CircuitMess Spencer: The Educational DIY Voice Assistant Hobby Kit

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The CircuitMess Spencer box cover.
Around the same time last year, I posted a review of a project where my son and I built a DIY mobile phone: the CircuitMess Ringo. Well, this year, both he and I built a DIY voice assistant: the CircuitMess Spencer.

I have to admit, this kit took a bit less time to assemble [than the Ringo]. It also required less soldering which is good for my son, because he needs to spend time practicing before taking on projects such as this. Fortunately, CircuitMess manufactures and sells practicing kits which I will need to purchase for him to build up his soldering skills.

Anyway, upon opening the box for the Spencer, you will find all the components neatly categorized and separated.

Inside the CircuitMess Spencer box.

Note – The instructions are available for download online and on the CircuitMess website but there is a problem with the English version. Midway through the instructions, the images are not available. I needed to download the German version to view those same images while continuing to follow the English instructions.

A great parent and child project.

Aside from the minor issue with images in the English translation, it was relatively simple putting this kit together and we both had fun doing it. At the end, the Spencer was connected to the CircuitBlocks program to get the WiFi configured and the firmware updated.

Note – CircuitBlocks is available on Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Ubuntu Linux.

Connecting the Spencer to CircuitBlocks.

The best part of the Spencer is that it is very programmable. The IDE is very similar to Scratch. For those less familiar with Scratch, it is a very kid-friendly programming interface designed to teach the foundations and basics of programming computer code.

Programming the Spencer.

Now, we were still learning how everything works together and [more than once] flashed bad code to the Spencer. This resulted in the Spencer crashing every time and us restoring the firmware to its factory image. An easy fix and an easy process.

The last few pages of the instructions contain a list of supported questions and commands for the Spencer, as in asking what the weather is or having it tell a joke and many more. Listening to its responses is very entertaining.

Anyway, both my son and I enjoyed putting together this project and the CircuitMess Spencer is highly recommended for anyone looking to build something fun with their child.

 

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Published by Petros

Petros Koutoupis is the self appointed BDFL of the RapidDisk project. Most of his career has been in software development in the data storage industry. He is deeply involved in open source software development and for years has written code for the Linux kernel, various open source device drivers and applications in both the embedded and server spaces.