Tag Archives: hardware

Pixel 2 and Daydream View: new experiences in AR and VR

Virtual and augmented reality have the potential to make computing more immersive, intuitive and powerful. With augmented reality (AR), you can interact with digital objects that are integrated seamlessly in the real world around you. With virtual reality (VR), you can experience what it’s like to go anywhere. We just announced the new Pixel 2, which gives you access to amazing smartphone AR and high-quality mobile VR in the same device.

AR: Have fun and get things done

Aside from taking great photos and videos, the Pixel 2 camera is factory calibrated and optimized for AR. It enables robust tracking, even in low-light conditions, and 60 frames per second rendering of AR objects. That means you’ll be able to have really engaging AR experiences.

To start, we’re putting AR objects and characters at your fingertips in a new experience called AR Stickers. With it, you’ll be able to express yourself with playful emojis and set the scene for your very own stories. If you’re powering through an afternoon slump, you can take a picture with a tired cup of coffee from the Foodmoji pack. Or, if you’re feeling festive, shoot a happy birthday video for your friend with lots of AR balloons. These stickers give you new ways to be creative and capture how you’re feeling, so you can share with the people in your life. It works right in the camera, and it’ll be exclusive to the Pixel.

We’ll release more new AR Sticker packs in the future, so keep your eyes peeled around the changing seasons, holidays and big pop culture moments. You’ll be able to interact with your favorite characters from “Stranger Things,” and be part of the scene as Eleven faces off against the Demogorgon. Team up with R2-D2 to save the day with the "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" pack. Hang out with your favorite NBA Stars and the cast of "Saturday Night Live."

We’re previewing apps and experiences built by our partners with ARCore, the AR software development kit (SDK) for Android. With Houzz, you’ll be able to bring the showroom into your living room and see how different furniture, accent pieces and more fit into your space. Experience the real-time action of a League of Legends match through an AR map, built by Grab Games. And with LEGO, have fun building virtual models in AR with characters that come to life, without fear of stepping on that last 2x4 brick.

AR Stickers and lots of other AR experiences will be available in the coming months.

VR: More immersive with an all-new Daydream View

We’re also announcing a new Google Daydream View headset, which you can pair with Pixel 2 or another Daydream-ready phone for great VR.

With this new headset, we kept the best parts of the original and made them even better. The new Daydream View has high-performance lenses, which result in better image clarity and a wider field of view. It sports a premium two-tone fabric that makes the headset soft and light, and it comes in three new colors: Fog, Charcoal and Coral.

There’s so much to experience on Daydream. Last year, we launched with 25 apps and games. Daydream now has more than 250 titles, so you’ll never run out of things to do. Over the last year, we’ve also seen how much people love watching immersive VR video on apps like YouTube VR. And no wonder: great VR video puts you in the center of the action. It’s a totally different experience from watching on a flat screen.

We’re bringing you more of these amazing, only-in-VR moments with a slate of new and exclusive premium content for Daydream. Get closer than front row seats with intimate performances from your favorite stars like Ed Sheeran in “Austin City Limits Backstage.” Hear personal confessions from huge comics like Trevor Noah in “The Confessional,” a YouTube VR original from Felix & Paul. With “The Female Planet,” follow in the footsteps of inspiring women like Gina Rodriguez and Inna Braverman. Venture to all seven continents with the new series “Discovery TRVLR,” and blast off into space with IMAX 3D in Google Play Movies.

Learn more and buy

With Google Pixel 2, you’ll have easy access to both AR and VR. We can’t wait for you to get your hands on it and start exploring. Learn more and pre-order one at the Google Store.

The new Google Daydream View will be available later this year:

United States: Google Store, Verizon, Best Buy, AT&T, Amazon
Canada: Google Store, Best Buy, Rogers, Bell, Telus, Freedom, Videotron, Glentel
United Kingdom: Google Store, EE, Carphone Warehouse
Germany: Google Store, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, MediaMarkt, Saturn
Australia: Google Store, Telstra, JB Hi-Fi
India: Flipkart
Italy: Google Store
France: Google Store
Spain: Google Store
Japan: Google Store
Korea: Google Store

From now until the end of the year, your purchase of Daydream View will come with a bundle of top games to help get you started. (U.S., U.K. and Korea only).

