This summer, three students successfully completed Google Summer of Code 2018 (GSoC) projects mentored by BeagleBoard.org®. GSoC, sponsored by Google, is a global program in it’s thirteenth year, focused on bringing more student developers into open source software development during a 3 month programming project.
GSoC provides a way for BeagleBoard.org® to identify and bring in new developers to implement new features, and also engage community members to mentor the students who hopefully continue to contribute to open source even after the program is over. Most importantly, more code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.
Mentors & Students Collaboration Key to Success of GSoC
This year Beagleboard.org® was one of 200 communities chosen to participate as mentoring orgs. 
The process begins with posting new project ideas from the community and the recruiting of mentors. Students apply to the program by writing proposals based on the community project descriptions. Both the org and Google then vet proposals, students are accepted, matched withmentors, and the projects kick-off.
The students who worked on Beagleboard.org® GSoC this summer were exceptional and the work completed in the projects is exciting. They provided weekly status reports and met weekly with the teams of mentors from the community.
Volunteer mentors are the “heart and soul” of GSoC, bringing enthusiasm, encouragement and hours of dedication to the projects.
By pairing multiple mentors with each student, mentors also get a chance to develop new skills and collaborate with other community members. Several of this year’s mentors had been previous GSoC students, giving great insight to both students and other mentors.
2018 BeagleBoard.org® GSoC Projects
The projects for this year’s program engaged mentors and students with a variety of skills and backgrounds. Overview, full documentation and code can be found for each project by selecting the links below:
Project: BeagleBoot
Student: Ravi Kumar Prasad
“To integrate node-beagle-boot to Etcher and add features like U-boot console on boot up, TCT/IP proxy server, grab latest images from BeagleBoard.org® to BeagleBoot (electron app), developed during GSoC 2017.”
Project Page: https://github.com/ravikp7/node-beagle-boot/
Project: Fixing Bugs in BoneScript and Improve BeagleBone UI
Student: Vaishnav M.A.
“BoneScript is an existing Node.js library specifically optimized for the BeagleBoard.org® family and featuring familiar Arduino function calls, exported to the browser. The BoneScript library provides several functions for easy interaction with hardware which otherwise would have required the users to manipulate the SysFs files directly, confusing for a beginner-level user. The primary aim of the project is to solve any open issues reported and add some additional beneficial features. Improvements to the BeagleBone® User Interface to provide a similar interface for PocketBeagle® & BaconBits cape examples, giving beginners a GUI from which they can try out the example codes easily(similar to BBUI).”
Project: Modern Speak and Spell using PocketBeagle
Student: Anirban Banik
“This project is an idea based on the retro toy Speak and Spell by Texas Instruments, and generate open source code for it, running on the PocketBeagle®, providing a Linux application which can be reproduced. The added features include offline speech recognition. using CMU Sphinx to provide more robust features. Adding games with features to appeal to the present day children, specifically the preschoolers. Future goals may be to extend this project to other languages, so that this wonderful device can be used more extensively.”
Project Page: https://github.com/AnirbanBanik1998/Modern_Speak_and_Spell/wiki
Each of the students is excited to continue their projects as community members. We encourage all community members to continue to mentor these projects through participation on the IRC and engaging these new members directly.
If you would like to participate in GSoC 2019, please contact us to be added to the mentor list.