Smart Speaker Hacked: Repurposing an ESP32 Touchscreen for Custom Displays

With an interest in smart home tech and automation, writer Adam Davidson wanted to add a display to his old Echo speakers without buying Amazon's expensive display. He chose a $15 ESP32 touchscreen known as the Cheap Yellow Display (CYD), which connects to a small color touchscreen panel.

The CYD was chosen over an E-Ink screen because of its bright colors and touchscreen capabilities, allowing interaction with the Echo speaker. The project relies on Home Assistant integration, specifically the Alexa Media Player integration, which exposes data and controls not available otherwise.

Using this integration, Davidson's smart speaker now has a Now Playing screen, showing album artwork and controls for pausing or skipping tracks, similar to his Echo Show devices. He also added features such as displaying the current time and date, four smart home controls, and the ability to see what the last voice command was and Alexa's response.