Source: The Official Google Blog

Ask more of your phone: Google Pixel 2

“What if smartphones were smarter and simpler?” That's the question we asked ourselves last year, and what we set out to answer when we launched our first Pixel phone made by Google. With Pixel, we set out to make the smartphone experience better and bring the best of Google to the most important device in your life. So we created the world’s best smartphone camera and the first phone with the Google Assistant. But we didn’t stop there.

Today, along with a new family of hardware products, we’re introducing Google Pixel 2. We want you to be able to ask even more from your phone—so we're giving you the highest-rated camera ever that helps you take great pictures and interact with the world around you, all-day battery life, and an Assistant that understands you better and helps you get more done.

Pixel 2 is loaded with great features. Let me take you through a few of our favorites.

The best smartphone camera, again

Taking great photos and videos is one of the things you do most with your phone, so we set out to deliver the best photography experience. You get stunningly crisp, clear, and detailed photos in any light. You can also take high-quality portrait shots with the perfect background blurs, from both the front and back camera. New motion photos capture a few seconds of video around the shot so you can relive the moment around the picture. The Pixel 2 camera is powered by our computational photography and machine learning (ML) capabilities which make all these great features easy, fun and fast for you to use.

We’ve made video capture better too by combining both optical and electronic video stabilization to give you remarkably smooth video, even when you’re on the move. All of these great features mean you can take the best photos and videos with Pixel 2. And don’t just take our word for it—independent camera experts DxOMark have rated the Pixel 2 camera as the best camera of any smartphone, with an unprecedented score of 98. To top it off, we’re once again providing free unlimited storage for all of the photos and videos taken on your Pixel.

Your camera will also keep getting better over time. As just one example, coming soon and exclusive to Pixel, you’ll be able to play with Augmented Reality (AR) Stickers, so you can add playful emojis and virtual characters to your photos and videos and set the scene for your very own stories.

Search what you see

Pixel 2 owners will also get an exclusive preview of Google Lens—a new set of visual smarts that help you learn more about the world around you and get things done. Lens builds on Google’s advancements in computer vision and ML, combined with our Knowledge Graph which underpins Google Search. From day one, on your Pixel 2, you’ll be able to look up landmarks, books, music albums, movies and artwork by clicking on the Lens icon in Google Photos. You can also use Google Lens to copy URLs and contact info from a picture of a poster or business card. We’ll add capabilities on an ongoing basis, including the use of Lens in the Google Assistant.

The Google Assistant, more helpful for you

The Google Assistant makes many tasks—from sending a text or making a call, to finding an answer—faster, easier and hands-free. You won’t need to edit the text messages you dictate as often as you do with other assistants. With Pixel 2, you can access your Google Assistant with a new feature called Active Edge. Just give the phone a quick squeeze—even when it’s in a case—and ask the Assistant for what you need.

Your Assistant now helps you manage more settings and apps on your phone. You can say “turn on do not disturb” on your way into the theater, instead of navigating settings, and soon you’ll be able to book concert tickets or buy flowers. You can control your music, your smart home devices and find answers to pretty much anything.

In the coming weeks, your Assistant on Pixel will also be able to help with your daily routines, just by using one simple phrase. For example, when you go to bed at night, with a simple “good night” your Assistant can silence your phone, turn off the lights, set your alarm and more. There are also routines coming to Pixel for the morning, your commute, when you get home, etc. So the Google Assistant on Pixel not only understands you better but can also be more personal to you, helping you get more done at any time.

Do more, worry less

We’ve all been caught with a dead battery, so we made sure the Pixel 2 has a battery that lasts all day.* And if you ever need a quick boost, 15 minutes of charging gives you up to seven hours of usage. It’s also water and dust resistant to the IP67 standard and comes with important security features baked in. With monthly security updates from Google, your Pixel will always have the most advanced security precautions built in—no more worrying about updating or upgrading.

