How I added a display screen to my Echo speaker with out shopping for Amazon’s costly show

I’ve a number of previous Echo good audio system round my home that I’ve accrued over time. Despite not being a fan of Alexa, they nonetheless get common use. Having repurposed my Echo Show units, I missed having a display screen with my good audio system, so I made a decision so as to add my very own.

I used a $15 ESP32 touchscreen because the show

A Cheap Yellow Display was an ideal match

When I thought of including my very own display screen to my Echo audio system, a couple of choices got here to thoughts. I thought of utilizing a jailbroken Kindle as a show, for the reason that E-Ink display screen would look nice, and the inner battery would imply that I would not have to fret about connecting it to energy.

In the top, I made a decision to go along with a Cheap Yellow Display (CYD). This is an ESP32 board related to a small colour touchscreen panel. You should buy them for $15 or much less, they usually’re actually helpful for all types of smart home projects.

I selected to make use of the Cheap Yellow Display for a few causes. The first was that I used to be planning on displaying album art work, so I needed a pleasant shiny colour show reasonably than monochromatic E-Ink. I additionally needed to have the ability to use the show to work together with my Echo, so the touchscreen CYD made way more sense.

Home Assistant is the glue between the Echo and CYD

The Alexa Media Player integration exposes what I want

This entire mission is made potential by a Home Assistant integration that I’ve been utilizing on and off for a number of years. The Alexa Media Player integration is a third-party customized integration that allows you to join your Echo units to Home Assistant. Once put in and authenticated together with your Amazon account, it creates Home Assistant media participant entities on your Echo smart speakers and exposes information and controls that are not in any other case accessible.

Using Alexa Media Player, Home Assistant sits between my Echo and my CYD, passing the Echo information to the show and receiving contact information again. The CYD is operating firmware created utilizing ESPHome, which permits Home Assistant to inform the CYD what to show, and for interactions with the CYD display screen to get despatched to Home Assistant to behave upon.

In different phrases, though the CYD is sitting proper subsequent to the good speaker, they are not speaking immediately in any respect. It’s Home Assistant that is doing all of the arduous work.

My good speaker now has a correct Now Playing display screen

Music is what my Echo audio system get used for many

The first function I arrange was a Now Playing display screen. I hardly ever use my Echo good audio system for voice instructions or asking Alexa for data, however I exploit them on a regular basis for enjoying music. In some rooms, Echo units are the one audio system, whereas in different rooms, the Echo acts as a voice enter for a better-quality speaker, corresponding to my previous Sonos Play:1.

When I play music by way of my Echo Show units, I get good album art work displaying the music that is at the moment taking part in, together with controls for pausing the music or skipping to the subsequent observe. I needed to recreate this function with my CYD.

The Alexa Media Player integration exposes particulars concerning the music that is at the moment taking part in on the gadget, together with the music, artist, and album. Since I’ve Music Assistant arrange, Home Assistant can discover the corresponding album art work in Music Assistant and share a URL that factors to Music Assistant’s album art work picture. The CYD then downloads the picture and shows it on the display screen.

I added easy controls to pause the music and skip backward or ahead. The consequence was an inexpensive reproduction of what I get on my Echo Show.

I get options that even an Echo Show would not supply

I can see what my Echo speaker thinks it heard

Once the Now Playing function was working, I added a couple of extra. When no music is taking part in, the show defaults to displaying the present time and date, which is what my Echo Show units do. Tapping the show opens 4 good residence controls that I can activate with one other faucet.

Perhaps my favourite function is made potential by the last_called_summary and last_called_response attributes uncovered by the Alexa Media Player integration. These let you know what the last voice command spoken to Alexa was, and the final response that Alexa gave.

I added a function that briefly exhibits the written textual content of the spoken command and the good speaker’s response while you converse to Alexa. If Alexa ever goes improper, it is a straightforward approach to see if it is as a result of she misheard you, since you may see the phrases that Alexa thinks she heard on the display screen.

While you may get an Echo Show to show the spoken response, I’ve by no means discovered a approach to make it present the spoken command, so my setup really offers me options past what an Echo Show can do.

You do not at all times want to purchase new {hardware}

I needed the advantages of a smart display with out having to purchase one, and an affordable CYD was all I wanted to make it occur. It’s made the expertise of utilizing my Echo good audio system a lot better, though finally I’d like to go away Alexa behind utterly.