It's Alive!
Picroft - Buster Keaton (Pork Pi) release
Picroft is an enclosure for a Raspberry Pi 3, 3B+ or 4 connected to a speaker and
microphone, bringing Mycroft to anyone who wants a simple voice interface they
have complete control over. This is built on top of the official Raspbian
Buster Lite image.
The entire project is available as a pre-built micro-SD image ready to be
burned and placed into a Raspberry Pi. You can download the pre-built image
here:
Picroft Stable 2020-01-10 image
SHA-256: 9cd9ec16388d72dfc6069bc7ea62d1b73e944df103571f48c88a49ec09f5f6d4
Picroft Unstable 2020-09-07 image
SHA-256: 3d3c99c53793224b84de02e816435230f2bbe6272b71d8909afee43e5ef9a402
Optionally you can build it yourself by following the Recipe for building the image
Requirements
- Raspberry Pi 3, 3B+, or 4
Older Raspberry Pi versions do not have sufficient processing power,
and if they work they will be very slow - Speaker
Any analog speaker, or an HDMI monitor with speaker - Microphone
A list of Community tested hardware is available in our documentation. - 2.5 Amp or better power supply
Don't skimp on this! It might appear to work, but you'll have weird
issues with a cheapo supply. - MicroSD Card
8 GB or larger - HDMI Monitor and keyboard, only required during setup
Installation
- Download and burn the image to the SD card.See the RaspberryPi.org's
guide to
Installing Operating System Images
for detailed instructions on how to burn an image to your SD card. - Insert the SD card into your Raspberry Pi
- Connect speaker, microphone, monitor and keyboard
- Apply power
- Follow the on-screen prompts to setup Picroft
- Follow the verbal prompts to pair your device to an account at
Mycroft Home - Talk to Mycroft and enjoy!
Usage
Simply speak to Picroft as you would to any Mycroft. For example:
"Hey Mycroft, what time is it?"
"Mycroft, how tall was Abraham Lincoln?"
Older Versions
Help and more info
To re-run the setup wizard, use mycroft-setup-wizard.
Check out the Picroft wiki here.
There's also the general Documentation.
Customization
audio_setup.shconfigures your specific audio setup.custom_setup.shis a stub meant to initialize anything before Mycroft
starts. For example, initializing connected devices, or launching services.
Getting Help
There is an active Picroft community within the Mycroft's Mattermost chat which all are welcome to join!
FAQ
Q1) Why "Buster Keaton (Pork Pi)"?
This image is built on top of Raspbian "Buster" for running on a Raspberry Pi.
Buster Keaton is best known
for his silent films, but also his signature Pork Pie hats that he designed
and made himself. Coincidentally, Buster Keaton's classic film "Safety Last!"
came out of copyright in 2019.
The photo at the top of this page we thought was Buster Keaton wearing his
signature hat. It turns out that it is actually a slightly more contemporary
Harold Lloyd.
Q2) Can I run this with a the Raspbian desktop GUI?
Sadly, not really. A Raspberry Pi is powerful, but still not well suited to do
everything at once. You can add other basic services on top of Picroft, but
the desktop GUI requires too many additional resources and neither Mycroft nor
the GUI end up running well.
Q3) Can I run this with anything else?
Depends on what you want to add. Serving simple webpages or polling devices
periodically is probably fine. Mining bitcoin won't.
Q4) Can I run this on a Pi4?
Yes!