Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Google has long been focused on artificial intelligence. Its Google Now and voice assistance projects have used AI to better the lives of users. The Google Home voice-based hardware unit brings its assistant to life, making traditional inputs and displays unnecessary. With just the power of your voice, you can interact with the device -- nothing else is needed.
The search giant has decided to take artificial intelligence to the maker community with a new initiative called AIY. This initiative (found here) will introduce open source AI projects to the public that makers can leverage in a simple way. Today, Google announces the first-ever AIY project. Called "Voice Kit," it is designed to work with a Raspberry Pi to create a voice-based virtual assistant. Please keep in mind that the Pi itself is not included, so you must bring your own. For this project, you can use a Pi 3 Model B, Pi 2, or Pi Zero. Want a Voice Kit? Here's how to get it. Heck, you might be getting one for free and you don't even know it.
Source: https://betanews.com/2017/05/04/google-open-source-raspberry-pi-diy-voice-kit/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Monday May 08 2017, @08:37PM (5 children)
Why do they need all that crap? All they are doing is adding a speaker, microphone, light and button to a Pi and bundling you to their platform. It needs several boards for that? An amp chip plugged into the Pi with a microphone. The Pi has a headphone/mic port, why complicate things needlessly? We all know a standard headset can support a single button so they could drive everything into that one 1/8" jack except the light. One frigging GPIO pin can't be that hard for people as smart as Google, right? Talk about over designed!
(Score: 4, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Monday May 08 2017, @09:12PM (2 children)
This is the maker community we are talking about. The same people who think an entire OS stack with a few megs of JS code is how you turn a light bulb on and off.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @09:30PM
Which is a result of their incompetency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:19AM
Me, I just use a switch. [scientificamerican.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:01AM (1 child)
The Pi does not have a mic port. You have been misinformed.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:27PM
Well crap. Saw it had a four pin 1/8" plug, should have read further... they only use it for composite video with no obvious capability for jack switching. One would think a SoC designed for a cell phone would have an mic/audio input, one would assume the brainiacs would have bothered to expose such a useful input, even if only on the 40pin header. One would apparently be wrong in ASSuming these things. :(