We’re also making it easy to switch to Pixel. Most people will be able to copy their contacts, apps, messages, photos, and even their iMessages from their old phones to Pixel in 10 minutes or less. It’s fast and painless.

Just give me the deets, already

Pixel 2 comes in two sizes, with the same great features in both. There’s the 5-inch Pixel 2 with a crystal-clear cinematic OLED display, which comes in Just Black, Clearly White and Kinda Blue. The 6-inch Pixel 2 XL has a razor-sharp pOLED 18:9 display which allows us to create a full screen, immersive viewing experience, and comes in Just Black and Black & White.

Both phones are powered by Android 8.0 Oreo and come with an always-on display which lets you see notifications at a glance on Pixel’s screen without having to touch the power button. The new Now Playing feature, exclusive to Pixel, shows you what song is playing around you. With your permission it matches music to a database of thousands of songs that’s stored on your device, without sending any information to Google.

Alongside Pixel we’re launching new cases and accessories. That includes our customizable Google Live Cases, and a range of other cases, cables, headphones and more from over 25 partners in our “made for Google” program. The "made for" products will feature a badge on the packaging so you know they've been certified to meet Google's compatibility standards.

Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are available for pre-order today starting at $649 in the U.S. Both products are also available in Australia, Canada, Germany, India and U.K. We’ll be bringing Pixel 2 XL to Italy, Singapore and Spain later this year. In the U.S., we’re teaming up with Verizon to make Pixel available nationwide at all Verizon retail outlets as well as at Best Buy stores. Pixel is also being offered on the Google Store. And Project Fi fans will be happy to know that Pixel also works on the Fi network.

There's so much more to Pixel 2, but I'm sure I've already taken up my word count. Visit google.com/phones to find out more.

_{*Based on use of the included charger and a mix of talk, data, and standby use with always on display off. Actual results may vary, see website for details.}

Source: The Official Google Blog

Ask more of your phone: Google Pixel 2

Pixel 2 is loaded with great features. Let me take you through a few of our favorites.

The best smartphone camera, again

Search what you see

The Google Assistant, more helpful for you

Do more, worry less

Just give me the deets, already

There's so much more to Pixel 2, but I'm sure I've already taken up my word count. Visit google.com/phones to find out more.

_{*Based on use of the included charger and a mix of talk, data, and standby use with always on display off. Actual results may vary, see website for details.}

Source: The Official Google Blog

Google Pixelbook: the high performance Chromebook

The way we use technology has changed so much over the past 10 years. We live online. We use tons of apps every day. We create and collaborate more than ever, and we’re constantly jumping across all our devices to get things done.

But while the way we use technology has changed, our laptops haven't really kept up. They don't run many of the apps we use and love on our phones. They're not as portable as tablets. And they’re not always as versatile and helpful as they should be.

With Google Pixelbook, a new high-performance Chromebook, we're hoping to change this. We’ve worked to combine the best parts of a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone, to fit how we use technology today. Pixelbook comes with premium hardware; the speed, simplicity and security of Chrome OS; the smarts of the Google Assistant; and all your favorite apps on Google Play.

Beautifully versatile

Pixelbook is the thinnest, lightest laptop we’ve ever made, at just 10.3mm and 1.1 kilograms. It has a 4-in-1 design, so you can do anything you want with it. You can use it as a laptop, fold the keyboard underneath to easily watch your favorite show, read your favorite book or take notes in tablet mode when you’re on the go, or prop it into tent mode as you follow along with a recipe in the kitchen.

The 12.3-inch high-resolution touchscreen display brings you vibrant colors and enough brightness to use outside, even on a sunny day. The thin keyboard is comfortable to use, with soft-touch keys and a backlit design that helps you work anywhere. The trackpad uses new, special touch-processing algorithms to make sure you can navigate with accuracy.

Performance hardware and software

Pixelbook starts up in seconds, stays fast throughout the day, and won’t slow down over time. Chrome OS provides a more secure computing experience, with multiple layers of security and automatic updates. Pixelbook uses Intel® Core™ i5 and i7 processors and plenty of RAM to smoothly handle your multitasking needs.

