Category: google

Here is a quick summary of what is new in the latest Android Things Developer Preview.

Earlier this month Google announced a partnership with AIY by releasing a co-produced build-your-own Google Home kit. Built on Google’s Raspberry Pi 3 developer board, the kit showcased Android Things’ ever-expanding features, particularly the integration of Voice Kit. Enabling developers to build a proper Voice User Interface (VUI) Voice Kit is an open-source platform which can integrate cloud services such as Google Assistant SDK or Cloud Speech API or simply run similar services directly on the device with Tensorflow – Google’s on-board neural-network.

Google also added some important drivers to the mix – most notably those necessary for implementing Google Assistant SDK on any certified development board. Also in tow is support for Inter-IC Sound Bus (I2S) which has been Added to the Peripheral I/O API. A Voice Kit sample for which is included, aimed at demonstrating the use of I2S for audio.

Developer Preview 4 will also bring new hardware, adding a Board Support Package for the NXP i.MX7D. Also, in a display of Android Things’ scalability, Google has released Edison Candle – a sample of custom hardware which fits modularly with SoM’s (system-on-modules) running the lightweight OS. Code for this sample is hosted on GitHub while hardware design files can be found on CircuitHub.

Things seem to be coming together quite well for Google’s IoT solution. With the 1.0 release of Tensorflow in February and I/O kicking off, we hope to see even bigger strides today.