I’ve always loved the face of the mk1 but didn’t have the cash at the time to pick one up.
Do they still get updates and function with the latest routines etc?
Are they a raspberry pi on the inside also?
I’d love to hear about them in people’s homes, and also wondered if anyone is willing to sell theirs to a new home?
I have a few old Chumbys that I’ve hacked and integrated into my Home Assistant based smart home (using api calls to synthesize speech and change display/behaviour) to make them read things out etc, and I’d love to do the same with a mycroft mk1.
I’ve always believed that old hardware if loved should never become obsolete, but retired to less demanding tasks so you can keep enjoying it.
The Mark 1 gave “AI” such a nice and sympathetic face… My visitors and I just loved the eyes and the moving mouth. Unfortunately, its processing power wasn’t enough for real private and offline work. I’d actually also buy a used one, just for the fun of it. I still enjoy Jay’s videos, with the little Mycroft Mk1 sitting there and watching the studio…
Now the Mark 2 has such a sober, technical, unemotional look (though it reminds me a little of the tube on the console Spock always looked into) that the Mark 1 will be duly missed…
Maybe they’ll come up with a Mark 3 one day that looks more like a little robot head again, but can also display data like the Mark 2? (Probably plus the touchscreen features.)
Currently the Mark 1’s are running Debian Jesse so there needs to be some work done to bring them into the new age but they do still receive all the Mycroft-core updates. There are also some community scripts that have been created to create Debian Buster versions. I believe these do everything except the wifi setup process which needs to be configured manually.
They have Raspberry Pi 3B’s inside so not the fastest clocks on the block but not too shabby. We see them occasionally on Reddit or different marketplaces, but there aren’t heaps around.
The big limitation is the mic but we have been toying with the idea of retrofitting the internals and re-releasing the same enclosure at some point. There is something so nice about a classic matrix display. Don’t hold your breath for this though, there’s a bunch of hardware design that would need to go into this and we have our hands full with the Mark II atm.
I’ve managed to track down at least one maybe two, and it sounds like this is exactly up my alley as I’ve been hacking and tinkering with small Linux appliances for years.
I found an exploded diagram that made it look like the raspberry pi 3B is attached to the rest with the GPIO ports like a shield, could it be possible it is semi-compatible with slotting in a raspberry pi 4 with some minor case modding?
Either way good to know it’s a 3B on the inside which is still reasonably capable.
I can’t wait to see that little face on my bedside table linked in with my Home Assistant replacing the poor failing hacked Chumby that has been my companion for more than a decade.
Haven’t tried to be honest would need to make sure the pins mapped properly which is also delivering power to the pi and there might need to be some updates to support the arduino code.
Ooooo did you get any where with this ?
I’ve managed a get a pi4 4gb and wanna swap out the pi3 in my mk1.
Also very interested about the API calls to set face/mouth/eye stuff using home assistant, are you will to post the code ? Or the custom integration you use.