Ever since the Amazon Echo Dot was released, the most common question I’m asked about it is if there’s a way to connect an external speaker without disabling the internal speaker. This is because many owners want to use their nice sound system when listening to music through the Echo Dot, but don’t want to have to always turn on or unplug their external speakers when asking Alexa a quick question or request. I set out to find a solution to this common gripe and here’s what I came up with.
While I did come up with a way to hear audio simultaneously through the Echo Dot’s internal speaker and an external speaker connected to the Echo Dot’s 3.5 mm audio jack, I was not happy with the result. For that reason, I don’t recommend others replicate my method. I’m posting this guide primarily to share what I learned so that others can possibly improve on my solution.
By default, the Echo Dot bypasses the internal speaker and routes audio through its 3.5mm audio jack if it detects an audio cable is connected to the port on the back. The way I achieved audio through the internal speaker while an external speaker is connected is by hard wiring the internal speaker to the 3.5mm audio jack. This way, when audio gets redirect through the audio jack, the internal speaker continues to also receive the audio signal.
My method worked, but I was unhappy with it because it resulted in constant feedback noise coming through the internal speaker if no audio cable was connected. When an audio cable is connected, the feedback noise did go away, which is great, but the internal speaker was noticeably quieter than normal. Having the internal speaker with noise in one state and quieter in the other was unacceptable to me, so I ultimately removed the modification and restored the Echo Dot to its default functionality.
I was just experimenting with an idea I had and didn’t spend much time trying to solve the issues that I ran into. With a bit more tinkering, it should be possible to achieve clean audio from both internal and external speakers. If I experiment further, I’d like to try and tap directly into the digital to analog converter (DAC) chip, instead of the 3.5mm audio jack.
Here is my process for those interested:
First, you need to open the Echo Dot. This is done peeling away the rubber bottom which is attached with adhesive. The adhesive on my Echo Dot remained intact enough to be used again once I reassembled everything. Under the rubber bottom are 4 Torx screws that must be removed. I believe they are T7 or T8 size.
The internal components of the Echo Dot are stacked loosely on each other, so once the screws and bottom housing are removed, be careful not to put any strain on any ribbon cables. The internal speaker will likely remain in the bottom housing but it is held in only by friction and can be easily popped out, although it’s unnecessary.
Disconnect the ribbon cable from the circuit board by gently lifting the thin black strip of plastic upwards, then carefully pull back on the ribbon cable. With the ribbon cable disconnected, lift the metal housing (which is a heat sink) and the circuit board away from the rest of the Echo Dot’s internal components.
The circuit board is attached to the metal heat sink by a sticky thermal pad. Gently peel the circuit board and heatsink apart. Be careful not to damage the thermal pad or get it dirty. When reassembling, be sure to firmly press these two pieces together before placing them back on the other components.
The audio jack solder points are as indicated in the above image. There’s a slight chance I have the LEFT and RIGHT channels flipped, since I’m writing this off of memory, but because the internal speaker is mono, it does not matter much which is which.
For simplicity, I soldered wires to the LEFT and GROUND to be attached to the internal speaker. (I am clearly not good at soldering.) There are alternate ways of converting stereo to mono that you might want to research if you’re serious about doing this yourself.
On the other side of the circuit board are the two springy connection points that the internal speaker sits on. I wrapped my wires, without soldering, to the base of these springs in order to quickly test my idea. As I said early, I was not happy with the result, so I never soldered this connection.
Something worth trying is connecting the audio jack wires directly to the internal speaker and not allowing the speaker to connect to the two springy points at all. This would make it so the internal speaker only works if an audio cable was connected, but might result in better audio to the internal speaker. My goal was always to have a normally functioning Echo Dot when no external audio cable was connected, so I unfortunately never thought of trying this when I had the Echo Dot apart.
Perhaps I’ll experiment more with this idea in the future. Hopefully, this helps someone use what I’ve learned and run with it to come up with a better solution for using the Echo Dot’s internal speaker while an external speaker is connected.
