Ever wanted to dabble in face and/or speech recognition? Espressif's ESP-EYE is a miniature ESP32-based development board that combines a digital microphone, ESP32 (of course) with 8 MB PSRAM and 4 MB flash, and a 2 megapixel camera. There's a few buttons and LEDs as well for basic control and configuration.

Unlike some boards, this codebase does not require internet connectivity - you don't have to send video or audio data to 'the cloud' - it's all processed on-chip! The built in demo shows off what it can do:

• Plug into a computer USB port and open up a serial port connection at 115,200 baud to the new serial port
• Once the red LED is lit, activate the board with the watchword "Hi Lehshin" (in documents they spell it lexin, the x is pronounced as a shh sound)
• The red LED will blink - then connect to the new Wi-Fi access point created
• Open up a web browser to https://192.168.4.1/face_stream
• Point the camera at faces to show off the recognition boxes! Video is about 2 frames per second, not super fast.

Once you get the demo going, check out the source code and ESP development platform to customize your very own DIY voice/speech recognition project.

Technical Details