Google AIY kit

mahamageehad

Hiya folks,

Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but I picked up a Google AIY Voice kit last night in the Cyber Monday sales and wondering if anyone here has any experience with that? Out of the box it's a simple enough Home assistance, but can be hacked and extended to include more IOT activities.

bk

Cool, I hadn't heard of that, looks like a nice little project.

Atomic Pineapple

Bought it from the Pi Hut a few weeks ago and haven't had a chance to open the box, looking forward to building it and "hacking" it over xmas.

mahamageehad

Cool, mine should arrive by the weekend so I'm looking forward to getting into it. Seems to be a pretty beginner friendly kit - all that's required for set up is a screwdriver and tape, no soldering or anything. I did a little RetroPie box as a pressie for the boyfriend last Christmas, but other than that I haven't done anything with development boards! (Hence not being sure if here or development was the right place to start this thread )

This will be the first device of its type in our house so I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do and what other stuff I can connect to it!

The_B_Man

It can do some of the smart device stuff, but don't expect it to be as good as the Google Home. A lot of the functionality is limited.
For example, it can't play music or cast to a chromecast. It can't set reminds as far as I'm aware as well. It's fun, but limited.
You can get your weather and traffic etc, no bother.

Over on the rpi forums, people have created scripts to play YouTube music and Google Play Music, however, they were built for the old version. When the AIY Kit came out first, there was a completely different setup, which was easily extended. Now, with this new kit, they've updated the SDK and everything has changed, so people need to come back and update their scripts to work with the new one, which hasn't really happened. So a lot of the old 'hacks" don't work any more. You can still install the older version if you want, but even that isn't perfect. Theres still more "hacking" involved if you want to tell it to stop playing the music, for example.

I have one and its a bit of craic, but having just bought a Google Home, I'm half considering turning my AIY kit into an emulator.

mahamageehad

The_B_Man wrote: »

It can do some of the smart device stuff, but don't expect it to be as good as the Google Home. A lot of the functionality is limited.
For example, it can't play music or cast to a chromecast. It can't set reminds as far as I'm aware as well. It's fun, but limited.
You can get your weather and traffic etc, no bother.

Over on the rpi forums, people have created scripts to play YouTube music and Google Play Music, however, they were built for the old version. When the AIY Kit came out first, there was a completely different setup, which was easily extended. Now, with this new kit, they've updated the SDK and everything has changed, so people need to come back and update their scripts to work with the new one, which hasn't really happened. So a lot of the old 'hacks" don't work any more. You can still install the older version if you want, but even that isn't perfect. Theres still more "hacking" involved if you want to tell it to stop playing the music, for example.

I have one and its a bit of craic, but having just bought a Google Home, I'm half considering turning my AIY kit into an emulator.

Oh ok good to know! I wasn't sure the extent of the overlap between Google Assistance and Google Home, disappointed to hear it won't work with the chromecast! I mean, for under 30 quid I can't complain I guess! I believe that the kit is based on Python so I'd be comfortable enough going in and having a poke around. Defo good to have that heads up in advance though, thanks for that!