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great i have been looking into doing something like this
i do not know why they didn’t just make it so this is possible and switchable by voice command from the beginning , it was really poorly though out
i have though of another simple solution though
do you think that we could fit something like and ESP8266 inside there?
then we could make a smart home device out of it and use it to switch the mod wire connection on or off
but i do not know why you would want both the mono speaker and the 3.5mm working simultaneously
just being able to leave a cable plugged in to the 3.5mm jack without it switching off the internal speaker would be good enough for me providing i could control things by asking to switch the 3.5mm jack on or off
here is the solution i propose ,let me know if you think it is feasible,
basically use an arduino esp8266 to switch the wire /circuit that lets the dot know that a 3.5mm cable has been plugged in and turns off the internal speaker ,flash a smart home script to the esp board so it acts as a wemo switch in smart home , then you could just ask alexa to switch on the 3.5mm jack or switch it off while being able to always have a 3.5mm jack inserted in the jack ,you could switch the internal speaker on or off by voice instead of having to unplug or plug the cable into the jack
not sure but i think those boards have another GPIO pin too so maybe you could also modify it to switch on the internal speaker at the same time you have the 3.5mm jack switch on if you really wanted to also have simultaneous operation of the internal and external
hopefully it would not be too difficult to solder to get power to the esp board internally as well so it could be powered by the same USB
also there is debate on weather the esp8266 can tolerate 5v input
might need to throw in a level shifter or another method to step down voltage to 3.3v
Being able to manually switch between internal and external speakers at will is certainly better than hard wiring both to be on simultaneously, but obviously, that’s far more complicated and probably beyond most people’s ability. I think having both on would be sufficient for most people because I presume the external speaker will always drown out the internal speaker when both are on.
Using the ESP8266 is a very interesting idea. Amazon compacted everything in the Dot very tightly so finding room for the ESP8266 will be difficult. One option could be to cut one of the 4 “legs” on the heatsink to make room for the ESP8266 in its place, but I don’t know how that would affect the Dot’s operation.
I believe the Dot knows to switch to the external speaker by detecting a short across two points caused by the tip portion of the 3.5mm plug. The switch from internal to external and vice versa is done by software because for a very brief moment, both speakers are active when plugging and unplugging an audio cable.
With any luck, someone at Amazon/Lab126 sees this article and adds in an option in the Alexa app to manually control the internal speaker.
I believe the Dot knows to switch to the external speaker by detecting a short across two points caused by the tip portion of the 3.5mm plug
yes i know that is what i am suggesting controlling with the esp
ah ok thanks ,so this confirms for me that it is possible through a firmware or software update
i never noticed the split second simultaneous sound through both speakers before
i have contacted amazon months ago and made the suggestion to them while troubleshooting a bluetooth issue
i hope they do add it eventually and also the ability to control other echo dots connections across devices , so you could say for example “alexa switch on kitchen dot external speaker” or “alexa switch on kitchen dot’s internal speaker” or just “alexa internal on ” or “kitchen dot external on” or “kitchen internal on” when speaking to a dot other than kitchen ,saying seithc to internal without specifying a device would by default switch it on the device you are speaking to
since you confirm there are no hardware limitations i do not see why they would not want to implement full audio switching
for bluetooth and 3.5mm and across all devices
also they could have a sound scene option for different configurations
this would be good to also include sonos too (which i do not own)
you could have one scene where you have one dots internal speaker switched on and another dot in another room with 3.5mm switched on and internal off
i think sound themes would be a nice addition especially since they have sonos integration now
another thing they could do is make volume control sliders next to the device name in a sound theme section of the app ,you could create a new sound themes , add devices to the theme and then each device listed in the scene would have a volume control slider to the right of it in the app along with on/off toggle tick boxes for bluetooth, internal speaker,and 3.5mm
kind of like how the HUE app has dimmer sliders next to each light
oh yeah this is what i was afraid of , not enough internal real estate in there especially if you need to regulate the power
plus that heat sink , i am surprised the dot can connect to wifi at all with all that metal in there, it practically a faraday cage ,esp might not be able to be mounted in an ideal position for good wifi reception
How about an audio cable splitter for the audio jack to send the audio stream to an alternate unpowered speaker? The volume level may be rather low on an unpowered speaker but it may serve the purpose.
That would definitely work, but I was trying to find a solution that people could do without having to buy anything extra.
Genius, thanks. I hope Amazon provide the option for the intercom service to work via internal speaker. It kind of defeats the object if I need to remotely turn on the receiver/speakers to call the children to dinner. Might as well just use a bell, which is fine unless a baby is sleeping, and vertainly not as pleasant.