With storage options up to 512 GB, you can store documents, movies, music and apps, and Google Drive will sync your most recent Google Docs, Sheets and Slides to your device, so you can keep working and watching even when you’re offline. Pixelbook’s battery lasts up to 10 hours and if you run low on juice, 15 minutes of charging gets you up to two hours. You can also use your Pixelbook charger with your Pixel phone, giving you one less thing to carry around.

Alongside Pixelbook we’re introducing the Google Pixelbook Pen, a smart, responsive stylus which gives you a natural and comfortable feel when you are sketching and writing. Pixelbook Pen uses machine learning for handwriting recognition, and we’ve reduced latency to just 10 milliseconds—so it feels as fast as writing with a pen on paper. It also has 60 degrees of angular awareness and 2,000 levels of pressure sensitivity, so it’s fast and responsive and naturally follows your hand movements.

A more helpful laptop

Pixelbook is the first laptop with the Google Assistant built in. Just say “Ok Google” or press the dedicated Assistant key, and you can talk or type to find answers or perform tasks. You can set a reminder, check your commute, look up a basketball score, open a new document, or find an email. Just like you can with your other devices, your Google Assistant gives you hands-free access to your music and entertainment and allows you to control your smart home to turn up the thermostat or turn down the lights.

You can also use your Pixelbook Pen to get help or take action on what’s on your screen—just press and hold the button on your Pixelbook Pen and circle an image or text. You can look up words, find out more about a picture, add an event to your calendar, and more.

It’s not just the Assistant that makes the Pixelbook a more helpful laptop. For example, when you don’t have access to WiFi, Pixelbook can automatically connect to your Pixel phone’s data. And you can ask your Google Assistant on Pixel to send an email to a colleague when you’re out and about, and then ask it to find their reply on your Pixelbook when you get back to work.

Your favorite Google Play apps, on a bigger screen

You can download your favorite apps on Google Play for Pixelbook, so you don’t have to switch between your phone and your laptop. For instance, listen to Spotify or use Adobe Lightroom to edit a photo before you post it to Instagram or Snapchat or play games like Asphalt 8. You can even download Netflix to watch your favorite series both online and offline.

Pixelbook Pen is also great for drawing and designing in your favorite apps. Illustrate with Infinite Painter, design with AutoCAD, or jot down thoughts with Squid and Evernote. You can even take notes right from the lock screen with Google Keep.

Many more developers are building apps for the larger screen too, and you can check Google Play for the latest apps to try.

Get yours soon

Pixelbook is available in three configurations starting at $999 in the U.S., so you can choose the processing power, memory and storage you want. The Pixelbook Pen is $99. Both will be on sale at the Google Store and major retailers, including Best Buy, in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Pre-orders start today.

So that’s the Pixelbook—a radically helpful laptop that’s designed to better fit how you work, play and create. To find out more, visit g.co/pixelbook.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Google Pixelbook: the high performance Chromebook

Beautifully versatile

Performance hardware and software

A more helpful laptop

Your favorite Google Play apps, on a bigger screen

Many more developers are building apps for the larger screen too, and you can check Google Play for the latest apps to try.

Get yours soon

So that’s the Pixelbook—a radically helpful laptop that’s designed to better fit how you work, play and create. To find out more, visit g.co/pixelbook.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Google signs agreement with HTC, continuing our big bet on hardware

About a year and a half ago, I joined Google to pursue my dream job to create compelling hardware products, built with Google’s smarts at their core. As a first step, we brought together various consumer hardware-related efforts and established a single hardware organization within the company. Our team’s goal is to offer the best Google experience—across hardware, software and services—to people around the world. Last fall, we introduced our first family of Made by Google products, including Pixel smartphones, Google Home, Google Wifi, Daydream View and Chromecast Ultra, and we’re preparing to unveil our second generation of products on October 4. We’re excited about the 2017 lineup, but even more inspired by what’s in store over the next five, 10, even 20 years. Creating beautiful products that people rely on every single day is a journey, and we are investing for the long run.

