“Wireless and hands-free” is the mantra for next-generation voice-enabled products. This trend is catching up fast with TV remote controls. Pushing the buttons on the remote control to talk will soon be a thing of the past. The next generation of TV remote controls will be wireless and hands-free.

Voice-enabled remote controls have standard batteries and need to work well in noisy backgrounds. They also need to transmit the voice data wirelessly to the TV from several feet away. Designing these remotes require power-efficient BLE/Wi-Fi and audio processing solutions since both of them contribute significantly to battery life. This is where QuickLogic’s EOS S3 SoC with its voice-optimized hardware comes in with its <100uA always-on wake word operation.

The smart TV remote control at QuickLogic’s suite at CES 2020 is an example of how the EOS S3 Voice and Sensor Processing Platform enables wake word listening capabilities with significantly lower power consumption compared to other MCU-based devices for remote controls.