ReSpeaker Drive Unit

Introduction

ReSpeaker Drive Unit is specially designed for ReSpeaker Core, as a separate speaker drive unit.

With this drive unit that you can build your own smart speaker with Amazon Alexa Voice Services or other voice services. What’s more, it supports Airplay that means you can stream your music via smart phone, PC and Mac. And of course play local music is possible.

ReSpeaker Core contains powerful exntension ability, we hopefully it can help you to enable voice on your prototype/product easily.

Features

  • Chargeable bettery included
  • Touch button
  • Airplay support
  • Impedance is 4Ω, and Rated Power is 5W
  • Indicator LED on the ReSpeaker Core

Specification

  • Rated Power: 5W
  • Impedance: 4Ω
  • SNR: ≥ 75dBA
  • Sensitivity: 550 ± 50mV
  • Degree of Distortion: ≤ 0.5%
  • Frequency Response: 85Hz - 20kHz
  • Power Supply: 5V through USB or through 3.7V, 1500mAh battery
  • Speaker Diameter: 40mm

Out of the box guide

Prepare the ReSpeaker Core

To drive the Meow King drive unit, the firmware for ReSpeaker Core should be updated. To know the differences between the original stock firmware and this firmware, please refer to the change log here.

Now let’s update the firmware. Firstly, download ramips-openwrt-v1.0.01-LinkIt7688-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin from OneDrive. Copy the firmware to SD card and then plug the SD card into the ReSpeaker Core. Follow the instruction here to get the serial console. Please note that, to get the USB serial working we need to restore the default firmware for the Arduino chip (ATMega32U4) if we have changed it. After we get the USB serial, type the following commands to update the firmware:

mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt
cd /mnt
sysupgrade -n -F ramips-openwrt-v1.0.01-LinkIt7688-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

After the system image has been written, the ReSpeaker Core will reboot.

Build up

Plug your ReSpeaker Core onto the Meow King drive unit like the image below.

Press the power logo over 5 seconds, the drive unit will power on, and also the ReSpeaker Core board.

Note

The power control circuit is in the drive unit, even when you pulled the ReSpeaker Core off, pressing the power logo over 5 seconds will still power on the drive unit.

To power down the whole device, please press the power logo over 5 seconds again.

When the device is powered on, the ReSpeaker Core will enter the boot up process. The LED ring will light up with red color for 1 second, indicating that the ReSpeaker Core is booting up.

Now wait a few seconds, find your smart phone and prepare to stream your music onto the Meow King drive unit.

Stream your music

For iOS

  1. Connect to the same Wi-Fi network on your iOS device and ReSpeaker.
  2. On your iOS device, swipe up from the bottom of your screen to open Control Center.
  3. In Control Center, swipe horizontally to find the Now Playing screen.

  4. Select ReSpeaker as the following picture:

  5. Connect your headphone/speaker to respeaker, then you can enjoy the music now.

For Android

  1. Connect your smart phone to ReSpeaker’s Wi-Fi.
  2. On your smart phone, open an AirPlay client software, such as: AllConnect.

  3. Select ReSpeaker as the following picture:

  4. Connect your headphone/speaker to respeaker, then you can enjoy the music now.

Note

An additional tip is that, try to tune the volume up of your player application if you hear no sound after the playing.

Help us make it better

Welcome to the new documentation system of Seeed Studio. We have made a lot of progress comparing to the old wiki system and will continue to improve it to make it more user friendly and helpful. The improvement can't be done without your kindly feedback. If you have any suggestions or findings, you are most welcome to submit the amended version as our contributor via Github or give us suggestions in the survey below, it would be more appreciated if you could leave your email so that we can reply to you. Happy Hacking!