Google AIY without HAT and its setup

Google_AIY_without_HAT_and_its_setup.md

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Google AIY without HAT and its setup

I made the Google AIY voice kit without HAT. Thanks to great Hackaday article !

However some of the files are changed from 17/05/30. Some steps were changed from hackaday article and I changed the few things.

I tried AIY at 18/01/24 with newer image 2018/01/03

Current image

Hardware setup

• Append USB Sound adapter
• Connect Microphone to adapter
• Connect Speaker to adapter
• (Under construction) audio amplifier
• (Under construction) mic and amplifier

Append button switch to GPIO23

• standard: GPIO23 - button - GND

Append LED to ... (Under construction)

• (Under testing) standard(Optional): GPIO?? - res - LED - GND

Sound configuration

Disable RasPi I2S and change to USB Audio as ALSA-#0

append a blacklist and a option then reboot.

blacklist snd_soc_bcm2835_i2s
options snd_usb_audio index=0

Configure alsa sound

make default hw to plugin device, I really don't know alsa settings.

pcm.!default plughw:Device
ctl.!default plughw:Device

Confirm

you can confirm it by aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav too. you might be got the error like invalid sample rate or channels if you were wrong the settings.

Hack AIY some scripts

• change I2S to USB audio, override the alsa parameters to point the USB audio

    def __init__(self, output_device='default'):
        output_device = "plughw:0,0"
        self._output_device = output_device

    def __init__(self, input_device='default',
                 channels=1, bytes_per_sample=2, sample_rate_hz=16000):
        """Create a Recorder with the given audio format.
        ...
        """
        input_device = "plughw:0,0"

Confirm

run check_audio.py.

Update sdk

• for Register AIY kit to Google Assistant API, you must update the SDK.

(Optional) Free diskspace

• I tried to use 4GB SD card for AIY kit, but there was no diskspace.
• remove these packages and got 300MB.

$ sudo apt remove minecraft-pi   # ... about 5M
$ sudo apt remove libreoffice*   # ... about 200M
$ sudo apt remove geany*         # ... about 1M
$ sudo apt remove claws-mail*    # ... about 1M
$ sudo apt remove python-thonny  # ... about 1M
$ sudo apt autoremove

upgrade packages

$ pip install --upgrade google-assistant-library

Confirm

$ googlesamples-assistant-devicetool

Register a device

• create new application on Google Client

see SDK document

• Enable Google Assistant API.
• Register AIY kit to Google Assistant API.

$ googlesamples-assistant-devicetool register-model --manufacturer "Assistant-SDK-developer" \
          --product-name "Assistant-SDK-light" --type light --model [your-model-name]
$ googlesamples-assistant-devicetool list --model  # confirm and get project_id from it.

Launch

$ googlesample-assistant-hotword --device_model_id [your-model-name] \
    --project_id [your-project-id]

(Optional) Extra Hacking

• o Bootup voice --- too mechanical voice, change to play a fanfire.
• ignoring pop noise from speaker at bootup
• LEDx8
• Swtich x4
• USB-HDD x2 and build NAS and mirroring

Casing

USB-HDD

• install hd_idle for WD devices.
• to spin down the WD HDD, run hd-idle -t disk/by-uuid/... (remove /dev from path)

Power Consumption

AIY is always turn-on in usual situation. So I measure some conditions with my watt meter.

Condition	avg.	max(W)
RasPi3	2.0	2.7
RasPi3 + HDMI + USB Keyboard(Dongle)	2.0	2.7
RasPi3 + Assistant launched	---	---
RasPi3 + Assistant + HDDx2	---	---
RasPi3 + Assistant + HDDx2 (spin down)	---	---
RasPi3 + USB-HDD	11.0	11.5
RasPi3 + USB-HDD (spin down)	4.3	4.8
RasPi3 + USB-HDD (spin down) + Assist	4.7	5.7
RasPi3 + USB-HDD (slow)	7.5	7.8
RasPi3 + USB-HDD (spin up)	14.0	14.0
RasPi3 + USB-HDDx2 (spin up)

Don't worry, AIY does not spend the power too much! Enjoy use AIY.

History

3.

2. append D-class amp and microphone

1. Parts