I think you did this the hard way. There ought to be a switch in the 3.5mm jack that disconnects the internal speaker when the male plug is inserted. All you probably had to do is short the switch terminals of the 3.5mm jack.
I started by experimenting with the 3.5mm jack alone. From what I can tell, the jack is dead until the tip of the 3.5mm plug shorts a pair of connections in the jack. When that occurs, the signal to the internal speaker is cut off, so there’s no way to modify the jack so that both it and the pins to the internal speaker are active. The switch from one to the other is almost certainly done via software because there is a lag from when a plug is inserted and the audio switches. That’s why I resorted to trying to bring the internal speaker pins back to life by hard wiring them.
I have one plugged into a speaker selector that feeds 6 zones in my house. I have to have the livingroom zone on and turned up just to hear the echo.
I think I will be making a kid to one of mine and trying this out.
plus one
drives my wife crazy
amazon should just implement this.
ill even buy andw echo if thats what it takes
Wouldn’t it be the easiest if one could group an Echo device with a Fire TV device (like Fire TV 1. Gen) and have multiroom audio through the Echo and HDMI/SPDIF of the Fire TV?
To those wondering why you may want to do this, I currently have my Dot with a 3.5mm audio splitter running to an external speaker and a USB ADC plugged into a Raspberry Pi. The Pi then runs music visualization software which is then displayed on an LED array.
I would like to upgrade to the new generation Echos and do away with the external speaker, but that would prevent the Pi getting audio.
Alternatively, I could try and use the AVS SDK to get music, but that is limited to commercial device manufacturers, and I’m a hobbyist.
Alternatively, I use a redundant Dot in multi-room music mode purely to feed the ADC via the dot’s DAC……..
https://github.com/rbirkby/aws-infra/blob/master/content/visualization-skill.md
I would keep the led array playback separate personally, so that it doesn’t get too confusing. It already sounds like a non-standard (and cool) system.
The new unannounced Fire TV might be able to playback Alexa via internal speakers if it detects the TV or receiver isn’t on according to this site I think. Nevertheless, I couldn’t think of a foolproof way of this working regarding input selection, and mute buttons etc.
I have just bought a ‘redundant’ echo dot to work with Alexa drop in intercom etc while the main alexa in that multi-purpose room will be the as yet unreleased Fire TV. I plan to change the wake word for the drop in only dot so it won’t get used apart from as an intercom to call the kids for dinner etc.
So I figured it out. You can’t have both at the same time but you can however select between the internal and external 3.5 with a small modification. The headphone jack it a normally closed circuit. So if you have a jack plugged in it opens the circuit. Then if you short the left circuit to the soldering point right below it in your photo. It will switch back to the internal speaker with out unpluging the 3.5. I use SmartThings so I took a sonoff low voltage relay ($6 and they just use a esp8266) and use that to short the connection between the 2 points. Automated it with smartthings and finally I have the best of both worlds.
This is similar to what I’ve done. I’ve soldered two wires to the two middle row connections on the back of the dot’s 3.5mm socket (these connect left+ and right+ chanels to the internal speaker), drilled a small hole next to the 3.5mm socket to allow them to pass outside the dot.
I then have a 2 pole 2 way 12v relay connected to my amp, luckily the amp has a 12v control output that energises when amp is on.
The L+ and R+ output from the 3.5mm plug inserted into the socket goes to the common on the relay (1 to each pole). Then the normally open side is connected to L+ and R+ on the phono cables connected to the amp and the normally closed side is connected to the two wires I soldered to the L+ and R+ connections to the internal speaker. The ground wires from the inserted 3.5mm plug and the phono cables to the amp are connected together (as the ground cable isn’t switched inside the 3.5mm socket this also provides a ground back to the internal speaker through the 3.5mm socket).
When the amp is off the sound comes out through the 3.5mm output to the relay and is then routed through the soldered cables to the internal speaker. When the amp is switched on it energises the relay which then routes the audio from the 3.5mm output direct to the amp.
I am planning to do a mix of these two solutions – using an automotive 12v relay hooked up to the amplifier 12v remote to short the left circuit to ground when the receiver is turned off to trick the Dot into thinking the headphones jack is unplugged.
Steve any suggestions for 2 pole 2 way 12v relays?
How about the same issue but when external speaker is connected via Bluetooth? Has anyone come up with a method to have both play?
