Google Turns Raspberry Pi Smart!

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Raspberry Pi is about to get really smart, they have teamed up with Google to bring voice integration to their product, with a very smart combination of hardware and software. So smart in fact this little DIY kit brings all the fancy powers that the Google Home has to the Raspberry Pi 3.

However…..the pack contains a Voice HAT (Hardware Accessory on Top, a HAT is any piece of physical hardware that is added to the Pi motherboard) board with a speaker and a microphone, giving Pi owners everything they need to add-in voice integration.

The only way to get the HAT board is to buy the latest issue of the company’s official magazine The MagPi, where it comes as a freebie.

WHAT IS A RASPBERRY PI?

A Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized computer originally designed for education, inspired by the 1981 BBC Micro. … The Raspberry Pi is slower than a modern laptop or desktop but is still a complete Linux computer and can provide all the expected abilities that implies, at a low-power consumption level. https://opensource.com/resources/what-raspberry-pi

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Sonos Play 5

Sonos Play:5

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We killed time with a MASSIVE Speaker this week. The beautiful Sonos PLAY:5

  • Fills a large room with pure, brilliant sound.
  • Bold. Pure. Dynamic. Intense. With deep bass that packs a punch.
  • Uncompromised sound whether vertical or horizontal.
  • Convenient, ultra-responsive top panel touch controls.
  • Line-in. Plug in any device you want.

Attention obsessive audiophiles and hard-core music lovers. PLAY:5 is your speaker. It’s our biggest and best-sounding. So whether you’ve got a big room to fill with music or a discerning ear for divine sound, we’ve got you covered.

You’ll hear each separate instrument, voice, and sonic detail in all its glory. Six Class-D amplifiers with six dedicated speaker drivers deliver crystal clear, rich, deep, stereophonic sound with zero distortion. So go ahead and crank up the volume.

Thanks to three mighty woofers and a completely sealed architecture, PLAY:5 delivers big, precise bass response without reverb or echoes.

CREDIT:Sonos.com

To buy your own Sonos Play:5 please click here!

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Siri Speaker

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Apple could announce their own take on the Amazon Echo at this years WWDC in June according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. A Speaker with integrated Siri basically. With superior sound and computing power than that of Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, with an end of year release date.This isn’t the first time an analyst had predicted this, leaker Sonny Dickinson has also predicted that the Siri Speaker will make an appearance at WWDC.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise Apple want to dip their toes into this market with the improvement of HomeKit and the continued growth of Apple Music. We shall see in June. (Maybe)

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

Amazon Echo Look

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Amazon have announced a brand new smart speaker called the Echo Look, priced at £154 (to be released) it features a full length selfie/video camera which can be stored to create a ‘look book’

Using Alexa, the smart assistant to give a verdict on an outfit whilst recommending clothes to buy. It is currently on Amazon’s US website and is strictly ‘invitation’ only at the moment.

Amazon have stated that it would not share any personal information with advertisers or third party websites.

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Doritos Playing Music?

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Facebook wants to read your mind!

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F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, they unveiled a proposal of “Brain to Computer” Interface – that would allow us to send thoughts to a computer.

Regina Dugan, Head of Facebooks secret hardware R&D division “Building 8” asked “what if you could type directly from your brain” – As she showed a video of a woman typing 8 words per minute from her brain.

“That’s five times faster than you can type on your smartphone, and it’s straight from your brain…..Your brain activity contains more information than what a word sounds like and how it’s spelled; it also contains semantic information of what those words mean.”

Facebook is proposing a world where we’re connected all the time by thought alone.

Similarly Dugan also highlighted a video that showed the ability to listen to human speech through vibrations on skin. Aiding disabled people to hear, it works like braille, that you feel with your body rather than fingers via the use of actuators and sensors via an armband.

The end goal is to build an online world that feels real:

“Our brains produce enough data to stream 4 HD movies every second. The problem is that the best way we have to get information out into the world — speech — can only transmit about the same amount of data as a 1980s modem…..We’re working on a system that will let you type straight from your brain about 5x faster than you can type on your phone today. Eventually, we want to turn it into a wearable technology that can be manufactured at scale. Even a simple yes/no ‘brain click’ would help make things like augmented reality feel much more natural.” – Mark Zuckerberg said via Facebook post.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

Zap Zap VR!

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VR Researchers have found a use for electric shocks – to make you feel walls that don’t exist.

Researchers at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany have been hard at work finding ways to make you feel like you have bumped into a wall in the virtual world and make you feel it in the real world by giving you a bit of good old electrical muscle stimulation – a shock of electricity basically.

You wear the usual headset/tracking gloves, but you have an additional muscle stimulator and computer in a back back, then electrodes attached to your arm activate muscles causing them to twitch and move by themselves if they hit a wall in the VR world.

As well as highlighting when you have ‘bumped into something’ it can also eventually be used to stimulate the feeling of lifting something. By shocking opposition muscle groups in a users arms it makes them feel resistance, simulating gravity. More electrical simulation, the heavier an object feels.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

 

Elon Musks Underground Road

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Elon Musk hates LA traffic so much he has proposed an underground road……stating that he wants it to be the future of city driving.

How would it work we hear you ask! Well by a series of multi-layered underground tunnels, beneath a city, travelling along a scalextric like platform.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

Apple Store flying drones!

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If you visit an Apple store in the not too distant future you may see the Hover Passport Drone flying around!

Apple have signed a deal with ZeroZero Robotics to exclusively sell their drone for $100 dollars cheaper than their own site for $500 dollars, for which you will receive (one drone, two batteries, a charger, an adapter, and a carry bag)

It has face /body tracking, orbit mode where it circles around you, a 360-degree “Spin” for panoramic video shots & protected propellers, too!

Apple Stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., China, and Hong Kong are kicking off the demonstrations with other stores expected to follow suit not long after.

To buy your own Passport Hover Drone please click here!

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Robot Volleyball???

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Japan have created a team of robot volleyball players to help their national women’s volleyball team to improve their game, by creating a team of opponents that mimic the actions of blockers. (Players who jump close to the net with their arms above their heads and stretched out wide) They can even programme them with play similar to their opponents!

The three pairs of robotic arms move left and right along a track at a speed slightly faster than that of a human player and whilst impressive the robots can only move along a pre-determined line and don’t react according to what is happening in front of them. However developers are working to make this a reality by incorporating motion sensors into the robots.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!