Is the Amazon Echo Flex mute button real or fake? #IoT #InternetOfThings #Alexa #DieShot @electronupdate1 Adafruit Industries Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! [Video]

January 12, 2021 AT 10:11 am

It is always on the privacy-minded person’s mind: can I REALLY turn the microphone off on my Alexa or other Internet of Things device? The Amazon Echo Flex has a “Mute Microphone” button. Does it really do that???

The electronupdate blog finds out!

Let’s do a bit of reverse engineering to sort this question.

If one traces the signal from the push button switch it seems to flow to a small SMT part marked “ICFJ” (right most part of one’s circled below). To the left of this is a part marked “VC74” which will be a package of dual “D” flip flops and on the left the golden component is the microphone.

Decapping the chips helps find out what they are:

From here a bit more of the schematic can be teased out (simplified, some resistors not shown):

And the conclusion:

The  ‘mute’ button appears to be very real and functional.  When the button glows ‘red’ the power is removed from the microphones.

See …