Originally published at: Mycroft Product and Manufacturing Update - Mycroft
Our Next and Final Dev Kits Have Shipped!
As of today, we have shipped all Dev Kit orders! If you placed an order for a development unit, be looking for it to arrive soon. The build of these products took much longer than expected due to the global supply chain issues. Key parts were not readily available. With much tenacity we were finally able to get there. We thank each of you for your patience.
Mark II Production Update
In conjunction with our leading contract manufacturing (CM) candidate, we have completed assessing the supply situation for parts needed to build the Mark II and identified several parts with long lead times due to the global semiconductor supply chain disruption. This is very frustrating for us: the Mark II hardware is ready for production- we just need to be able to source the parts!
We are actively assessing options to reduce the time on these long lead time parts. This includes either identifying alternate parts that we can simply plug in and replace, or where needed, doing design changes to incorporate more available parts. We are also placing orders now on the long lead time parts where it makes sense. We will keep an eye on the global supply chain, be tenacious and fluid in our plans, and be creative where we can. Unfortunately we cannot at this time announce a ship date: on a day-to-day basis we get variations of +/- 9 months on certain key parts. Once we sort this issue you can be sure we’ll make an announcement.
Product/Development Update
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Improved the embedded browser experience
- Enabled fullscreen mode for any website that can make use of it which opens up a world of possibilities for using existing web applications and viewing content in a more immersive way without the need for a custom built Mycroft Skill.
- Added a prompt if a website requests access to the camera or microphone. This led to Gez’s first ever video conference with himself, and the first that we know of on a Mark II!
Gez in first known Mycroft video conference
Other Software Updates
Whilst it’s not going to be very noticeable on a dedicated device like the Mark II, we also wanted to give a special mention to @PureTryOut. He has put in a large amount of work over the last year to bring Mycroft in line with the XDG Base Directory Specification. This month we merged a big part of that. We have a few more pieces to get in place to be fully compliant but it was a huge step forward. These changes mean that files generated by Mycroft will be stored in the XDG standard directories, which are more easily configurable by end users.