1Pcs VC-02-Kit Voice Control Module Intelligent Offline Speech Module for Smart Home Devices & Lighting Voice Recognition Development Board

I needed to have some simple voice interaction with a robot I was making and was getting frustrated with the amount of hardware and cloud based services I needed. This device had some bad reviews from people about it not working or being too hard to use, but that wasn't my experience so I thought I would leave a review to help others. Right out of the package, the stock factory firmware worked perfectly. I was able to wake up the device (I used the wake phrase "hello pudding") and control the white light and warm light and I could shut the device down with the command "quit." It has excellent recognition and the Chinese generated voice is easy to understand. My goal is to have this handle the voice commands and responses, and pass a code over the serial line to an ESP32 that is controlling my robot. There are lots of videos that demonstrate how to customize the wake word and all of the commands you want. If you search for VC-02, you will find them. To customize, follow the instructions in the videos. You will go to AI-Thinkers voice website and register for a free account. You will select a device, select offline, and select VC-02 as the controller. You will then be able to set the voice type, sensitivity, whether you want to operate the GPIO pins on the device in response to commands, whether you want to send commands over the serial port, what wake up word you want (the video said they have to be in Chinese, but you can see from my video it accepted "hello robot" as a wake up), and also voice commands that can be run without having to wake up the processor. It was all done with English words and phrases so it was a piece of cake to get through. My first attempt failed, but it was my fault. When using the serial port, do not assign the first two GPIO pins as the serial port. Use GPIO7 for TX (RX will be automatically assigned) and it will work with no issues. When you are done configuring, you select generate firmware. It could take up to 30 minutes to complete (mine did). When done, you can download the new firmware. You then need to burn it to the board. That is done with software you can download from their site. Again, watch a video to see how to do this. I assigned numbers to be sent over the serial port so my ESP32 knows what command was issued. It all worked flawlessly. If you have any experience using Arduino or ESP32 controllers, none of this will be difficult for you. This is an amazingly inexpensive and easy way to add voice functionality to a project.

Kinda fun but you have to go through too many hoops to actually work it

Even though it has potential it does not work, no support website does not work and it is imperative to create changes in the commands and use its functionality. Without their website you ca not flash the board. Do not buy.