Setup Hardware

Shopping List

To build your own voice assistant, you will need at least the following things:

Raspberry Pi 3b/3b+/4 with Power Cable
Micro-SD-Card with a min of 16gb
ReSpeaker 4-Mic-Array
Zigbee2MQTT adapter, like Texas Instruments CC2531 or ConBee2 or (other compatible adapters)
Zigbee LED Light Bulb or any other Zigbee device
Speaker with 3.5mm jack

Setup Raspberry Pi

The easiest way to set up a Raspberry Pi is to use the Raspberry Pi Imager.

Steps:

Insert Micro SD Card
Choose OS -> We recommend Raspbian with OS
Choose Micro SD Card
Click Button Write
Done!

You can attach a screen, keyboard and mouse to enable SSH and configure WI-FI connection.

The username is pi and the password is raspberry. You should change the password immediately.

Optionally SSH and WI-FI configuration

If you want to start the Raspberry Pi headless, you can enable SSH and configure the WI-FI connection before starting.

Enable SSH

You only need to create an empty file with the name ssh without any extension in the root directory of the usb stick. Done!

Configure WIFI

Create a file with the name wpa_supplicant.conf in the root directory of the pi. Fill it with the following code and adjust country to your country, for example DE for germany. Also adjust ssid and psk to your network.

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=<Insert 2 letter ISO 3166-1 country code here>

network={
 ssid="<Name of your wireless LAN>"
 psk="<Password for your wireless LAN>"
}

you can use the command sudo raspi-config for additional setting (e.g : change your time zone, set the language, Keyboard layout etc.)

Plugin ReSpeaker and Zigbee Adapter

Attach the ReSpeaker 4-Mic-Array to the Raspberry Pi and plugin the Zigbee Adapter.

Raspberry Pi with ReSpeaker and ConBee2

Finish!

Congratulations! You mastered the first step to your own Voice Assistant! Go to the next step!