Your Echo Show, rebuilt. Linux inside, Home Assistant in charge, no Amazon cloud.

What's new · Built on EchoLocal · Why · Screenshots · Stock vs TECHO5 · Install · Under the hood · Credits · TECHO5 ATHENA · TECHO5 Dot · TECHO5 Spot

New: the Echo Show 8 2nd gen (2021, athena) runs TECHO5 on a 64-bit mainline Linux kernel. The story, the board and the UART pads: TECHO5 ATHENA. Install: docs/install-athena.md.

TECHO5 (Tech Echo 5) is open firmware for Amazon's Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 8, both generations of each. It replaces Fire OS and Alexa with a small Alpine Linux image and one Go daemon, turning the Show into a fast, private Home Assistant voice satellite with a touch screen of its own. It started on the Show 5, which is where the name comes from.

Every Echo that can be unlocked now runs it. The bootloader exploit these devices are opened with, amonet, opens most of these Echos, and saiyaku-athena unlocks the Show 8 2nd gen. All of them run the same daemon:

Device	Model	Repository	Status
Echo Show 5, 2nd gen (2021, cronos)	C76N8S	this one	In daily use
Echo Show 5, 1st gen (2019, checkers)	H23K37	this one, same binary; hardware notes in techo5-checkers	In daily use
Echo Show 8, 1st gen (2019, crown)	C7H6N3	this one, same binary	In daily use
Echo Show 8, 2nd gen (2021, athena)	A8H3N2	this one, same daemon on its own 64-bit mainline kernel; the story in TECHO5 ATHENA	In daily use on two units
Echo Spot, 1st gen (2017, rook)	VN94DQ	TECHO5 Spot	In daily use
Echo Dot, 2nd gen (2016, biscuit)	RS03QR	TECHO5 Dot	In daily use
Echo, 2nd gen (2017, radar)	XC56PY	TECHO5 Dot, same release and daemon	Working on one unit
Echo Dot, 3rd gen (2018, donut)	D9N29T	TECHO5 Dot, same release, its own daemon build	Working on two units
Echo Input (2018, cupcake)	C1125P	TECHO5 Dot, the Echo Dot 3rd gen's release and daemon build	Experimental, not yet tried on a unit
Android tablets and the Meta Portal, no unlock	Android 8.0 or later, ARM	TECHO5 Panel, an app with the same daemon inside (docs/panel.md)	Tested on a Fire HD 8 (10th gen), a Galaxy Tab S6 Lite and a Meta Portal (2nd gen); other tablets may work

Every other device amonet opens is a Fire tablet. No Echo made after 2021 has a public unlock.

Beyond the Echos and the Panel's tablets, the Skylight Calendar 15 (150-CAL) runs it too, a wall calendar with a 1920x1080 touch screen. TECHO5 puts its own 64-bit mainline kernel and the same daemon on it, over adb, after a full backup. It has no microphone, so it's a screen and a speaker: no wake word, voice, phone calls or intercom. Tried on one unit, the newest port: docs/install-skylight.md.

How it compares with EchoLocal, EchoMuse, echo-dot-assist, Kiosk Satellite and View Assist: docs/comparison.md.

Waking to light. For up to half an hour before an alarm the screen becomes a dawn, on a curve that does most of its work near the end. Every frame here is drawn by the code the device draws with.

What's new

The bigger changes of September to November 2026. Every release lists the rest.

• 📞 Call by wake word, Hang up bar, repeating alarms (v1.6.28). A wake word can call a phone book contact (#463), calls can keep the page on screen with a Hang up bar (#459), and the Set an alarm blueprint understands repeating days (#461).
• 🎙️ External microphone processing and custom screens (v1.6.27). An interface for a separately installed audio processing helper, off unless you choose External (#407, docs/external-asp.md). Other boards can add their own full-screen pages and show one when idle (#447). AirPlay 2 works on the Show 8 2nd gen (techo5-athena #5).
• 🎶 Snapcast, your own Headscale and a dark nursery (v1.6.26). Every device can be a Snapcast client, in step with the house's other Snapcast speakers (#406). Tailscale can join a Headscale server you run instead of Tailscale's, from the setup page or the headscale_login action (docs/tailscale.md). Baby monitor light turns the listening mark down to its dimmest or off, for a nursery kept dark (#448).
• 📝 To-do lists, a baby monitor and your own sounds (v1.6.23). With echo cancellation on, you can speak right after the wake word, without waiting for the sound. A To-do tab in the drawer shows Home Assistant's to-do and shopping lists on the Show, the Skylight and the Panel. A private link plays the room's sound live in a phone's browser (Baby monitor, off until you turn it on), and the wake, volume, button, Bluetooth and Drop In sounds can be your own. Voice volume and Call volume sit beside the music volume, and the assistant's replies can play on another speaker. Pop-ups can be large or huge for reading across a room (#396), the night clock can keep Next up (#397), and a fan on a drawn dashboard opens speed, direction and presets on a long press (#410). The Echo Dot and Echo 2nd gen get a ring that follows the music, and all of them a Clearer speech switch. Bluetooth devices such as Hue bulbs can be paired through the proxy (#398), the Show 8 2nd gen uses the ondemand CPU governor (#413), and the installers try a failed download again (#393).
• 🌧️ Rain on the glass, and a news update by voice (v1.6.22). Rain on the weather page and the weather art gathers on the glass and runs down, and lightning strikes at random with a new bolt each time. The direct assistant plays a news update when asked. Wi-Fi quiet hours keeps the device off the Wi-Fi at night (#391), and a repeating alarm can skip one morning from its wake-up light (#360).
• 📊 Wake scores, a privacy switch and new diagnostics (v1.6.21). Voice request events carry the wake word's score and why a request was canceled (#381), and **