Well, yes. I actually sent a query to the company asking if they needed developers after seeing those (they did not). And I wouldn’t want to completely cease recording them if I had been doing it for a while. Or, at least, if I had to, I would make sure that folks understood I was going to do so. Either would be in better service of demonstrating the only thing that actually matters for their business model: a commitment to openness. I would understand that without that continued demonstration, I will be out of business very quickly.
If those exist and I’ve missed them, I apologize, although I don’t think it would change my diagnosis.
The reason I’m realistic about this is that I’ve worked at at least one company who had a similar trajectory in the early '00s (traansitioning from open-source-to-traditional without great comms). They no longer exist. They wouldn’t recommit to opennesss, but they could not compete with enormous competitors like Microsoft as a closed company. They were buried within seven months of making that choice. Patience is not on Mycroft’s side: the salaries need to be paid, and new investors need to be found.
If you mean in a broader sense, sure. I’m only talking about Mycroft.ai.
Quit whining, it’s a brand new device being made that they obviously ran into timing issues. Why did you even order it to begin with if you are that impatient?? You should have just built your own!
I ordered and have already received (2) Mycroft Mark II’s, so if anyone should be pissy then I think it would be those of us that have even more skin in the game than YOU. But guess what, i’m just going to sit back, get baked and wait. I might also try out the core version in the meantime, but you know what i’m NOT going to do? Report this small company trying to make something cool to the FTC because they are delayed and i’m impatient. It’s not like they can’t update the shipped OS to be able to install skills and such, so just sit back and shut up.
Today I have received my 3 Mark II devices. I am a bit shocked by I read here and fully agree with “No response is the worst response”. Someone from Mycroft should put the folks in here at ease.
From a security perspective I can understand why Mycroft went the Dinkum route. Although I think they chose the wrong technology for this. Simply put, a skill is nothing more that a “little” python program that runs when your Mark II detects utterance related to that skill. You as the owner of that device trust the skill developer has no evil intentions, but the python program could execute any python code depending on how hardened Mycroft is. Most probably a malicious skill could still steal/share your information with the skill developer. In the worst case scenario it could create a backdoor in Mark II to execute malicious code at will. Usually you want pluggable features like this to be sandboxed and only give it access with consent to what is needed, similar to apps on your smartphone.
These security related issues is not something you want to happen in a consumer product like the Mark II. I believe this is the reason why installing new skills is not made easy in the Dinkum version.
Being a software engineer myself I could not help myself and followed the steps from: Porting the Hello World Skill - Mycroft Mark II
Following these steps I succeeded in getting the “Hello World” skill working. Like this it should be possible port other skills. But this is only advised for the tech savvy or brave amongst us.
I am OK with limitations in the software. But I want to know exactly what those limitations are, and how to use the system with the limitations.
Instead the information I initially got was completely wrong/misleading.
What I first got my mark ii device, I saw Account, which tells me:
To add skills to your device(s), you can use voice commands (e.g. “Hey Mycroft, install alarm skill.”) or visit our skill marketplace. (link deleted due to forum requirements)
This is wrong. Furthermore it which has a link to Mycroft Marketplace which tells that I do have the Installer skilled installed. This is also wrong. Sure, the installer is not listed on the skills page, and no doubt that is the authoritative page, but, this just confused me.
As a result, I spent some time trying to get a new skill set installed verbally only to find I don’t even have the Installer installed.
But solving this would be simple, all they really need is to supply a link or qr code to these forums when sending the Mycroft Mark ii. Maybe a wiki page would be really good too.
And the blog on how to port code (link above) looks really good too.
Yeah I finally got my hands on my Mark II, which I backed on Kickstarter years ago; and dropped the extra dough to not come to empty handed. All this waiting and extra expense just to discover that this device didn’t even have the ability to dim the display without digging into the command line.
Am I missing something? Or did I just get fooled twice?
@mike99mac While advising users of NeonOS (or OVOS, for that matter) I’ve discovered it’s important to include the following information, or people seem to think we’re random third-party spammers =P
MycroftAI appears to be defunct. All its development staff are out of a job.
New management has taken over the software. OVOS is an open source crew that forked a long time ago. Now we are becoming a nonprofit.
NeonAI is a company that implements the OVOS fork, and they’ve taken over Mark II software support. NeonOS, linked just above, is a Mark II-native image that I hope will provide exactly what you were hoping for. Neon’s support staff are elsewhere in these forums, and the OVOS crew is all over.
