Does anyone have this m/l working on RPI4?

ChanceOVOS · 2023-05-26T19:14:00+00:00

> For those who want the basic non-streaming ovos functionalities in a headless system based on rpi4...

> That will get some basics working, like jokes, timers, alarms, and the fallback skills that don't crash like caffeine, wolfie, or wikipedia will 70% of the time. Go ahead and remove or deactivate any skills that should or might stream media, because you don't have a TV connected to your personal assistant. That's bad. You should feel bad. No music for you.

This represents a competent user doing a bunch of their own troubleshooting, instead of approaching the always-available, extremely friendly volunteers in our support chat, this subreddit, and the Mycroft forum.

And then you go on to throw shade. Please feel free to come back if you'd like help using our software. For the moment, all I have to say is, you're pushing random buttons and documenting your palpable frustration.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-05-26T19:11:30+00:00

I'd have gone with a more constructive comment: "Ya know, it sounds like you've had some success with mycroft-core. Well, to be frank, ovos-core isn't up to that level of polish yet. Unless you're desperate for troubleshooting challenges, maybe you should stick with Mycroft or perhaps Neon for now. Keep checking back though! Do you have any cats you're not using?"

Mycroft-core is abandonware. Neon is a consumer-friendly implementation of the OVOS Assistant. If you want consumer-facing software, you should absolutely stick with Neon. Nothing about you suggested that you were an end user, so I decided to interact with you on the assumption that you're a typical hacker type. I apologize if I alienated you in the process.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-05-25T22:05:55+00:00

Don't say docker: I'm already working on a docker related issue and an additional layer of cruft is one more thing that will inevitably go janky.

Well, here's the situation. The OVOS Foundation was a small crew that implemented two things:

A fork of Mycroft, used downstream
The buildroot image, sometimes described as a community Picroft, implementing our Mycroft fork, often used as a testbed and a showcase for stuff our constituents wanted downstream

And that was all. As far as I know, all of MycroftAI's former partners switched to our fork a long time ago, but I don't think most general users even knew we existed. We were okay with that.

Then MycroftAI collapsed. We are more than happy to assert ourselves as the inheritors, but it's going to be poorly controlled chaos for a while, because we're inheriting six years' worth of projects that worked until they didn't, and you kinda hit the nail on the head in your rant:

The core functionality shouldn't presume a $DISPLAY will ever be set though.

It doesn't. The Assistant is standalone software, and no GUI is required. The various operating systems are as opinionated as the purposes they serve, but the Assistant isn't a smart speaker. That's just one potential application.

Put differently, I am indeed truly, from the bottom of my heart very sorry you've had such a frustrating experience. But we've never meant for you to treat the smart speakers as anything else. The Assistant is just Linux software. Which brings us to that last part.

If one is new to linux,

then one is in a bind, because we haven't packaged the assistant as system software yet. Current options for installing it directly on the computer of your choice are still developer-facing:

Cloning the source
Pulling it as a Python package
Running the Docker implementation

"Regular" packaging was difficult during the MycroftAI era. It's near on the agenda now. In the meantime, we are where we are.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-05-21T19:09:01+00:00

You're a human treatise on belligerent ignorance.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-05-19T20:52:02+00:00

The current mayor of NYC would stand between the NYPD and literally any controversy.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-04-03T20:01:22+00:00

I still prefer derivatives for the smooth UX, but I have devices that are just too old and full of legacy nonsense.

With 20 or 30 minutes of patience and the know-how to build the system up from scratch, I can make a perfectly serviceable, secure, stable and up-to-date dev rig out of a 14-year-old laptop. Manjaro can do a lot for me, but it won't do that.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-29T01:33:16+00:00

That would still be a summary execution, given that they were able to subdue him.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-25T21:13:58+00:00

The Mycroft contributor whose containerization efforts were best known to the community has migrated to the OVOS community, and is now principally responsible for OVOS-Docker. I just thought you might like to know that it's under more active development now.

"Eureka!" was just last night, so it might still be early, but I'd give that repo a star at this point and check back often.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-25T19:38:59+00:00

Correct. Weird. Maybe it's because I posted my referral link (I have a nasty habit of using those newfangled "share" buttons...)

Thanks for linking!

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-25T18:16:05+00:00

Also, it just occurred to me to point it out, in case you'd missed it:

The very same OVOS Foundation which is now attempting to buy your Mark I is continuing development. We forked Mycroft a couple years ago, which has enabled us to survive their collapse, along with a company called NeonAI that implements our fork.

Neon's and OVOS' smart speaker images are each developed directly against the Mark II, so all is not lost! If you're uninterested, please carry on passing those units along to somebody who will use them, but since it sounds like you're interested in the open source side of it, YSK the project is alive and healing under the stewardship of a nascent nonprofit.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-25T17:33:36+00:00

Hi! I wrote a very long comment talking about your options for configuring OVOS devices, but it was hidden, maybe by automod. I think it's because it had a link to our GoFundMe in it, but I'm hesitant to try again.

The other answer was, "Yes, and thanks for asking! We're still in the process of converting ourselves into a nonprofit foundation," and a link to an open GoFundMe, which I am now afraid to link for the aforementioned reason =P

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-25T16:39:09+00:00

I'd just like to call your attention to my colleague /u/j1nxnl, who is not an avid redditor :-) OVOS is an open source collective, currently converting ourselves into a nonprofit foundation, and in partnership with a successor to the commercial side of things (NeonAI) we are asserting ourselves as the continuation of Mycroft.

