NXP — SLN-LOCAL2-IOT i.MX RT Solution for Offline Voice Control

NXP SLN-LOCAL2-IOT EdgeReady Development Kit

i.MX RT106S / i.MX RT105S MCU-Based Solution for Offline Voice Control

The NXP SLN-LOCAL2-IOT Development Kit uses the i.MX RT106S or i.MX RT105S MCUs to deliver local voice control by means of phoneme-based speech recognition and a speech modeling tool using text input.

Add voice assistant capabilities: NXP’s EdgeReady MCU-based solution for offline local voice control leverages the i.MX RT10xx crossover MCU family, enabling developers to quickly and easily add voice assistant capabilities to their products. Quick out-of-the-box evaluation and proof of concept development: This i.MX RT106S-based (and i.MX RT105S) turnkey solution includes a development kit (SLN-LOCAL2-IOT) with fully integrated software running on FreeRTOS, for quick out-of-the-box evaluation and proof of concept development.

Optimized BOM costs: The BOM cost optimized reference design and production-ready SDK minimizes time to market, risk, and development effort, enabling OEMs to easily add voice to their smart home, smart appliance, smart building and smart industrial products, without the need for Wi-Fi or cloud connectivity, addressing the privacy concerns of many consumers.

Create speech models: This second-generation local voice solution has a Windows™ based tool enabling developers to create speech models for more than 100 custom commands and multiple wake words from text input, with support for more than 40 languages.

NXP i.MX RT106S and i.MX RT105S Microcontrollers

Featuring advanced implementation of the Arm^® Cortex^®-M7 Core

The i.MX RT106S and i.MX RT105S NXP EdgeReady solutions feature NXP’s advanced implementation of the Arm^® Cortex^®-M7 core, which operates at speeds up to 600 MHz to provide high performance and real-time response to target low cost embedded local voice control applications.

In addition to the local voice control capability, these i.MX RT MCUs have plenty of available CPU horsepower and peripherals, making it suitable to be the main processor in many applications. The i.MX RT106S and i.MX RT105S solutions are supported by MCUXpresso SDK, IDE and Config Tools and licensed to run NXP’s pre-integrated, local voice control software, including:

• Automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine supporting over 100 commands
• Far-field machine learning audio front end (AFE)
• Ambient noise reduction
• Beamforming
• Acoustic echo cancellation for barge-in
• Playback processing
• Codecs
• Media player/streamer
• MQTT, lwIP, TLS
• Discovery and onboarding
• All drivers, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth™

Benefits

i.MX RT106S & i.MX RT105S MCUs

• i.MX RT106S is an i.MX RT1060 MCU (Arm Cortex-M7 with 1 MB SRAM)
• i.MX RT105S is an i.MX RT1050 MCU (Arm Cortex-M7 with 512 kB SRAM)
  • Includes a phoneme based automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine that has a PC-based tool to create models for custom commands from text input (no NRE)
• Supports over 100 commands, multiple wake words, in over 40 languages with up to four simultaneously (on the i.MX RT106S)
• Also includes an easy to use, self-tuning, machine learning audio front end (AFE) for far-field voice
• Familiar MCU platform for IoT developers No Linux & MPU learning curve for RTOS developers
• Local voice eliminates cost, latency & privacy issues of cloud
• NXP’s EdgeReady solutions reduce time-to-market
  • Full reference design, software source, schematics, BOM & layout

Target Applications

Local Voice Control

Local voice control target applications include smart home, smart appliance, smart industrial and smart building applications that benefit from hands-free private voice control without cloud connectivity:

Smart Home

• Smart lighting, shade and fan controls
• Smart switches, dimmers, plugs and outlets
• Thermostats, room air conditioners and (de-)humidifiers
• Alarm panels, glass break sensors, smoke & CO detectors
• Set top boxes, home gateways and routers
• Garage door openers and access panels
• Smart toys

Smart Appliances

• Whitegoods (fridge, oven, washer, dryer, cooktop, vent hood, etc.)
• Countertop (microwave, coffee maker, food processor, multicooker, etc.)

Smart Industrial and Smart Building Applications

• Elevators, vending machines, access control
• Intercom systems
• Advanced human machine interfaces (HMI)
• Industrial automation and hands-free process control