Welcome to the World of AI and Python

Since long I got interested in AI. Never had the time to really investigate. I had heard of Tensor Flow and other Tools, had a look at the AI Tools on Azure like the Azure AI Services but this is a lot of material to read and a lot already customized. So why not start from the beginning and understand how machine learning works. I bought the book from Laurence Moroney “AI and Machine Learning for Coders” which has a nice introduction on neural networks and many examples coded in Python with TensorFlow. Now I am a C# developer since long and always reluctant to learn another programming language. There are many libraries and tools for AI you can use that are implemented in C# but what the hell Python is THE programming language for AI and Machine Learning, so I gave it a go and began learning Python.

After reading the first 2 chapters of the book I wanted to be able to play around with some simple TensorFlow programs. The idea was to control a robot with language recognition. First things first: I need a robot. My son had a Lego Mindstorms I thought I could use which I connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 to contol it. Even though Lego has stopped developing the Mindstorms, there is a nice programming framework called pybricks https://pybricks.com/ which sits on top of MicroPython (Python for microcontrollers).

Now the problem is that I had 2 controllers one is the so called EV3 brick that is the Lego contoller you see in the center of the robot and the other is my Raspi. I can download a program to the EV3 brick which runs nicely the Python code (that is something 😉 ) but will not work for what I intended. Real time controlling will be very hard as I would need a communication protocol between the Raspi and the EV3 brick. As I want to be able to add the sensors (like a microphone) to the Raspi I only need a very stupid robot car which only has motors that are controlled by the Raspi. So I ordered one and am still waiting. Meanwhile I am learning Python and will continue to learn and write about Machine Learning experiences.