Sorry to see this string of advice end with that last question, for I have the same question.
I’d like to listen to the bluetooth speaker downstairs, and still have the echo dot playing upstairs. Why must the internal speaker turn off?
You talked about intereferences when no aux is connected.is it possible that you reverted +L and – on the Speaker? Does it the Job if only 1 wire is connected from the headphone output to the internal speaker? Have you/anyone tried this?
Iam about to open the Dot but the intereferences are making me think about..
greetings
Scott your issue is a software issue. There are phones that can stream to 2 bluetooth sources at one time (Samsung s8) but I doubt you’ll be able to get the echo to recognize two output bluetooth sources unless you have access to the code which Amazon won’t do.
Thanks, but I don’t think this describes my question (or perhaps I don’t understand the terminology/system).
I tell the echo dot to play music, and it does, from incoming wi-fi signal (presumably).
When I then pair it with an external speaker, via outgoing bluetooth, the internal speaker quits playing.
Or are you saying that the music I hear from the echo speaker and the music on the external speaker are both coming via my iPhone, but the phone can only do one destination or the other, but not both simultaneously?
I think you are lowering the impedance in half by having the two speakers in parallel using your method. Of course that would result in lower volume and overdriving the amplifier output stage, which could result in damage, from what I know. The mechanical switch that opens when you plug in the external speaker is meant to prevent this from happening. I wish there was a way you could software enable/disable the external speaker via the Alexa app, or via voice command.
You are correct that having both speakers play at the same time will overdrive the amplifier. That said you can achieve what you want with a Sonoff switch and a bit of soldering.
If you look in the picture above with the labeled Ground/Left/Right when you short the point on the bottom left with the one on the middle left it will tell the Alexa that the headphones are unplugged. You can use the Sonoff’s relay to control when this is shorted and then control it with your voice. My plan is to use a 12v automotive relay + 12v receiver remote to control the output automatically when the receiver is on.
You are aware that the Dot has stereo sound that is then down mixed to mono after the 3.5mm jack for the internal speaker. So just doing the left channel won’t work.
Also shorting out the points won’t tell the dot anything, it’ll just reroute the audio through the short. There’s no data passed through our from the 3.5mm jack, it’s just stereo audio that is switched inside the jack between the internal speaker and the 3.5mm plug inserted. The switch is made by the 3.5mm plug causing a physical disconnection from the points connected to the internal speaker.
It’s not the actual audio channel, it’s a switch that tells the Dot if something is plugged in or not. Shorting it to ground = unplugged even if you still have it plugged in.
This image has a diagram of the internal wiring of a headphone socket. When you push in the headphone jack the circuit opens inside the plug which is the signal to the GPIO in the Dot that something is plugged in. It will work with plastic too – it doesn’t rely on the jack being metal.
https://sc01.alicdn.com/kf/HT1jjJyFQVXXXagOFbXw/206158044/HT1jjJyFQVXXXagOFbXw.jpg
* doesn’t rely on the *plug* being metal.
You are incorrect.
The jack inside the Dot has six connections.
The top two are the audio left and right channels into the jack.
The middle two are the left and right channels out of the jack to the internal speaker.
There bottom two are ground.
When there is no plug present the audio is routed through the jack (via top two connections) then back out to the internal speaker (via middle two connections).
When a plug is inserted it physically disconnects that connection between the two by prising some contacts apart (one for left channel and one for right).
The audio in to the jack (top two connections) then makes contact with the bare metal on the plug to send audio through the 3.5mm plug.
There is no switching of the ground, that is permanently connected to both outputs.
And there is certainly no shorting of an audio channel to ground.
You try your way of you want but you’re likely to damage your Dot.
I have this working and the dot switching from internal speaker to my amp whenever it’s powered up.
I can assure you the jack works as I’ve described above. There is no switch sending a signal to the Dot.
The plug simply disconnects the internal speaker from the circuit inside the jack which is why it will also work with a plastic plug.
Hi Justin – that image that you posted of the diagram for the jack is perfect. What I’m having difficulty doing is correlating that with the image above that shows the pads for the jack.
If you look at the image from the original article (that has the inset image of the plug) – there are arrows to the left and right pads at the top. There are two green arrows to the pads for the ground. There are two pads just below the left and right pads that are unmarked. Is it one of those pads that is the correct one to tie to ground to make the switch?
