I have bought a Playstation PS Eye3 myself and is fully supported in MycroftOS. So if you are looking for a cheap checking out Mycroft system, I would say; Take a RPI and PS Eye3 and give it a spin.
When satisfied, you can always look for other better hardware such as the ReSPeaker USB V2.
Although I don’t have a price limit, cheaper is better, but also I prioritize function.
I want it to hear me from all of the room, IE not needing a handheld microphone, and I want to hear it in all of the room IE enough volume from the speaker.
(I have good PC speakers, but would prefer a smaller model to build in to a case)
I also want it to have the display if possible.
I tried signing up for the MK2 model, but it doesnt ever seem to be ready for release
how much more performance does it bring to have a raspberry with 8gb ram instead of 4gb? Or alternatively the question 2gb ram or 4gb ram?
Can you give us a rough estimate and will more ram be more useful in the future?
Another question. I can also use the alpha9 gui söter without dispay or?
Then I would advise the ReSpeaker V2 for sure. You really want a microphone array if you want it to pick up your voice from around the room. If you use MycroftOS all sounds are merged into one stream that is pushed to all connected hardware, so you could use your speakers (or anything else) connected to the jack output for proper sound and if your HDMI screen also has sound output, they can be used as well.
MycroftOS and Mycroft A.I. for that matter do not use much memory. If you use the GUI, 1GB is just a bit low because 256 MB is used for the GPU, but if you disable the GUI it is more then enough. Therefor there is no real performance difference between the 2, 4 and 8 GB RPi4 models. (I personally have the 2GB version which I use for development)
MycroftOS can be used with a screen or headless. At the moment the releases contain the GUI, but can be disabled manually. In the near future I will split the images into a GUI and Headless version, where the latter don’t have the GUI and associated software stack included, making it smaller in size.
What screen is recomended? The official 7" touchscreen for the raspberry’s or something else?
I have put together an order including that screen, but I haven’t checked it out yet so I can change it if it’s not the recomended one.
I ordered a starter kit with an 8G rasperry pi4, a flirc case and the official 7" touchscreen, then I can use it for something else if I fail with the mycroft thing
The respeaker V2 was out of stock at the moment
@GuW That screen should just work out of the box. If it does not, just reach out to me again and we will get it supported.
Nice kit you ordered there. My advise; Just go to Amazon or similar and order a PS Eye3 for a few bucks. Perfect to get tinkering as a start.
Seems like Covid19 related shortage on webcams raised prices for the PS3-Eye as well - 30€+ (if deliverable at all), this was less than 10€ last time I have looked.
Where is that moving box with electronics junk that I haven’t opened in 5 years…?
Holy cow! I bought mine for 7 buck not long ago 
Well, the package with the Pie and the touchscreen has arrived, and tomorrow my Playstation Eye will arrive (found one for €9 )
I’m currently trying to install raspberry OS just to test drive the hardware, but it is progressing in a snail pace, I don’t understand why? (got a new SD card with Noobs in the deal, so it should be working)
Where do I download your version later when the hardware is tested?
(most recent but stable version)
I think if you have a screen/or not download the latest GUI version from https://www.j1nx.nl/downloads/
alpha versions are unstable by definition 
The latest would be alpha9 pi4_64 from the shared folder
Is there a way to manually update the Mycroft version? I am still running the 0.7 RaspPi3 Version and really getting sick of the warning message about a new version that shows up everyday 
For that, I’d say you might want to just reimage the card with the latest.
The current RP3 download unfortunately also includes an old Mycroft Version 
Apologies, have still not managed to get to work on the update mechanism.
I will try to get you an updated rpi3 image asap.
After a quick look at skills.log i realized that you need a newer pyee. 20.8 is pyee 7.0.1 dependent
That is most likely, because you installed the message-bus package from PyPi (or some skill did)
pip install --upgrade https://github.com/j1nx/mycroft-messagebus-client/archive/PR/pyee-bump-fix.zip
^ That will fix it.
Anyhow, the rest is fixed in the latest downloadble image from the shared folder. (for the rpi4 that is)
19:21:11.117 | ERROR | 351 | concurrent.futures | exception calling callback for <Future at 0x7f2eb49700 state=finished raised AttributeError>
...
File "/opt/mycroft/skills/mycroftos-enclosure-skill.j1nx/__init__.py", line 124, in reset_screen
self.speak_dialog('finished.booting')
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/mycroft/skills/mycroft_skill/mycroft_skill.py", line 1138, in speak_dialog
self.speak(self.dialog_renderer.render(key, data),
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'render'
Is that “finished booting” still a thing? Enclosure.log don’t show any activity dating back to february
Is that with the latest alpha9 from the folder?