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Building a Voice Assistant Echo Edition (*unofficial, tongue-in-cheek designation) from a Voice Assistant PE and an Amazon Echo Dot 3rd Edition.
The Echo has a fairly well tuned speaker cavity formed from cast metal. All we need to do is disassemble the Echo, extract the speaker and cavity, remove the Voice Assistant PCB from it’s case, 3D print a new enclosure and put it all back together.
Here’s what it looks like when done with a bit of speaker grill cloth to dress it up a bit.
It sounds great and has everything the Voice Assistant PE offers.
First, disassemble the Echo. The rubber bottom is glued on and will peel off. Save it to reuse on the EE. Remove the 4 screws (you’ll need a proper driver bit for this – they are not standard philips screws). Once you extract the assembly from the case, there are 4 screws from the bottom holding on the top buttons and light ring assembly. Remove those and extract the top. A few more screws and the crescent shaped board will come off too. Save all the screws as we can reuse most of them. Here’s what you’ll have now:
Likewise, remove the PCB from the Voice Assisant PE (there is a disassembly guide on the Home Assistant site) by removing the rubber feet and the 4 screws. 4 more screws holding the board on. Remove the speaker connector and you’ll have the board ready to transplant.
There are 4 parts to be 3D printed – the Top Panel, the Mounting plate, the Mute Button and the Base. The STL files and associated STEP files are in the zip archive. First position the PCB onto the Top Panel and secure it with 4 short self tapping screws. If you want to use the mute button, place it in position while placing the PCB. Reuse what fasteners you can from both donors.
Heres what you’ll have now
Now we need to add the mounting plate to the bottom of the circuit board / Top Panel assembly. This uses 4 self tapping screws and leaves an access hole to plug in the speaker connection. Note the 4 raised screw hole bosses – those mesh with the holes on the speaker cavity and accept long screws through the speaker cavity to make one solid assembly.
Here is the Speaker cavity top and bottom we will connect to the Mounting Plate and Top Panel assembly.
Before we join these together we need to connect the speaker to the PCB. This is probably the hardest part of the assembly as the Echo speaker cavity is well sealed with glues and sealants. So rather than break the seals, we will solder wires to the speaker connections that are brought out of the cavity on 2 metal contact pads. You can reuse the Voice Assistant PE speaker wire, or use another appropriate sized connector to the PCB. Clean and tin the speaker pads and solder the wires to the pads. Then we can put the two parts together.
Then place the entire assembly into the Base and after aligning everything, use the 4 screws you first removed from the Echo to secure the assembly into the Base from the bottom. The Echo bottom rubber disc can now be stuck on the bottom of the Base.
That’s it – a Voice Assistant EE* (* Unofficial) !
