Thank you to our community and supporters. You helped us reach our goal in less than a day.
We could not have done it without your backing and your support. We are grateful.
Now it is time to plan some great stretch goals. What would you like to see?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-mark-ii-the-open-voice-assistant
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First of all lower shipping costs for intl. buyers (30$ for shipment to Germany) 
But as for more impressive stretch goals I’d say:
- Make the whole shell or large parts of it exchangable so it can be colored differently and offer crazy colors (pink, neon, brown, orange, R, G & B etc.)
- Maybe offer shell skins (nicely designed stickers/covers that fit it perfectly) - eventually start a contest (to win t-shirts etc.) for artists so they can design some cool stuff
- Expose mycrofts skills and features to a VPL (visual programming language) to enable beginners and average people to do really awesome stuff with it
- Cool skill stretch goals to broaden the devices capabilities for example:
- advanced smart alarm for example that can estimate go to bed and wake up times e.g. or can be set depending on sunrise, calendar events, relative to time zones etc.
- send voice commands to devices and or pc’s (gaming mode where the microft acts as an always on (not depending on wakeword but always on microphone for catching hotkey events for example)
- a skill that allows one mycroft unit to talk to another one or set events (e.g. "microft - wake me up at 6am on my bedroom unit) - that might even buff the multi-unit bundle sales
- A speaker and small battery so the device can sound an alarm on power loss
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Thank you for the ideas. I will take them to the team. As to the international shipping, we can’t change the price. We are using a company that gets us the best deal out there and all we are charging is cost.
I know a lot of our community has been working on gaming skills already.
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Stretch goal mark 2.5 with enough gpu to run everything locally
It’s been amazing to see the community rally for the campaign (and the project in general). You guys are awesome!
Agree, 35$ for Spain it’s a bit disproportionate, fortunately I have been able to compensate it with the early bird…
My ideas for Mark II and future versions of the software (I now some of them are just dreams, but anyway…)
- Localization made easy. Despite the efforts to make Mycroft able to understand other languages rather than english, is still difficult. It should be as easy as select your desired language from a dropdown menu.
- I think integration of mycroft with smart home components is a must for a voice assistant. I’m starting playing with zwave and home assistant. My ultimate idea is make Mycroft to send orders to the zwave hub throught the HASS.io . A skill to send conmands to Home Assistant or OpenHAB simply by filling some fields would be great. On Mark I /Rpi /computer is pretty easy to plug a razberry or usb dongle, so Mycroft itself could be the zwave hub. Perhaps you can facilitate such integration.
- I would suggest to add an inner usb type a connector inside the Mark II and easibily accesible (but completely hidden). So anyone can plug some usb adapter (not necessary a zwave).
- As @dottedfish suggested, offer a VPL like scratch to average user would really boost skills development. It can be simple at first, and being improved with the time.
- Cables are a mess. Mark II is nice enough to be placed on the living room’s center table, but there are no plugs on those tables. A battery on the unit and dock system would be great to easily charge it and move it, or now just dreaming, WiFi charging (not inductive) would be even better
- As a alternative to the last, a set of wireless microphones which can be placed around the living/house, directly paired with mycroft and easily rechargeable.
- Pair/sync with another Mycroft: being a proud owner of Mark I and having installed on my Plasma desktop, it would be great to have the same skill on every mycrot without the need to repeating the process on all of them, perhaps letting them to execute the skill and report it back (thinking for example about the embedded mycroft on cars, or when the mobile mycroft app will be released, if you want to turn on air aconditioner when going back home), possibilities are countless!
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Hi. The openHAB skill is already available here.
+1 for different colours.
Built in battery and Qi on the bottom. It magneticly attaches to an included base the same diameter as the Mark II, can be taken into a different room to run off the battery or be set on a 3rd party charger.
TBH: borrowed the idea from another post on the forum.
As for shipping costs I kinda guessed that. I’d assume it’s BackerKit? Well, too bad for us but you guys aren’t at fault here - I’ve had this happen on other kickstarters too. It’s sad to see they charge 1/4 of the cost for a Mk II for just a box and a stamp on it… … … But enough of that, contracts are signed already anyways. 
I edited my initial post with some more details
Like the smart alarm idea (added alarms relative to time zones e.g.)
Detailed the gaming mode a bit more (no wakeword - always on and listening for hotkey events)
Detailed the exchangable outer shell idea
Changed “speaker + battery” to either a battery or a big capacitator and using the interal speakers for the sound on power loss
That said I really like the idea of wireless charging. But the more I think about it I’d love to see some sort of expansion port though. Similar to raspi shields. Basically having the port we could plug a battery on to the Mycroft for those who need it.
That’d allow those who need it portable to get an addon battery. It could also then come in versions for wireless charging.
With this tech the Mycroft could be interfaced with many other things too though. For example an I/O module that could connect sensors, camera(s) etc.
Maybe you guys could even just stick to and use the raspi shield interface and a USB port?