That’s why we’ve signed an agreement with HTC, a leader in consumer electronics, that will fuel even more product innovation in the years ahead. With this agreement, a team of HTC talent will join Google as part of the hardware organization. These future fellow Googlers are amazing folks we’ve already been working with closely on the Pixel smartphone line, and we're excited to see what we can do together as one team. The deal also includes a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property.

In many ways, this agreement is a testament to the decade-long history of teamwork between HTC and Google. Together, we’ve achieved several mobile-industry firsts, including the first ever Android smartphone, the HTC Dream, also known as the T-Mobile G1 (I loved mine!); as well as the Nexus One in 2010, the Nexus 9 tablet in 2014, and the first Pixel smartphone just last year.

It’s still early days for Google’s hardware business. We’re focused on building our core capabilities, while creating a portfolio of products that offers people a unique yet delightful experience only made possible by bringing together the best of Google software—like the Google Assistant—with thoughtfully designed hardware. HTC has been a longtime partner and has created some of the most beautiful, high-end devices on the market. We can't wait to welcome members of the HTC team to join us on this journey.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Announcing an Open Source ADC board for BeagleBone

Posted by Jason Holt, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Google Open Source Blog)

Working with electronics, we often find ourselves soldering up a half baked electronic circuit to detect some sort of signal. For example, last year we wanted to measure the strength of a carrier. We started with traditional analog circuits — amplifier, filter, envelope detector, threshold. You can see some of our prototypes in the image below; they get pretty messy.

While there's a certain satisfaction in taming a signal using the physical properties of capacitors, coils of wire and transistors, it's usually easier to digitize the signal with an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) and manage it with Digital Signal Processing (DSP) instead of electronic parts. Tweaking software doesn't require a soldering iron, and lets us modify signals in ways that would require impossible analog circuits.

There are several standard solutions for digitizing a signal: connect a laptop to an oscilloscope or Data Acquisition System (DAQ) via USB or Ethernet, or use the onboard ADCs of a maker board like an Arduino. The former are sensitive and accurate, but also big and power hungry. The latter are cheap and tiny, but slower and have enough RAM for only milliseconds worth of high speed sample data.

That led us to investigate single board computers like the BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi, which are small and cheap like an Arduino, but have specs like a smartphone. And crucially, the BeagleBone's system-on-a-chip (SoC) combines a beefy ARMv7 CPU with two smaller Programmable Realtime Units (PRUs) that have access to all 512MB of system RAM. This lets us dedicate the PRUs to the time-sensitive and repetitive task of reading each sample out of an external ADC, while the main CPU lets us use the data with the GNU/Linux tools we're used to.

The result is an open source BeagleBone cape we've named PRUDAQ. It's built around the Analog Devices AD9201 ADC, which samples two inputs simultaneously at up to 20 megasamples per second, per channel. Simultaneous sampling and high sample rates make it useful for software-defined radio (SDR) and scientific applications where a built-in ADC isn't quite up to the task.

Our open source electrical design and sample code are available on GitHub, and GroupGets has boards ready to ship for $79. We also were fortunate to have help from Google intern Kumar Abhishek. He added support for PRUDAQ to his Google Summer of Code project BeagleLogic that performs much better than our sample code.

We started PRUDAQ for our own needs, but quickly realized that others might also find it useful. We're excited to get your feedback through the email list. Tell us what can be done with inexpensive fast ADCs paired with inexpensive fast CPUs!

Source: Google Research Blog

Announcing an Open Source ADC board for BeagleBone

Cross posted on the Google Research Blog
Working with electronics, we often find ourselves soldering up a half baked electronic circuit to detect some sort of signal. For example, last year we wanted to measure the strength of a carrier. We started with traditional analog circuits — amplifier, filter, envelope detector, threshold. You can see some of our prototypes in the image below; they get pretty messy.

There are several standard solutions for digitizing a signal: connect a laptop to an oscilloscope or Data Acquisition System (DAQ) via USB or Ethernet, or use the onboard ADCs of a maker board like an Arduino. The former are sensitive and accurate, but also big and power hungry. The latter are cheap and tiny, but slower and have enough RAM for only milliseconds worth of high speed sample data.

