Dev kit for MK2 still available?

I meant to grab one of the May release dev kits, and life happened. Here we are September, I’ve reallocated my PiCroft to a PiKVM. As rpi prices soar, I’m not sure I want to dump $80-100 for another Pi4 just for PiCroft. I’m thinking of going the self-hosted backend route (I need to catch up on all the new developments since I was last active in April when life happened).

So, to the title of my post, are there still dev kits available in any form? Or is the official release the next step? I’d like to get back to my replacing Alexa. I swear she gets dumber every month. And since most things are run through my HassOS server anyway, having native implementation would make my dumb home a bit smarter.

Thanks in advance!

Michael

Hey Michael, welcome back :slight_smile:

We don’t have Dev Kits for sale at the moment. However we’ve got the contract manufacturer locked in so will hopefully have a timeline on the production units shortly.

Backers are obviously first in line, but as soon as those rewards are fulfilled we’ll be moving onto the reservation list and then new orders.

We’re starting to see the Pi availability settle down a bit, but personally I think the best part of the Mark II hardware is the SJ201 hat which provides excellent audio and some hardware interfaces. Totally unbiased there :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well I believe mine is reserved. Maybe more than once. Lol. Also the yearly membership. So I’ll keep an eye out. How is the focus regarding the self hosted option and a mimic backend? Last I was here, self hosted was doable. In all honesty, I run a mostly Alexa ecosystem, she’s pretty fukern stupid most of the time. but most things don’t work offline. Or with HA without special hacking. And even then, not offline. I realized it’s an often overlooked thing that home automation and smart assistants belong in their own sandboxes, so to speak. Obvious if the intent to to perform an action with a device, the intent is executed locally. If the intent requests data from the net, specific plugins compartmentalize that data, such as weather, sports score, a news article, or even email. Containerized lkeeps the data ready to go or instantly refresh and present to the user.

Something to keep in mind is authentication in multi-person rooms. This would be relating to the core, or at least a tightly integrated plugin. PINs and voice recognition are either not secure or not reliable always. Maybe implementing discrete user validation via ubikey type ble or nfc push button support for authentication with plugins and services. Idk, just rambling since it popped in my head.

So, self hosted still a goal to provide officially?

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Yeah self-hosted is on the longer term map - but getting the Mark II out with the existing config is the priority at the moment.

Until it’s officially supported there’s a couple of Community work arounds:

Standard disclaimer: Mycroft has not reviewed the code or functionality of these. We recommend reviewing any code you run on your device.

STT is still the biggest barrier to having something work well locally. I’ve heard some people have had good results by enhancing a DeepSpeech model with their own supplemental training.

The user authentication is an interesting area that needs tackling in the future too. I assume we’ll end up with multiple levels of auth confidence depending on the action being taken.

What’s my next meeting

Voice print only is probably fine

Buy some milk

Maybe voice print based off a OTP provided by the device

Send all my money to Joe

Needs to be something pretty strong… :smiley:

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I immediately have to correct your error. My name is not spelled with J-O-E. I’ll be more than happy to let you test it all you want to my gpay or PayPal though :wink: obviously will need some HQA review before going live… I assure you, I write very high quality reports, articulating every eloquent detail of the transaction data I receive, with pie charts, pictographs, pop up art, unique fonts, custom color sets, and textured bamboo fiber poster board. (Also available in PowerPoint, interactive DVD-ROM, and Visual Basic runtime). I can provide singing telegram service even, for the highest quality of service, I assure you!

(This includes random midnight forum posts with only the highest quality of pointless yet fun bullshitting)

THAT SAID…

I will definitely check out the current projects and I do agree that trust levels should be least permissive first. As long as plugins stay sandboxed it won’t be a problem to allow the developer to define security levels for actions. Anyway I’m going to have a deeper look before I start asking more

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I have seen your product and I am experimenting with picroft on a pi3b. I would like to build my own Mark II and was wondering if I can still get the interface board to use it with the STL files from the github?

Hey there, unfortunately we don’t have any SJ201 boards for independent sale at the moment and its not currently planned to do so.

You could look at the components of the OTS design which should all be source-able from a quality component store:

At the end of the day you will end up paying more than just buying a Mark II - but I know that’s not always the point :slight_smile:

Thanks for the help. will the dev kit be available in the future?

We don’t have any explicit plans for another Dev Kit run, but I’d say that’s because we’re just focused on cranking up mass production right now.

Personally, I’d be pretty surprised if we didn’t offer either a Dev Kit or just the SJ201’s as a standalone at some point in the future, but it definitely won’t be this year. There are costs involved for any additional product line or even variation of a product, so we’d need to see the demand before we would go down that road again.