I’m sure I could just experiment, but I’d rather be armed with data first :-)
Thanks!
Could you help me use the aux port for line in? What I want to do is this. I’d like to be able to use the drop in function to listen to audio that’s routed into the echo dot. Or disable the mics and instead use the line in port.
Shorting either audio channel to ground will likely cause damage to the Dot.
Great reply Steve, I will use it to adapt mine.
Just wish my 52 year old eyes were better for soldering :)
Justin is actually right, Steve is incorrect. I rigged mine with a normally-closed relay that opens when my amp is powered up by Alexa. When the amp is powered down, the contacts close and the Echo powers off the internal headphone amp and turns on the internal speaker. Works great and no need to remove the jack when not usingthe hi-fi.
Please elaborate on what I’m incorrect about.
If you read my earlier post I also have a relay controlling it that works the same as yours. I fail to see how that proves me incorrect.
Hi Steve,
Your method works, but not in the way you think. The echo doesn’t toggle between internal speaker/aux out in a strictly mechanical way. It uses the switch in the jack as a sensor to detect the presence of a jack barrel. The right side (left channel in the pic) center contact is separated from ground when a jack is inserted and this signals the echo to toggle from the internal speaker to the headphone output. You can verify this by shorting that contact to ground while a jack is inserted and the echo will revert to internal speaker after a second or so. Your method is working not because you are routing an audio signal to the internal speaker but because the left side (right channel) center contact becomes a ground when a jack is present (you can verify with multi meter).
I have achieved the same result with much simpler wiing than your method. Just wire the right side center and ground to the normally closed contacts on a spst relay. The echo is fooled into thinking no jack is present and there will be no ouput from the jack but the internal speaker will be on. Have the relay energize when you or alexa powers up the amp so it opens the contacts and voila, internal speaker shuts off and headphone jack powers up.
I think it’s maybe possible amazon could provide output selection on the echo via firware update, but idk. Btw, I have a echo dot 2 and an echo 2 both working with this method and it’s actually an easier mod on the echo 2 than the dot.
This is great but I am still waiting for one of you brainiacs to figure out a way to play simultaneously through both the dot’s speaker and a blue tooth speaker.
Help y’all.
While technically possible I think that is need to be a firmware rather than hardware hack since it’s the Echo that decides where to output the audio channels. The original post here kind of does have both running by just wiring them together but that will definitely affect the quality and likely overdrive the amplifier which could damage it. If I think of anything I’ll let you know though, and not just because I’m partial to the use of y’all :)
Hi Steve,
If you look at Waldemar’s comment below he has a much better explanation of the solution than I gave. The difference in our solutions is that you are controlling the actual audio channels with the relay whereas I am controlling the sensor that tells it if a plug is present or not and then letting the Echo do the audio output switching.
Two means to the same end I suppose :)
J
The solution in the article linked in Waldermars comment backs up exactly what I said. There is no sensor that tells if a plug is present, it a physical disconnection of contacts in the 3.5mm jack.
From the article “The Echo Dot is using a 3.5mm connector that disconnects two pair of pins when the jack plugged in.”.
Sorry you are not correct – there is no audio going through those pins, they are a sensor, not audio channels. When you disconnect the pins it triggers it sets the GPIO to low and tells the Echo that the jack is plugged in, and then the software reroutes the audio.
So let me get this straight. You are trying to tell me that there is no audio going through the connections in the 3.5mm audio jack.
Strange how I’m getting stereo audio through the wires that I have soldered to them.
I have this up and running and working perfectly. In assuming you don’t and it’s just theory in your head.
Software does not route the audio. It is a standard headphone socket that have been in use for years in other devices that physically disconnects the internal speaker when a plug is inserted and routes the audio through the plug instead.
But no amount of explaining is going to convince you.
Serious question. Do you have this working? using your method of shorting one of the audio channels to ground to switch speaker outputs?
Or said another way, it’s an input, not an output which is why it’s a sensor. It detects if something is plugged in and tells the Echo to route the audio output differently.
Steve, there is definately a dectection switch in the jack and the audio output is toggled electronically by the echo. The echo uses a DAC3203 which has a built-in headphone amp. This is what supplies audio to the jack. It is not at all capable of driving the internal speaker to appropiate volume, which is why the author could not get proper volume from the speaker when he direct wired it to the jacks l/r pins. The speaker will be driven by a mono chip amp, something like a TPA2006D1 and the echo sends audio out to one or the other depending on the switch. Thats why it’s not possible to have both play simultaneously.