That led us to investigate single board computers like the BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi, which are small and cheap like an Arduino, but have specs like a smartphone. And crucially, the BeagleBone's system-on-a-chip (SoC) combines a beefy ARMv7 CPU with two smaller Programmable Realtime Units (PRUs) that have access to all 512MB of system RAM. This lets us dedicate the PRUs to the time-sensitive and repetitive task of reading each sample out of an external ADC, while the main CPU lets us use the data with the GNU/Linux tools we're used to.

The result is an open source BeagleBone cape we've named PRUDAQ. It's built around the Analog Devices AD9201 ADC, which samples two inputs simultaneously at up to 20 megasamples per second, per channel. Simultaneous sampling and high sample rates make it useful for software-defined radio (SDR) and scientific applications where a built-in ADC isn't quite up to the task.

We started PRUDAQ for our own needs, but quickly realized that others might also find it useful. We're excited to get your feedback through the email list. Tell us what can be done with inexpensive fast ADCs paired with inexpensive fast CPUs!

Posted by Jason Holt, Software Engineer

Source: Google Open Source Blog

Project Bloks: Making code physical for kids

Posted by Steve Vranakis and Jayme Goldstein, Executive Creative Director and Project Lead, Google Creative Lab

At Google, we’re passionate about empowering children to create and explore with technology. We believe that when children learn to code, they’re not just learning how to program a computer—they’re learning a new language for creative expression and are developing computational thinking: a skillset for solving problems of all kinds.

In fact, it’s a skillset whose importance is being recognised around the world—from President Obama’s CS4All program to the inclusion of Computer Science in the UK National Curriculum. We’ve long supported and advocated the furthering of CS education through programs and platforms such as Blockly, Scratch Blocks, CS First and Made w/ Code.

Today, we’re happy to announce Project Bloks, a research collaboration between Google, Paulo Blikstein (Stanford University) and IDEO with the goal of creating an open hardware platform that researchers, developers and designers can use to build physical coding experiences. As a first step, we’ve created a system for tangible programming and built a working prototype with it. We’re sharing our progress before conducting more research over the summer to inform what comes next.

Physical coding
Kids are inherently playful and social. They naturally play and learn by using their hands, building stuff and doing things together. Making code physical - known as tangible programming - offers a unique way to combine the way children innately play and learn with computational thinking.

Project Bloks is preceded and shaped by a long history of educational theory and research in the area of hands-on learning. From Friedrich Froebel, Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget’s pioneering work in the area of learning by experience, exploration and manipulation, to the research started in the 1970s by Seymour Papert and Radia Perlman with LOGO and TORTIS. This exploration has continued to grow and includes a wide range of research and platforms.

However, designing kits for tangible programming is challenging—requiring the resources and time to develop both the software and the hardware. Our goal is to remove those barriers. By creating an open platform, Project Bloks will allow designers, developers and researchers to focus on innovating, experimenting and creating new ways to help kids develop computational thinking. Our vision is that, one day, the Project Bloks platform becomes for tangible programming what Blockly is for on-screen programming.

The Project Bloks system
We’ve designed a system that developers can customise, reconfigure and rearrange to create all kinds of different tangible programming experiences.

A birdseye view of the customisable and reconfigurable Project Bloks system

The Project Bloks system is made up of three core components the “Brain Board”, “Base Boards” and “Pucks”. When connected together they create a set of instructions which can be sent to connected devices, things like toys or tablets, over wifi or Bluetooth.

The three core components of the Project Bloks system

Pucks: abundant, inexpensive, customisable physical instructions
Pucks are what make the Project Bloks system so versatile. They help bring the infinite flexibility of software programming commands to tangible programming experiences. Pucks can be programmed with different instructions, such as ‘turn on or off’, ‘move left’ or ‘jump’. They can also take the shape of many different interactive forms—like switches, dials or buttons. With no active electronic components, they’re also incredibly cheap and easy to make. At a minimum, all you'd need to make a puck is a piece of paper and some conductive ink.

