connectivity to Alexa Voice Service
Built on top of 100% open-source hardware QuickFeather dev kit and QORC open-source software tools

The QuickLogic QuickFeather AVS reference design for Amazon is available now and can be ordered from QuickLogic’s online store.