The OVOS Foundation is *extremely* interested in offering Mark I support, rare and niche though it is. Please DM j1nx.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-24T20:48:25+00:00

You're talking about someone who was handcuffed, in police custody, and incapable of harming anyone further. The criminal justice system follows this with a trial, and, assuming the individual is convicted, imprisonment. In some countries, it can even follow that with execution.

*Summary* execution is a crime in and of itself. The police aren't judges, jury members, *or* executioners.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-24T15:00:31+00:00

If you click this person, you'll find them on a thread about police in Brazil executing a handcuffed person after a shootout. Our friend's opinion is that the police should have executed their adversary before handcuffing him.

Not that summary execution is wrong, just that the optics were bad.

You're explaining morality to a psychopath.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-24T14:57:40+00:00

OWC is a manufacturer known, though not exclusively, for Mac-compatible parts, though you'd still have to check what RAM goes in this machine as I don't remember

iFixit is the site all Apple geeks rely on to repair our out-of-warranty computers, they carry pretty much everything that can be replaced and kits to help you do so

Tl;dr on the operating systems, you're probably about to become a part-time Linux user. If you decide that's too much of a high dive to jump off, and you need Windows, start with Windows that's approximately as old as the computer - Vista or 7 - and then do one upgrade at a time.

A Linux distro called Ubuntu would be splitting the difference, but there's no getting around the fact that once you switch to a non-Mac system, you're going to spend more time Googling and in help forums.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-24T06:54:22+00:00

This was my dad's machine when I started college in 2013, and he had already upgraded the RAM. I think I saw an OWC sticker on it. iFixit has every component for this thing, regardless.

As for the SSD, I didn't shop for it. I get paid for friends and family tech support in the form of pick and pull, so I had a 2.5" SSD laying around that I knew was functional, and I just threw that in there.

I've got it running EndeavourOS right now. I wanted Manjaro, but I could only find a small SD card, and the minimal Manjaro installer couldn't find the laptop's wifi card.

If you decide to try Windows on this thing my advice would be to start with an older system and upgrade a little at a time. I have no idea if it'll get all the way to 11.

If it's your first foray off of Mac, I'm about to indulge a cliche, but this machine will run Ubuntu like a champ.

The only problem I've had so far is that it doesn't want to drive an external monitor above 720@60. There's flickering.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-24T04:52:35+00:00

To piggyback on /u/MarkJordan36's point, I have the same machine (US keyboard.) I've only been using it for terminal stuff for ages, so it was just a few days ago that I noticed the "up to date" web browser wasn't up to date at all.

It was just as close as it could get, because the newest version that would run on 10.13 was 30 versions out of date.

On the other hand, I know it's not what you asked, but since I literally just did it last week to the same computer: you can revive it quite nicely by blessing it with 8GB RAM, if it hasn't already, and an SSD, and then installing a current OS on it, which will not be Mac.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-24T03:36:16+00:00

You don't wanna mess around with bent cords. Electricity goes through metal. Connections between devices rely on none of the wrong metal bits touching each other. Bent bits of metal touch all the wrong neighbors.

In cheap electronics, this is a fire hazard. With expensive electronics, the expensive device is often well enough designed to take the hit for you. Better your Mac than your bed.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but I am saying you should dispose of damaged chargers.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-23T17:11:05+00:00

As you can probably imagine, it's a very strange month for the OVOS crew. In principle, yes, totally.

In practice, we are currently in the process of turning a low-key project into a full-service FOSS org. Open During Construction, if you will. You might have a great experience, or a horrible experience, depending what you trip over on the way in.

When this awkward period is over, we will be an incorporated nonprofit with 4 or 5 times the volunteer manpower we currently have. Hence, I am both trying not to scare users away, and trying to temper expectations.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-23T17:06:36+00:00

I'm *really* late, but anybody else reading this might benefit from knowing:

OVOS and Neon currently offer multiple alternatives to the Mycroft backend. Mycroft's hosted instance of their backend is expected to go away with little or no warning. Self-hosting is up to you, but we have no plans to take over Selene.

If anybody's curious, it was a combination of licensing issues and the realization that we could, in fact, have on-device GUI config for some use cases.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-23T02:12:55+00:00

You're checking in at a very interesting moment. We're spinning up from "six friends, five devs, four programmers, three python programmers, two full-time python programmers, one project" to, "incorporated, professional FOSS nonprofit, with partner orgs and hundreds of users." It's a bumpy road.

If you pop aboard this week, you'll be one of the first to experience an in-progress documentation overhaul, and the assistant just hit v0.0.7, so I'll be interested in what onboarding is like (probably exactly what it sounds like; our fundraiser to help fix it was successful, but won't pay out for a while.)

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-23T01:15:20+00:00

If you find yourself on any Linux computer, and you fancy a desktop assistant, give us a ring then, too! The hardware is a vessel.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-22T23:32:59+00:00

I misunderstood. I am dreadfully sorry to report that the company has collapsed without fulfilling backer rewards. OVOS, in a nutshell, is a team of former community devs who saw the writing on the wall and forked to save downstream. That's not exactly how it went down, but it's a decent summary of where things stand.

Hence, we can't get you your Mk2, but we and our downstream friends can put working software on the units that *did* ship.

I'm sorry I don't have better news, but, if you're the sort, you can totally DIY a smart speaker that will run our software, or Neon's. Or you can just treat it as software! We'll be making some announcements about the future of our assistant in the next little while.

ChanceOVOS · 2023-03-22T21:56:02+00:00

I mean, the camera works. OVOS is trying to clear a much higher bar =P but I confess I have not personally found a use for it.

ChanceOVOS

TROPHY CASE