Pucks allow for the creation and customisation of endless amount of different domain-specific physical instructions cheaply and easily.

Base Boards: a modular design for diverse tangible programming experiences
Base Boards read a Puck’s instruction through a capacitive sensor. They act as a conduit for a Puck’s command to the Brain Board. Base Boards are modular and can be connected in sequence and in different orientations to create different programming flows and experiences.

The modularity of the Base Boards means they can be arranged in different configurations and flows

Each Base Board is fitted with a haptic motor and LEDs that can be used to give end-users real time feedback on their programming experience. The Base Boards can also trigger audio feedback from the Brain Board’s built-in speaker.

Brain Board: control any device that has an API over WiFi or Bluetooth
The Brain Board is the processing unit of the system, built on a Raspberry Pi Zero. It also provides the other boards with power, and contains an API to receive and send data to the Base Boards. It sends the Base Boards’ instructions to any device with WiFi or Bluetooth connectivity and an API.

As a whole, the Project Bloks system can take on different form factors and be made out of different materials. This means developers have the flexibility to create diverse experiences that can help kids develop computational thinking: from composing music using functions to playing around with sensors or anything else they care to invent.

The Project Bloks system can be used to create all sorts of different physical programming experiences for kids

The Coding Kit
To show how designers, developers, and researchers might make use of system, the Project Bloks team worked with IDEO to create a reference device, called the Coding Kit. It lets kids learn basic concepts of programming by allowing them to put code bricks together to create a set of instructions that can be sent to control connected toys and devices—anything from a tablet, to a drawing robot or educational tools for exploring science like LEGO® Education WeDo 2.0.

What’s next?
We are looking for participants (educators, developers, parents and researchers) from around the world who would like to help shape the future of Computer Science education by remotely taking part in our research studies later in the year. If you would like to be part of our research study or simply receive updates on the project, please sign up.

If you want more context and detail on Project Bloks, you can read our position paper.

Finally, a big thank you to the team beyond Google who’ve helped us get this far—including the pioneers of tangible learning and programming who’ve inspired us and informed so much of our thinking.

Source: Google Research Blog

Something different — code up hardware in Google Summer of Code

In 1983, the same year I was born, a company called Altera was founded and created the EP300, their first reprogrammable logic device. The event was considered a major step towards the development of devices we now call “Field Programmable Gate Arrays” or FPGAs for short. In the following 33 years, FPGAs would go from extremely expensive devices found only in high end military and telecommunications equipment, to something even a student can afford.

The EP300 in all it's glory

FPGAs are exciting because they make the development process for hardware the same as software. Developers are able to create designs in a hardware description language (HDL), compile and then use them almost instantly! They make hardware code. Turning hardware into code makes it easy for open source developers to share, collaborate and improve the hardware in ways that would have been extremely hard, or even impossible in the past.

There were 180 open source organizations accepted to participate in Google Summer of Code 2016 (GSoC), and it is exciting to see several of the organizations using these technologies. I've highlighted some of the different types of hardware coding opportunities in GSoC this year below. (Anything I've missed? Feel free to add it in the comments section below!)

In the area of CPU architectures, OpenRISC and it’s spiritual successor, the RISC-V, are attempting to make a truly open hardware at the most fundamental level. In 2016 you could help this goal via participating in GSoC with either the FOSSi Foundation or lowRISC project.

Not content with the existing HDLs, both the ArchC organization and MyHDL organization (a sub-organization of the Python group), are attempting to make it easier to create these hardware designs. MyHDL is particularly cool because Python is normally considered to be as far away from hardware as you can get.

My own project, TimVideos.us, is using much of the work from these other projects to develop high speed video processing hardware for conference and user group recording (or maybe even video DJing).

Imagine developing hardware in the same way you write code. With FPGAs you can — and GSoC has numerous opportunities to create hardware using this exciting technology. With only 7 days left to submit your application, you better get cracking!

By Tim ‘mithro’ Ansell, Software Engineer on Chrome by day, open source hardware hacker by night