Google AIY Vision Kit V1.1

This kit is great fun for the hard-core computer geek, or a beginner who has such a geek available to help. You need experience with the delicate little ribbon connector sockets, and linux software experience is very helpful. But if you have a friend who can get you over the inevitable rough spots, it’s a great educational platform.The kit came with all the parts, including the Raspberry Pi Zero WH microcomputer, the camera, and the coprocessor board. A micro-SD card with the necessary software is included, but they tell you to check the AIY web site to get the latest version of this software. To do that, you need, temporarily (for one-time setup purposes), a computer (Windows, Mac or linux) and a micro-SD card adapter. It’s very helpful to have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor (any TV, plus a HDMI-to-micro-HDMI adapter) so you can do more than just run the demo program that detects faces in the camera’s field of view. The included micro-SD card has other demos that you can run, but the best feature of this product is that it is hackable – that is, you can modify it. You can connect various electrical things (LEDs, motors, sensors, etc) to the GPIO (general purpose input-output) connector, and write your own software to do cool stuff. For example you could make it unlock the little cat door when it detects your cat – not a raccoon or someone else’s cat – on your porch. But remember, this is an educational toy, not a ready-to-use household product. By playing with it, you’ll get to practice writing python, linux, maybe C or scratch or even HTML.