An Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd generation, 2021) with Amazon's software wiped off and replaced by techo5, a small Linux firmware that turns it into a private Home Assistant voice assistant and touch dashboard. No Alexa, no cloud, and the wake word still works.
This site: https://echohack.daha.us/
The device & tools
Which Echo Show qualifies, what is inside it, and the short list of things to have on the desk before starting.
The Show boots straight into a minimal Alpine Linux root filesystem. One program, echod, drives the microphones, speaker, screen, touch, camera and radios and talks to Home Assistant over the native ESPHome API, encrypted, on the local network only. It shows up in HA as an ESPHome device with a voice satellite, a media player, a camera, an update entity and dozens of settings.
Voice
Wake word detected on the device (microWakeWord). Twelve to choose from, including "Alexa", "Okay Nabu", "Hey Jarvis", "Computer".
Speech goes to Home Assistant Assist, whatever pipeline you run there (local Whisper and Piper, or a cloud one).
Echo cancellation, so it hears you over its own music. Stops listening when you stop talking.
Timers and alarms that ring even if HA is down. Announcements to every Show in the house.
Screen
Clock with weather, rain radar, photo backgrounds, thirteen themes, night mode.
Your Home Assistant dashboards, either drawn by the device from the card config or streamed pixel-exact from a helper server.
Live camera feeds from HA, and the Show's own front camera as an HA camera entity.
Calendar with pop-ups, now-playing art from Music Assistant, radio stations.
The plan at a glance
#
Stage
Where
Roughly
1
Confirm the model (C76N8S) and the Fire OS version, register it once so it can update
On the Show
20 min, mostly waiting for updates
2
Unlock the bootloader with amonet-cronos ("fastbrick")
Linux live USB or Windows PC
10 min
3
Back up stock Fire OS from TWRP
Same PC
10 min
4
Flash LineageOS 18.1 (cronos v0.4 or newer), enable USB debugging
Same PC
15 min
5
Run the techo5 installer
Any computer with Python, adb, fastboot
15 min
6
Add it to Home Assistant, pick wake word and dashboard
HA
10 min
Budget an evening. Most of it is downloads and progress bars.
Read before you start
This can brick the device. The unlock uses a bootloader exploit. Most of these units have no low-level recovery mode, so a brick is permanent. It wipes everything on the Show and ends its life as an Alexa device unless you restored the backup you make in stage 3. Keep it on its own power adapter the whole time and never unplug it while anything is being written.
Only the 2021 Echo Show 5, model C76N8S, follows this procedure. The 2019 model (H23K37) uses a different exploit package. Using the wrong one can bootloop the device.
The Show has about 1 GB of usable RAM and 8 GB of storage. That is plenty for techo5, which is why the project exists; it is not enough to run a full Android with Google apps comfortably.
techo5 is a hobby project by one developer, in daily use on a few units, and updated often. Expect an occasional rough edge, and expect updates to arrive through HA's update card.