Hacking the Google AIY Voice Kit Part 2 - Voice Control

Using the Google AIY Voice Kit to control your own devices, including motors and LEDs.

Get the code at https://dbot.ws/aiyvoice2

Also, see the Google AIY Voice Kit Part 1

In the second part of the Google AIY Voice Kit series, I’ll take the voice kit out of the cardboard box and put it onto a custom Raspberry Pi experimenters breadboard. Yes, I’m thinking outside of the box today!

Once I free the AIY Voice Kit from the confines of its cardboard box I’ll discuss the AIY Voice HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) board, which is the heart of the voice kit. We’ll solder some connectors to our HAT to make it more useful. I’ll also show you another inexpensive HAT you can use if you can’t get your hands on a Google AIY Voice Kit.

Next, I’ll show you how to configure the Google Cloud Speech API so that you can begin to develop your own voice-controlled projects. We’ll start with a few examples that Google has provided and then modify them to make our own unique devices.

Speaking of unique, how about a voice-controlled traffic light? Now to be fair this one just uses three LED’s on a breadboard so you won’t be able to control the traffic in your neighborhood but it’s an amusing device nonetheless. It also uses the “OK Google” wake word as opposed to other projects that you may have seen that require you to push the button before you speak. And it’s really easy to build and code.

After that, we will use our voice to control the speed of a DC motor. I’m sure you can come up with many uses for that.

Here is a breakdown of what is covered in this video:

00:00 - Introduction
02:47 - AIY Voice HAT
09:50 - Raspberry Pi Breadboard -
12:27 - Google AIY 2018 Raspbian Update
16:30 - Google Speech API
24:00 - Cloud Speech Demo with Button Trigger
26:19 - Cloud Speech Demo with “OK Google” Trigger
33:46 - Voice Controlled “Traffic Light” (with LEDs)
41:21 - Voice Controlled DC Motor

As always there is a complete article that includes all of the Python code on the DroneBot Workshop website at https://dbot.ws/aiyvoice2. Look for the Resources box at the end of the article and download the ZIP file - it's easier than copying the code from the listings.

Hopefully, this video will inspire you to build your own voice-activated devices!