Newbie questions about mycroft

General Discussion Introduce Yourself
1

Hello everyone! I made a New Year’s resolution to take control of my data and protect my family digitally. I’ve begun shopping for parts for my server, nas, Dd-wrt friendly routers, better VPN service, open source software, etc. From what I’ve found in my research, Mycroft is the premier replacement for Amazon and Google device’s. The three questions that I can’t seem to find straight forward answers to are;

  1. Is there an easy to use interface/integration with Linux, Android, Librem 5 (ditching Android ASAP)?

  2. My biggest gripe about “smart homes” is that they don’t really work if my internet goes down. Will Mycroft?

  3. Lastly, will there be any visual device(s) or device support similar to current Amazon and Google devices on the market? I like to check on my kids with video services when my oldest (young teenager) is watching his younger siblings.

Sorry if this info is already out there. I couldn’t find it last night, and I briefly searched here before posting.

2

For 2, this depends on the devices. Hue bulbs and wemo plugs can be used on an isolated network, and don’t require internet access.
For 3, check out the Mk2 device coming soon.

3

If using homeassistant you can setup lots of devices that dont requre internet acces to work. and mycroft himself can work without internet, but skills that do use external acces (like duckducgo, Wikipedia etc.) wil not work witout internet. Mycroft can access homeassistant witout internetaccess only LAN if desiered.

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4

Hi there @B101, congratulations on prioritising privacy!

Interfaces / integrations

  • We have a build for Linux and you can read the instructions here. The Android project is Community-developed, and the best way to check on its status is to join the Android chatroom. We’ve had some discussions with the folks at Librem, but nothing came of it AFAIK.

  • Mycroft is still dependent on the internet in a number of areas. The integration with home.mycroft.ai currently abstracts a number of functions for key skills, such as Wikipedia. We also do cloud-based STT processing, although we want to move to on-board DeepSpeech when that capability becomes available. Most Skills also have some form of internet-connectivity component.

  • The Mark 2 link has a video screen, but I can’t speak as yet to its video Skill capabilities.