So which pins do you claim are to a detection switch?
The author tried to wire the internal speaker from one channel of the audio in to the jack, whereas he should have just shorted between the audio in (top connections as identified in his picture) to the middle connections which are the pre-amplified, pre-downmixed to mono connections to the internal speaker. He bypassed the internal amplifiers for the internal speaker that’s why he didn’t get the right sound.
I have this up and working and have tested it thoroughly. I can switch between internal and external speakers with a relay and get both left and right channel sound to each (tested with a stereo phase test soundtrack). I can disconnect one channel from the relay and only get one channel of sound to the internal speaker proving that the internal speaker is routed through the jack then downmixed to mono.
You could probably even wire an aux in socket if you wished. Might even try this later to further prove my point.
Do you have this wired up your way and working?
Oh, and it is possible to have sound from both simultaneously.
I made a crappy video of my modded echo 2 showing what I did. I didn’t feel like taking it apart again, so the 2 wires are soldered to the right side center contact and ground. They are connected to the normally closed contacts on that relay. If there is a simpler way to do this, I haven’t found it.
https://youtu.be/dqHWZipud3I
I may have to eat a bit of humble pie here as my testing didn’t go as expected. It definitely doesn’t work as I expected. Will do a bit more experimenting tomorrow but I’m at the same stage, I have it working as I want it to, so don’t want to be taking it apart again and risking something upsetting it.
The thing is I also have two wires soldered but they are both to the two centre pins and my set up works. But with further testing I realised I only need one of those wires for it to work. I have it working by the relay shorting the middle left to the top left terminals (orientation as in picture above in the article). I also have middle right shorting to top right but that doesn’t appear to make a difference and it seems is unnecessary.
Top two terminals (right and left channels) are connected to the relay through the 3.5mm jack so was no need to solder wires for them.
I certainly don’t have anything shorting to ground but get the right results.
Sorry it middle right to top right that works for me not top and middle left as stated above.
Yes, seems to work either way. I did measure the current both ways and it’s about 0.4 mA both ways, although it becomes a source rather than a sink when you wire it to ground. Soldering is much easier on the ground contact though, no close components that you could damage accidentally.
The audio is switched via software inside the dot. The switch in the audio-out jack tells the system to switch the audio output device. It is *not* a simple mechanical disconnect like 98% of all other audio/headphone out setups. If it was there would be no lag while the audio switches.
Play music through the dot’s internal speaker. Then plug in an audio cable. You’ll still get audio from the internal speaker for about half a second or so.
The simplest solution to the problem at hand requires purchasing a couple of inexpensive itmes but no tinkering with the Dot’s internals.
(1) 3.5 MM HEADPHONE JACK SPLITTER for eample Best Buy SKU 4561008 or Amazon ASIN B01HAVUV1O. You can find these in lots of places, usually sold as a way to connect two stereo headphones to a portable device, and should cost less than $10.
(2) Buy a pair of computer speakers (or repurpose that pair that is sitting in your closet). The ones I use are Logitech Z200. The don’t sound as good as my home audio system but they sound way better than the Dot’s internal speaker.
(3) Connect the splitter to the Dot’s audio jack and connect the computer speakers and the home audio system to the spoitter. Most of the time I leave the computer speakers on (low power drain) so I can as question s like “what time is it” and get an immediate response. The Z200’s are also good enough to listen to Pandora for a half hour. When I want higher quality audio I turn off the computer speakers and switch my hme audio to the Dot. So simple.
As a bonus I can still control audio from either the computer speakers or the home system by voice commands. I set the volume control on each so that the range I get with my voice varies from soft to distortion-free loud.
That works too but I don’t want to look at computer speakers in my living room…and you’re still left with having to turn them off when listening to your audio system.
I get around this by using a smart plug on my stereo. When I ask the Echo to turn lights on and off I don’t mind not getting audio feedback. When I want to hear audio I say “Alexa, turn on the stereo.”
