Paper Signals is Google’s new papercraft experiment

Google is rolling out a new experiment that combines papercraft and Google Assistant. The new project, Paper Signals, lets you control physical things with your voice. It’s all open source and cheap as hell, too.

To get started, grab a Paper Signals starter kit. This includes an Adafruit board, all the cables you’ll need, and a micro servo motor that moves your paper objects around. You can find all of those parts in a bundle at the bottom of this post.  The only tools you need are ones commonly found around the house such as an X-acto knife, glue, pencil, and a ruler. You’ll also need a device that supports Google Assistant like a Google Home or Google Home Mini. If you don’t have one of those, you can just use you Assistant on your phone. 

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Once you gather all your parts and supplies, you can then assemble the hardware. It’s as simple as plugging in a few different components. After they’re connected, download the required software and plug your device into the computer. At this point, you install your software and then print your template.

Printing, cutting, and assembling the templates looks pretty easy and fun to do. Currently, there are six activities supported. They range from an umbrella opening up to tell you when it is raining to an arrow that points up or down to indicate how Bitcoin is doing. 

This is a cute project that doesn’t take much time to complete. I plan on grabbing one of the kits and saving it for a rainy day so my daughter and I can create one together. How about you?

get the Paper Signals Bundle

get the instructions