Hacking the Dash Button

Tom Warren in The Verge writes about the fast approaching demise of the Amazon Dash Button.  With some interesting use experience comments.  Also points to some ways that their lifeless shells can be hacked to perform other tasks with the Raspberry Pi.  I pass it along here so that at least a few of them may have an after life purpose.

I will miss Amazon’s Dash buttons
Dashed dreams of toilet euphoria
By Tom Warren  @tomwarren  ...

Google Do it Yourself AI and Voice Kit

For the do it yourself hobbyist, or the clever and inquisitive child, get started with voice and vision AI,   assistants.   $35 and less.  Add AI to your Raspberry Pi.    From MicroCenter.

Do it yourself AI

Google AIY Projects brings do-it-yourself artificial intelligence to your maker projects. With this AIY Voice Kit from Google, you can build a standalone voice recognition system using the Google Assistant or add voice recognition and natural language processing to your Raspberry Pi based projects. The kit includes all of the components needed to assemble the basic kit that works with the Google Assistant SDK as well as on-device voice recognition with TensorFlow.  .... " 

About AI: Build a Face Recognizing Doorbell

I was reminded of how good the O'Reilly sites on AI were by my last post.    Especially about AI and advanced tech topics.      I had somehow missed the piece below, which is a good DIY piece for IOT, AI, voice interfaces and the smart home.   If you build this, you will have a good idea of the challenges involved.   In particular about how you can integrate multiple capabilities and services that are available.  Also a great instructional family project.   Will take a closer look.  Let me know your experiences.

Build a talking, face-recognizing doorbell for about $100  By Lukas Biewald .... 

DIY with Amazon Echo and Raspberry PI: Recognize thousands of people at your door every month, for pennies. .... " 

(Update)  And similarly using Tensorflow   --------------- 

How to build a robot that “sees” with $100 and TensorFlow
Adventures in deep learning, cheap hardware, and object recognition.

By Lukas Biewald September 21, 2016

Gain an intuitive understanding of the concepts and tools for building intelligent systems with "Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and TensorFlow," by Aurélien Géron. ....  

Adding AI to Raspberry Pi

Could be quite  a way to add AI experience for students.  In CWorld: 

Google wants to add A.I. to Raspberry Pi gadgets
Google plans to bring open source machine-learning tools to board makers later this year
By Agam Shah .... "

Raspberry Pi Upgrade

Raspberry Pi upgrades Compute Module with 10 times the CPU performance ... Compute Module for embedded computing gets first big upgrade since 2014.   by Jon Brodkin

 Am a big fan of this, its cheap.  Easy to get started. Would suggest that any child with a hint of interest in computing, electronics or the Internet of Things should get access to one of these.  Admit its a little obscure, and many will need some initial hand holding, but there is no better way to get a start.  Lots of resources on the internet and opportunities to collaborate.  In my era, we had breadboard systems where you could easily set up circuits and test them.  That gave me a lifelong appreciation of the details.   This is a similar way to gen up interest in useful skills.  See more in my tags below on Raspberry Pi.

Alexa Voice Service with Java on Raspberry Pi

I am very late to this, I see lots of people have it working.  All the steps are there, but its an advanced project that requires buying a number of additional parts, some programming understanding, and attention to detail, should be considered experimental ...

https://github.com/amzn/alexa-avs-raspberry-pi
This project demonstrates how to access and test the Alexa Voice Service using a Java client (running on a Raspberry Pi), and a Node.js server.    ..... 

Raspberry Pi Laptop

In Indiegogo: A proposal that takes the basic board and adds keyboard and display, then lets you update the system. Nice idea that could lead to other innovations.

Have some Raspberry Pi

Just starting this book. Not very technical, but you need to be somewhat geeky to engage.  Quite an impressive amount of software comes along:  Starting with Scratch, Python and Mathematica.   Want to understand how the IOT will work?   Also a great way to get the kids into computing, hardware and software.  Essential for a technically oriented child.  You can buy the needed hardware now for as little as $5. That's a buy.

