Machine Learning on a Raspberry Pi

It looks like Google is catching up to the idea of machine learning on a Raspberry Pi! Someone put RapidMiner on a Pi back in 2013 but it was slow because the Pi was underpowered.

The Pi has been a great thin client and a small, but capable server. I’ve used it for my Personal Weather Station project and as an FTP server. Based on the news, things are about to get interesting for both Google and Raspberry Pi.

I don’t know what Google is planning to release to the Pi and Maker community but based on the survey I filled out, they haven’t decided yet. They’re looking at C#, Javascript, Go, Swift, Python, and all the other usual suspects.

The problem is optimizing the machine learning libraries for the Pi and having enough available to make it worthwhile for the community.  My guess is that they’ll go with Python, TensorFlow, and Go (Grumpy).

Whatever they decide, I consider this big news for Tinkerers and Makers everywhere. There will be an explosion of innovation if the Google toolkit is comprehensive. The Startup barrier to entry has been lowered, all you need is Pi ($40), a domain, some sweat equity, and a dream.

I love my Raspberry Pi!

I have a small army of them and I use them for all kinds of projects. I used one for my weather station, I built a RapidMiner Server cluster once, and I use them to tweet out my posts

They are so versitale and fun! They make great gifts for kids that are into comptuers and tech. Here are a few kits and boards I recommend.