Amazon Echo Hardware
The Amazon Echo is a nice piece of hardware. My Echo sits on a ledge between my living room and dinning area. From There I can use it to fill both rooms with music and control my home with voice commands.
Out of the box, the Echo is very sleek looking. A simple black cylinder about 9 inches tall. There are two buttons on top. One button, marked with a mute symbol will turn off the 7 microphone array that enables the Echo to be such a good listener.
Amazon has coined the term Far-Field Alexa devices. This means the Echo will listen with its array of microphones and at the hint of the wake word, come to life and stream the audio to the cloud for processing. With the mute button pressed, the Echo will not respond to any voice commands. When the Echo has been muted, the ring on the top and the mute button will glow red, letting you know its not listening.
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The other button is a wake button. Allowing you to press the button and wake up the echo, seeing its blue light ring glow. This can be helpful if you are listening to music at a higher volume, sometimes it can be difficult to get the Echo to hear you. Pressing this button, engages it immediately.
The top of the echo is also a volume knob. You can rotate it in order to turn the volume up or down. The ring around the top will act as a visual indicator of the volume level.
The bottom is pretty simple. Here is where you will find the reset button. That
small pin hole you see in the image to the left. I have had the Amazon Echo plugged in for a year, not once have I had to use that reset button. Actually, taking this picture was the first time I saw it.
The indented area for the DC power adapter plug is nice, it keeps it in place and allows the Echo to maintain its sleek cylindrical form. It is a nice addition to a room and does not take up much space.
Rounding out the hardware of the Amazon Echo is the sound portion. The Amazon Echo is a great sounding speaker. Playing music is probably the most used feature of the Echo bar none. So what gives it this good sound? Well the echo has a 3 piece system that delivers music loud enough and clear enough to fill a large space with music.