Getting Started with Raspberry Pi: Electronic Projects with Python, Scratch, and Linux Paperback – November 6, 2014
by Matt Richardson  and Shawn Wallace

" ... What can you do with the Raspberry Pi, the inexpensive credit card-sized computer? All sorts of things! If you're learning how to program, or looking to build new electronic projects, this hands-on guide will show you just how valuable this flexible little platform can be.

This book takes you step-by-step through fun and educational possibilities. Write programs in Scratch and Python. Use the Raspberry Pi with Arduino. Create Internet-connected projects. Play with multimedia. With Raspberry Pi, you can do all of this and more.

Get acquainted with hardware features of the Raspberry Pi
Learn enough Linux to move around the operating system
Draw graphics, play sounds, and handle mouse events with the Pygame framework
Use the input and output pins to do some hardware hacking
Discover how Arduino and the Raspberry Pi complement each other
Integrate webcams and the Raspberry Pi Camera Module into your projects

Create your own Pi-based web server with Python ... "

See also the RaspberryPi org
And,  Programming the Raspberry Pi

Windows 10 for the IOT?

Would never have thought of something like Windows suitable for running small connected devices. Unfortunately the term 'bloated' comes to mined.   But Microsoft thinks otherwise, and has adapted the newly launched mothership for kayak purposes.  Or is this more for demonstration purposes saying 'We can do it', rather than we expect everyone to take this approach?  Much more technical detail below

Microsoft wants to put Windows 10 on every connected gadget.
Microsoft is encouraging makers to build security systems, automated lighting controls and other Internet of Things Gadgets on Windows 10.  ....

Microsoft just released Windows 10 IoT Core, a slimmed-down version of Windows 10 that runs on the $40 Raspberry Pi 2 and Intel's $140 MinnowBoard MAX—credit card-sized computer boards that makers use to prototype connected gadgets. A version certified for Arduino (the granddaddy of hardware hacker boards) is coming, says Tony Goodhew, a program manager in Microsoft's IoT Team. ....  " 

SAP IOT Garden Innovation

Work and thoughts by SAP on IoT Innovation, in a Garden:

" ... Within SAP, IoT has begun taking shape in the form of grassroots projects and pilot implementations to fully validated solutions with external partners.

SAP Palo Alto’s IoT garden began with a simple vision and small budget: to automate the campus garden with consumer grade water and temperature sensors and a raspberry pi computer. By monitoring moisture and humidity, and combining the data with weather patterns, the project demonstrated how to set optimal workflows in the garden including how much to water, when to cover plants, and the suitability of certain plants given average sun and temperature patterns. The ultimate goal, as with most other IoT implementations, is enabling bidirectional communication so that collected information can be propagated back to the edge in the form of enhanced workflows.  ...  " 

Matchbox Computing

Very small computers  Complete computing systems the size of credit cards. or smaller.  Was looked at for possible sensor duty.  But once you could communicate easily with remote sensors, were largely put aside. Still valuable for the right applications.  The Raspberry PI is the best known.  I got a chance to look at an application manual for its use recently that open my eyes to data rich capabilities.

Careful Consumers, Smarter Marketing, Smarter Machines

In Wharton's long running set of online articles:  New Retail Strategies: Offering a Better Fit for Today's Careful Consumers.   Among a number of other things they talk about Coke's new machine:

" ... Retailers looking for growth in today's economy might pick up a lesson or two from Coca-Cola's Freestyle vending machines. First tested in 2009 and now rolling out full force nationwide, the futuristic touch-screen machines offer customers 125 different beverage choices, from flavored Dasani waters and sports drinks to Diet Cherry Coke.

Customers can even create their own combinations -- Fanta Orange and vanilla cream soda, anyone? -- or try flavors unavailable elsewhere, like Raspberry Coke. This month, the company launched apps for Facebook and smart phones that let customers mix and name their own drink. Plans are that one day the apps will spit out a bar code for customers to scan at Freestyle machines and automatically dispense their own personalized blend.

Coca-Cola is dispensing more than just flavored water, says Wharton marketing professor Jerry Wind. The company is also creating excitement, tapping into social networks, giving people a chance to customize their own product and empowering customers in ways that a traditional vending machine can't match. Those are important retail strategies in today's economy, where one out of five people in the United States is either unemployed or underemployed and consumers remain reluctant to spend ... "