At last, Google discovers Raspberry Pi for real

With AIY Projects, Google claims, Makers can use artificial intelligence to make human-to-machine interaction more like human-to-human interactions. They promise to release a series of reference kits, starting with voice recognition. The speech recognition capability in AIY’s first project is using the Raspberry Pi, along with a voice HAT (Hardware Accessory on Top) for the audio capture. The HAT contains hardware for audio capture and playback and was designed and tested with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. Wow! Well done Google!

I think it started a few years back with Apple’s Siri, the “intelligent” personal assistant and knowledge navigator built in for instance iPhones. Of course, the competition quickly followed the example and today we also have Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant, and Samsung Viv. They all have their quirks and strong points, but we can expect them to improve a lot in the (near) future. Surprisingly, the assistant that is currently having the best chances of beating them all is Amazon’s Alexa.

A fun new online interactive musical experience between humans and computer gives us a good example of machine learning. The experimental gadget is called A.I. Duet and allows you to play a question-answer game with the computer on a MIDI keyboard. The machine listens to you play, then replies to you.

To a bright New Year … Google may have reason to say too! To replace their somewhat hapless ‘Brillo’, the Internet company will out bring a revised version of their IoT OS called "Android Things", tailored to run on SBCs like the Raspbery Pi. A series of articles to get you going is already scheduled for publication in Elektor Magazine.

Google is releasing a developer preview of their Android Things, a new operating system that is said to make it easier for developers to code for IoT. The new OS contains feedback from Google's previous Android-based IoT OS, Brillo. Android Things will still have tools for Android Studio, the Android SDK, Google Play Services and Google Cloud Platform - with updates to all the software.

Colorful tangible blocks that once snapped together, send their equivalent in compiled code to a nearby robot or application. That’s how Google Creative Labs and IDEO (the .com, not the .org) believe programming can be taught at a very young age.

Look what can happen when the electronicist in you gets the urge to knock up some tone controls quickly... Without great effort you (1) quickly Google the standard circuit, (2) find something that will do the job and (3) decide to improve it, coming up with a brand-new alternative circuit. That’s not all: you look deeper into the subject and end up discovering several innovative variations. Isn’t this fun?!?

A new project initiated by Google (who else?) restores glory and respect to those who pioneered millimeter-wave radio and were forced to make room for the DC-and-microcontroller generation of electronic designers ruling the scene today.

Over the past months Google has been busy downsizing its Android operating system (OS) to make it suitable for the Internet of Things (IoT). The new OS, Brillo, is intended to run on small connected embedded devices that will be all over the place in the next few years (if we may believe the experts). An OS without a hardware platform to run on is not worth a lot but luckily Intel and Imagination have closed that gap.

Google’s Project Soli promises a tiny radar-based chip capable of tracking sub-millimeter movements. Is this the next level of gesture control? Although it’s still in its early dev stage, we like the look of what we see! At Google I/O sessions, the company unveiled its approach to gesture control for wearable devices; Soli: a tiny radar-based chip capable of tracking sub-millimeter motions. This interactive sensor can measure the movements and gestures of fingers and translates the resulting signal into commands, allowing the users to control different features as if they were using a conventional touch interface.