The always-interesting world of DIY computing just got a little bit more fascinating! Microsoft has brought Cortana on Raspberry Pi 3, as part of the Creators Update refresh of its operating platform.
Which, mind you, is still finding its feet on Internet of Things hardware.
These new features will excite developers and tinkerers the most, of course. But starting with this new version of Windows 10 IoT Core, the popular board can serve as the foundation hub for more advanced devices that work with voice commands, thanks to Cortana.
Microsoft’s digital assistant has, up until now, only been available on PCs and smartphone.
But we got wind of the company’s plans to bring it to IoT hardware, late last year.
And as the company notes, it has finally arrived on the Raspberry Pi. Better yet, it comes with almost the same feature set as other platforms, with support for voice commands that provide users with access to time, weather, traffic, dictionary, sports and information in a range of different areas.
Redmond explains:
“Cortana on IoT Core offers reactive experiences in the Windows 10 Creators Update. A reactive experience occurs when the user initiates commands to cut through multiple steps to complete a task. Reactive information is provided in response to a query.
Cortana is extensible. In addition to the native skills supported by the Cortana application, developers can create their own skills to allow Cortana to do more.”
As you might expect, English is the only support language.
For now, at least.
But this is how things rolled on PCs and mobile phones, and we can be sure that Microsoft is working hard to add support for other languages on IoT hardware, very soon.
If you’re interested in getting started, though, you can do so by clicking at the link below that provides full instructions on how to set up the digital assistant. Certain accessories are required to be connected to the board in order to interact with Cortana, like microphones and speakers.
How to configure Cortana on Windows 10 IoT Coresource:windows10update