A question I’ve always had, but no one touched on here:
Would it be possible to solder-in, in-tandem, a second or even third simple microphone/audio input feed, maybe just attaching the contacts right on top of the existing built-in mic solder contact points? Or maybe if not there, just adding a standard 3.5mm aux-in Jack in-line somewhere? I haven’t investigated Echo Dot’s inner-workings in great detail, but I feel like I read at one point the Echo Dot has a series of microphones equally-spaced apart, facing outward around the top perimeter in an effort to best capture commands from all angles, and perhaps this would gum up Alexa’s “spatial perception” or whatever, but honestly she kinda sucks already at recognizing commands as it is. I have the 2nd generation Dot (I believe this older post is discussing the original Echo Dot). I have the speakers for my Dot far, far away from the Dot itself, but I’m so so so tired of screaming at her all damn day when she starts going on about random crap I didn’t ask about/starts reading Wikipedia articles that have nothing to do with anything/starts playing songs by Michael Buble when I ask her to turn down the air conditioning (“Make it cooler.”). The walking floorplan of the first floor of my home kind of forms a big loop and I have her on one side but the speakers cover the entire main living area. I’d really like to be able to be anywhere on the first floor and not have to scream loudly like I currently do in order for her to respond. I don’t want multiple Dots on the first floor (there’s already another on the floor in a bedroom) because I don’t want to then have to mess with competing music players. I have found, strangely, that the microphone on my cheapo Amazon Fire HD tablets are much much more sensitive and better at picking up requests than the microphone(s) in the Echo Dot. Often, when I’m angrily screaming at Alexa to stop playing Michael Buble for the 100th time, I’ll hear one of the Fire Tablets left upstairs somewhere, far away, immediately respond “ok!” while the stupid Dot I’m maybe ten feet away from hasn’t even noticed my screaming at it.
I don’t think it would need to be an amplified microphone. Probably might be just fine to use a cheap PC microphone, or maybe even buy a scrap/for parts Dot and just wire the mic in exactly in tandem with the first. I’d really love two or three microphones, and if I can make this happen, I’d build them into the ceilings of the rooms downstairs.
And I would also, as requested above, be so so happy if it were possible to have the line out and Bluetooth simultaneously. I can get around this with standard 3.5mm splitter from the aux-out while using an additional little small Bluetooth transmitter, but the overall audio quality just isn’t wonderful, and I’ve gone through maybe five different Bluetooth transmitters now :-(
Anyway, this website seems pretty awesome! I’ve made some really neat modifications to my cheap-o Fire HD 8 and 10 tablets to where they basically offer the same functionality available from the much more expensive Echo Show devices – playing Spotify, having both Alexa and Google Assistant available to speak to, etc. I have even programmed this epic fued that unfolds between Alexa and Google Assistant, by using routines, where I say one phrase on any device in the house and then Alexa and Google start cursing at each other / start bickering and fighting with the light switches / chase each other around the house, upstairs and down, saying not-so-lovely things to one another/playing annoying songs to “anger” the other, lol. It’s quite entertaining! Especially so when a guest triggers it by saying the phrase and is then completely confused, hah.
I’ve built a circuit to detect and switch on / off the internal speaker. You can find more detail on the github – https://github.com/danielwu68/amazon-echo-dot-aux-speaker-switch/blob/master/README.md
I read this whole thread- interesting. What I want is to have audio going to the 3.5mm jack AND the internal speaker. Steve had mentioned it was possible.. I have actually tried a couple things but have not had success. Anyone have some pointers?
What some of you are failing to understand is that the headphone jack provides a stereo analog signal, while the internal speaker is driven by a digital mono PWM signal. They are not the same signal — nor are they interchangeable! That is why the headphone jack uses an isolated switch to mute the PWM signal; it is not wired to pass its analog signal to the speaker as is done with most headphone jacks.
Now, what I would like to know is audio circuitry schematic that feeds the headphone jack. I have noticed the headphone jack is lacking low bass ( below 50Hz), and I would like to fix that. Does anyone have a schematic? Presumeably, it would merely require larger coupling capacitors.
I’m wondering if just adding another 3.5 jack to the dot, one that is basic, not like the one in the unit. Wire it in. I didn’t click notify me of follow up comments so I sending this again.
It seems the Cube resolves this problem. I connected my HDMI to my AV receiver and played my music through my system. When I turn off the receiver, the Cube’s speaker takes precedence again. Out of the box.
Couldn’t one just use a rotary tool fo file down the aux cord on the same side that the pin that completes the circuit is one?