Now Even Business Cards Are AI-Powered
Dave McKinnon doesn't just talk about his AI skills, he shows them off with a business card that runs a voice recognition neural network.
There is nothing hotter than machine learning at the moment, so a lot of people are focused on upskilling themselves so that they can incorporate this technology into their professional lives. For the lucky group that has already got some talent in this area, the smartest thing to do is broadcast that fact far and wide. Updating resumes and online professional profiles is a good start, but Dave McKinnon came up with an even better solution.
Rather than talking about his skills, which anyone can do, McKinnon decided to demonstrate them. He built a tiny business card that runs a small neural network entirely on-device — there is no API connecting to a cloud service behind the scenes. Not bad for a 2” x 3” card, but you do have to connect it to a USB-C port for power, so it is not fully self-contained.
It was two main decisions that made this build possible. First, the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller was selected to serve as the brains of the operation. No, a 125MHz dual-core Arm Cortex-M0 processor and 520KB of RAM is not a lot in the world of machine learning, but for a highly-optimized and simple model, it is more than enough.
That leads us to the other decision that made this card work. McKinnon snagged a small neural network that was designed for voice recognition on Arduino boards. It isn’t super useful — it can only distinguish between the numbers “one” through “nine,” and the words “on” and “off” — but it is very small. Enough so that it can comfortably fit within the constraints of the RP2040’s hardware.
A custom PCB was designed, with McKinnon’s contact information silkscreened on the front. The RP2040 was accompanied by flash memory, power regulation circuitry, a microphone to capture a person’s voice, and other supporting components. When the model makes a prediction, the result is displayed on a makeshift seven-segment display made from individual LEDs.
If you like the idea, but would perhaps like to enhance the card’s capabilities a bit, check out the project write-up. There are lots of details available to help you get on your way.
R&D, creativity, and building the next big thing you never knew you wanted are my specialties.