techo5

README

TECHO5

Tech Echo 5 — an open, local-only firmware project for the Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd generation, 2021, codename cronos).

The goal is a leaner and more capable replacement for the stock Alexa software: a Home Assistant voice satellite with an on-device wake word, a native media_player, and a dashboard display, with nothing leaving the house.

Why

The Echo Show 5 is a 5.5-inch touchscreen, a far-field microphone array, a speaker and a MediaTek MT8163 in a nice enclosure. Once the bootloader is unlocked it is a small Linux computer that only needs three jobs done well:

1. hear a wake word and stream audio to Home Assistant Assist,
2. play speech and music,
3. show a dashboard.

Android is a lot of machinery for that. TECHO5 aims to do those jobs with a small daemon and a kiosk, keep the hardware fully local, and stay easy to update.

Status

Early, but talking. The ported daemon (echod/) runs on a Show, appears in Home Assistant as an ESPHome voice satellite, and completes voice turns: wake word on the device, transcription and reply through Home Assistant, speech from the speaker. It is started by hand on a bench unit with Android's framework stopped; see docs/porting-plan.md for what is left.

For daily use the working path on this hardware is still:

• bootloader unlock with amonet-cronos,
• LineageOS 18.1 (unofficial),
• the ShowAssist Android app as the satellite and display.

That works, but it is Android underneath. The plan in docs/porting-plan.md is to replace the Android layers step by step, starting with the voice path.

Installing on a Show

On a cronos unit already running LineageOS 18.1 with USB debugging and rooted debugging enabled:

cd echod
$env:GOOS='linux'; $env:GOARCH='arm'; $env:GOARM='7'; $env:CGO_ENABLED='0'
go build -trimpath -ldflags '-s -w' -o ../bin/echod-arm ./cmd/echod
cd ..
.\tools\install-cronos.ps1 -Serial <adb serial> -Name "Kitchen" -KeyFile .\kitchen.psk

The installer puts the daemon in place as an init service, switches Android to its null audio HAL (the daemon owns the microphone and speaker), provisions the name, API key and wake word models, and reboots. Home Assistant then discovers the device as an ESPHome node; paste the key when asked. Android and any app on the screen keep running, silently.

Approach

EchoLocal (MIT) already turns the Echo Dot 2 (biscuit, the same MT8163 family) into an ESPHome-native Home Assistant satellite with a single static Go daemon that drives the hardware directly. TECHO5 intends to bring that daemon to cronos and add the display layer it does not have, rather than port a whole Linux distribution first.

See:

• docs/hardware.md — what is known about the cronos hardware and the unlock path
• docs/porting-plan.md — milestones and open questions

Name

TECHO5 reads as "Tech Echo 5": the Echo hardware lineage and the 5.5-inch form factor. Style it TECHO5 or tEcho5.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

TECHO5 is not affiliated with Amazon. Echo and Alexa are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc.