Mycroft Mark II missing files

Archive - Mycroft Project This category is being retired - Support
28

our PHAL service can also be used together with vanilla mycroft, just run it on same machine, all it needs is to connect to the bus. but our plugins may not make sense in vanilla mycroft

docs here

https://openvoiceos.github.io/community-docs/PHAL

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We did this “behind closed doors” because we were trying lots of different things and every time we did this publicly there was an outcry that it wasn’t backwards compatible.

Definitely sounds painful. That said, you did sign up to run an open-source based company…

Maybe we should have released Classic Core as the default and provided Dinkum as an optional image?

No, I don’t want to stay on classic. If you all have a better framework in dinkum I’m happy to port skills there – I want to be swimming as close to HEAD as possible; I know that even in open source projects it’s usually one person or one company that does the bulk of the heavy lifting. But:

  • Giving your devs more of a heads up of where you’re going (even if only to say “hey guys, this it the new stuff, like it or not”) so that your community doesn’t feel totally surprised / left in the dark is going to engender goodwill down the line, and the inverse is just going to make your community feel left out / devalued.

  • Dinkum has a lot of odd systemd stuffs that seem to be aimed at just the mark 2; I’m happy to have ordered a mark 2 personally, but I’d like to know that if I contribute skills for mycroft I’m not going to either have to (a) contribute to a deprecated, unmaintained codebase or (b) only have skills be available to people who pay for premium hardware.

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30

Can you elaborate on “no automatic updates” ?

I received my unit yesterday and already had to flash an image…

31

Also, to anyone who flashes… Make sure you go into the Advanced Settings on the Raspberry Imager and set your SSID credentials… Wasted 20-30 minutes before realizing the Mycroft temporary SSID will not broadcast.

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32

Back in October 26th, I read with interest michael-mycroft’s response to missing files in this Mk2 missing files topic. Quote, " Rest assured, we will soon be releasing images that allow you make use of the hardware with any version of Mycroft. This should be within days, not months." unquote.

At the time I assumed, (obviously mistakenly), that this meant that the dinkum variant would shortly be upgraded to support installation of other existing skills etc, a common complaint here. However after waiting over a month, thought that I’d better re-read it.

On re-reading am I to assume now that the mycroft Core image is the one that was being talked about, (which Has been made available), and that there’s no immediate plans to bring installation of other existing skills into dinkum ?

(Did initially load up another USB with the core version, but as I ran into problems immediately, decided to hang on till dinkum was brought up to scratch).

So the question is, is this currently it for dinkum, or are there any plans to make it and/or other software compatible ? If so, any ideas on timelines ?

Thanks

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33

It looks like the README in dinkum now includes some direction on porting skills to Dinkum:

With sessions, skill intent handlers change from:

def handle_intent(self):
    self.speak_dialog("my-dialog", data={"x": 1})
    self.gui["y"] = 2
    self.gui.show_page("my-page.qml")

to this:

def handle_intent(self):
    return self.end_session(
        dialog=("my-dialog", {"x": 1}),
        gui=("my-page.qml", {"y": 2})
    )

Rather than executing commands to control the GUI and TTS, the skill is returning a message that expresses what it wants to do. The session manager (intent service) can then decide whether or not to do it.

A new session begins when an utterance is received, and is usually ended by a skill’s intent handler (self.end_session()). When the session is over, the GUI returns to the home screen after all TTS has been spoken.

Exceptions to the default flow include:

  • Using self.continue_session(expect_response=True) to get a response from the user.
    • The skill’s raw_utterance method is called with the utterance
  • Common Query/Play
    • The parent skill uses continue_session and expects the child skill to end it
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34

As a skill developer I want to reiterate what @osheroff said here: I’d like to be working against the future of the platform, not the past. But the documentation is lacking.

Edit:
In particular what I would love to see is instructions or a general guide on setting up a dev environment for dinkum that doesn’t involve the mark Ii hardware itself. Whether this be using a virtual machine or something else…my Mark ii is a production device in my house and I can’t always use it for skill development

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35

Thank you Harmony for bringing that to our collective attention! I appreciate your contribution. I want to suss out how to develop new skills, and I’m shocked that this info is not more readily available.

36

I’d like to point out that Mycroft AI has done a great job of documentation before…

just see their docs for mycroft-core: Development Setup - Mycroft AI

I suspect what we are seeing is just an overworked team trying to develop and ship a production product ready for the market and meet their kickstarter obligations. Obviously they have prioritized shipping the hardware along with suitable production firmware… hopefully now that this crunch is over they will be able to update the documentation with the new system.

Merry Christmas to the Mycroft team!

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37

My two cents: I’m thinking there’s a misalignment about what the target market is. I think I’m (software developer, interested in mucking with things myself and willing to pay a premium for hardware to avoid adtech) pretty much the target market for the original product I ordered . It feels like the target market has shifted (or maybe it was always this way?) and there’s an intention that this is a mass market device?

It worked out so that I unboxed this at Christmas, so my first experience showing it off was “huh, it doesn’t seem to really work or do any of the stuff it says it can do”. It can turn on very slowly with fan whine, connect to Wi-Fi, and then tell you in a bunch of different ways that it can’t do anything you ask. The room full of “mass market consumers” is not going to be buying this based of my demo, that’s for sure.

I understand the team is under pressure and it blows to have to make hard choices. That said, how many shipment delay, address confirmation, “order now”, “no really, order now” emails did we get and how many mentioned anything about Dinkum or the “stripped-down” (from my perspective, crippled) software that would ultimately ship?

I’m really surprised this wasn’t the decision made, but I guess it’s also got me curious. How many sales of the Mark 2 went to people unfamiliar with the command line? Is that really the majority end user that should be optimized for?

The product that showed up did not feel like it was produced to be user-empowering, hackable, open source alternative to adtech. It feels like it got halfway there, someone said “hmm, but it’s gotta make money” and turned it into mass market shovelware.

Maybe this is a rant and overly harsh, but sure was a disappointing Christmas reveal.

Edit: Thinking about how to make this rant more constructive, I think it’s all down to communication. If I buy a microcontroller, I know it doesn’t do anything and the first thing I’m going to have to do is flash it. Dinkum was a complete surprise to me, and I only found out about it indirectly in response to my own bewilderment in Mycroft Skills Manager on Mark 2? - #4 by devilish_cobweb. If the version that shows up is stripped to the core and can’t even install skills, then that should be front and center in the on-boarding so I don’t assume it’s just broken.

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38

Release of the Mark II was botched. The device has been described as an expensive paperweight and no more than a clock. Mycroft leadership should own this, and share a roadmap of the way forward, and by the way, give thanks to those who trusted them and who might continue to trust them. The goal of the Mycroft exercise is admirable, but those who peripherally support the effort shouldn’t be treated with disrespect.

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39

Yes exactly this. I’ve had my Mark 2 a couple of months but it’s only now at Christmas that I have some time to spend messing around with it. It is so disappointing to find that it has so few skills and no simple way to add more.

I spent the day yesterday getting the hello.mark2 skill working - it was painful, the guide assumes knowledge of pre-Mark2 which I don’t have. I finally figured it out but it was much harder than it needed to be.

Now I’d like to try to get some other skills working on my Mark2 but there is very little to go on.

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40

This was stated on October 26th. Where is the new documentation? Where are images that don’t force me to rollback to an older version of the OS? If this is not ready, I would like a full refund on this product or I will report Mycroft to the FTC for bait and switch tactics.

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41

I received my Mycroft Mark II after a long wait as everyone else. Was really excited when it arrived but since it was close to Christmas, I decided to wait to give it a try. Today, I was excited to give the device a try. However, after a quick setup process that went smoothly, my excitement soon turned to disappointment. All I have is a clock that tells me it does not understand. So, thinking I was doing something wrong, I took to the documentation. The site says I can have skills installed but every skill I try to install will not work and I am told that Mycroft does not understand. Thinking I am still doing something wrong, I come to the forums to get some help. Now, I am even more disappointed. Seems as though I do have a clock that does not do anything. I guess I got the weather read to me… So that is something… I knew there would growing pains with a new device such as this but I guess I was not expecting this low of functionality. Before I put this on the shelf of wasted money and electronics, can someone tell me there is a way to make it work? I was sold a private Alexa but in the spirit of Charlie Brown, “I got a rock.”

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42

You are not doing it wrong. They swapped out the OS and nerfed it before sending us our units. You do have options but each has its own issues:

  1. You can wait until skills get ported to the new OS. Unfortunately, many devs said they are not putting in the work for this since they are just community users like us and don’t want to maintain 2 skills.

  2. You can load another OS(basically rollback to the previous version of the OS). However, you need to take the time to do it and ross your fingers that you did it correctly otherwise, you have to follow the same steps you just failed on to load the original OS back and hope you did THAT correctly.

  3. You can load an OS from Neon/OVOS - basically 3rd party OSes made to do what Mycroft should have been made to do to begin with minus being able to stream music from a provider of your choice.

  4. As you have mentioned, you can toss it on the shelf for a bit or ask for a refund.

I have filed a complaint with the FTC for bait and switch tactics since the product we received was not the product we were told we are purchasing and we were not told of the change and given an opportunity to get a refund. My complaint # is 154923134.

I encourage anyone in the US to file a complaint as I did. You can do so by clicking here.

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43

Thanks. Appreciate the info and glad to know I was not doing something wrong. Will look over the options presented and see what might make sense. Really wish it would have worked out of the box and was what I was expecting…

44

Silly question perhaps…

Have any of these struggles (and perhaps successes) been translated to updated documentation?
I’m waiting for my Mark2s to arrive, and now know that it’ll be a bit of a project to get them to do useful things.
I also know I’ll be documenting the heck out of getting them to work… For future generations.

45

The master branch of Dinkum hasn’t seen a commit in a month and a half. It appears there’s a tiny bit of work going on if you look at active branches.

The documentation I’ve found looks to similarly be relatively low activity (note that it is the holiday season). I would hope that a sufficiently valuable PR would be merged? It looks like there is a history of accepting PRs, though I haven’t personally tried.

46

The 2 devs involved in dinkum are gone and I believe they are hiring replacements(I could be wrong on the hiring replacements point but am looking at their job postings.).

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@gez-mycroft @michael-mycroft
Oh man, fancy digital clock and weather app atm, any update on when we can install new skills?