Last week we learned interesting news for many lovers of the Hardware Libre, the existence of a virtual assistant that we could create thanks to a Raspberry Pi board and Google software.
This has caused The MagPi magazine to run out of stock, but it has also had other more positive repercussions for the world of Hardware Libre. Google's work has made an SDK is created with Google Assistant.
Many of you will ask What is an SDK? We can define an SDK as a software development kit. In this case, the Google Assistant SDK would be a Google Assistant development kit.
A kit that will not only allow us to create applications that work with this software, but we can also use it on other platforms than Raspberry Pi. So Google Assistant will come to Odroid, Orange Pi or BeagleBone Black among others.
We can also make boards like Arduino connect to this virtual assistant and even make use of it. For this we just have to go to the official SDK page and download it to us. A fast and free process for everyone.
This SDK works with Python, so we will only need the hardware in question to be compatible with this programming language, something that most boards comply with perfectly. The use of Google Assistant and this SDK is free but if we want to use it commercially, we have to talk to Google to be able to do so.
Google is following the same steps Amazon did with Alexa, something that benefits all users of the Hardware Libre, but Google Assistant and Alexa are not the only "free" virtual assistants that we can have on our Hardware. Although it must be recognized that they are the easiest virtual assistants to use. Do not you think?
This Google Assistant is a bit scary, right?