Google Offers Developer Boards for Project Ara Modular Phone

Google, continuing its efforts to make the Project Ara handsets a reality for end users, has now started taking requests for developer boards used in the modular phones. Interested developers can fill up a form available at Project Ara's official site to get the test board.

It's worth noting that Google has a limited number of developer boards, this is the reason why the Mountain View giant wants to prioritise requests based on technical experience and also the strength of the module concept put forward by a developer.

Notably, the Project Ara developer board was initially showcased at the first-ever Ara Developers' Conference held in April.

The developer hardware request page lists some of the terms for the developer boards, which mentions that Google will not be shipping developer boards to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria (for unspecified reasons), while the company will be limiting applications to 1 per organization, preferably to a designated technical lead who has experience with embedded boards.

Eduardo Ruiz, a Google+ user has posted an email from the Project Ara team, detailing Google's message to developers.

Dear Ara Module Developer:

We are now accepting requests for dev boards that we demo'd at the developer conference back in April. This is FPGA hardware that corresponds to the v0.11 release of the MDK. It is designed to help with prototyping and development of modules for the Ara platform, including modules for the current (first) prize challenge that we formally announced at Google I/O.

You may request the developer hardware at http://www.projectara.com/dev-board-form. The first round of applications will be due this Thursday, July 17 2014, 11:59pm Pacific Time. The second round of applications will be due on August 17, 2014.

We also anticipate making a new set of dev hardware based on the v0.20 MDK platform (which use ASICs instead of FPGAs for UniPro network processing and free up significant space for developer functionality in the modules) after the second developers' conference in November 2014.

Best,

Project Ara Team

Earlier this month, Google revealed the first 100 beta testers to receive Project Ara prototypes. Recently, Google's Project Ara Design Head, Dan Makoski, also announced his exit from the company.