
Mycroft – An open-source voice assistant - doener
https://mycroft.ai/
======
lifty
As far as I know Mycroft does its speech recognition in the cloud, so your
voice has to leave your network unfortunately. This is the reason why I don't
have a voice assistant yet. There was snips.ai which tried to solve this
problem locally but they were acquired by Sonos.

edit: spelling

~~~
antonzabirko
Your voice is already compromised if you use a smartphone or windows/Mac with
a mic.

~~~
lifty
If you are a target of the NSA or some other state actor, then perhaps. If
not, and you take a bit of care to disable the voice assistant on your devices
(Siri, Google. etc), then you should be fine.

~~~
Rooster61
That just disables the voice assistant. It does nothing to ensure that your
mic isn't on, listening, and recording at any time. I've had too many targeted
ads start popping up after conversations with people to be convinced
otherwise.

~~~
arbitrage
it's observer bias, nothing more. test it out. pick a phrase, my spouse and i
chose "snowmobile". For the next week, we had random conversations about how
cool snowmobiles are, how badly we wanted one, what price we were willing to
pay, financing, etc. we peppered our conversations with click bait, honestly.
neither of us particularly ever had any interest whatsoever in snowmobiles, so
we figured this would be a pretty ok test for anecdata.

at the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our
targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. likely what is happening is that you
searched something somewhere on your phone, then brought it up in
conversation, then saw an increase in ads related to that subject.

~~~
Rooster61
> At the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our
> targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles.

While I do respect you and your spouse for trying this experiment, it's
entirely too small a sample size to really prove that this doesn't happen.
There are a ton of variables involved, the biggest being which advertisers may
or may not be listening in at any given time. It's hardly a controlled
experiment, and I can't say I can put any stock in it.

It also does not prove that it is observer bias. I have had things pop up that
I am %100 absolutely positive I never in any way shape or form looked into,
yet there the ads were after a short conversations with others who did have an
interest.

~~~
mrobot
One thing i thought of and wanted to test: what if you yourself don't do any
internet queries but someone on the same network as you does? I've had
conversations with people, one time we were talking about a concert venue
which i did not look up, but i did start to receive ads for that concert
venue. It creeped me out initially, but I believe the other person on the same
home network was googling or looking for information on that venue on their
phone. I believe we were just associated together for advertisement purposes.

~~~
wolfgang42
I’m pretty sure this happens. When I was doing work with NetSuite, my roommate
(who has no interest in anything remotely related to enterprise software, and
doesn’t have any other devices that could have been listening in) started
getting ads for them on his laptop.

It makes sense for them to target by IP, so if one person in an office is
researching the product they can start targeting the entire office and maybe
get their ad in front of an exec who can make a purchasing decision.

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nshm
Worth a mention they are fighting a patent troll right now
[https://voicebot.ai/2020/03/04/mycroft-ais-legal-war-
against...](https://voicebot.ai/2020/03/04/mycroft-ais-legal-war-against-a-
patent-troll-heats-up/)

~~~
choward
Wow. The patent is for "Using voice commands from a mobile device to remotely
access and control a computer". That's so obvious it's laughable. How was this
patent granted?

~~~
ALittleLight
Once at a meeting to discuss the patent application the presenter mentioned
how Jeff Bezos patented "one click buy" \- i.e. Buying something with a single
click. I asked why we didn't patent "2-n click buy" to prevent any competitors
from selling anything.

Everyone laughed but I meant it seriously. I still don't get how "1 click buy"
is a thing you can patent but you can't patent "2 click buy". The patent
process is incredibly stupid and arbitrary as far as I can tell - at least
when it comes to software.

~~~
jszymborski
FWIW, there was a patent troll trying to get people for the idea of "online
shopping carts" which is pretty much "two-click buy" imo.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-
crush...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-crushed-the-
shopping-cart-patent-and-saved-online-retail/)

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juriansluiman
Mycroft as software is used by a small group of users and seems pretty stable.
More features are continuously added and the design principles look promising
(open source, as private as possible).

The biggest problem is their hardware: they have a Mycroft v1, (to me
personally) a prototype alike piece of hardware. There have been successful
campaigns for a v2 release, with new hardware and an improved design.

However, they fail to work with reliable partners and there's still no working
device which resembles the final production level. I have been a backer of the
indigogo campaign but it's frustrating they postpone their Mycroft v2 every
time again. I really hope the can deliver the device at some point, but they
keep rewriting software and _if_ they ship, the hardware is pretty outdated
probably.

~~~
tekchip
It's true v1 was more of a proof of concept device. The core hardware target
has always been the raspberry pi family of devices since they are pretty well
ubiquitous. 2-3 is the current set. Base software is linux so if your audio
devices, mic and speaker, work with Linux then you're pretty well good to go.
Most microphone hats for Pi are supported. I use the Google Voicekit AIY v1
with raspberry pi 3 b+. Works a treat.

As with most open source efforts(especially early on) there's a lot of
tinkering and DIY at the get go and they've designed their product to be
supportive of this. Their "retail" devices are, much like Googles intent with
Nexus, intended to be a best possible target for other vendors to target
including the DIY crowd. Whether that's the right way to come at it is open to
debate but the premise that they don't have a set hardware target is at best
misleading.

Edit: Link to hardware spec [https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-
ai/get-mycr...](https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/get-
mycroft/picroft)

------
leppr
This is already a step-up from Google Home devices in that you can trust it's
not sending audio to Google outside of what you intend to, but I'll be
properly excited when the Open-Source speech-to-text component is working[1]
and I don't have to send my voice to Google at all.

[1]: [https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/mycroft-
technologies/over...](https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/mycroft-
technologies/overview#speech-to-text-stt)

~~~
tekchip
I might be wrong so grain of salt. The main website is down. I believe the
open source STT was working and in. As with many community projects it relies
on folks contributing time to update documentation and unfortunately Mycroft
hasn't received the love of other projects so I believe, again I may be wrong,
that this documentation is outdated.

------
reeeeee
I get a Database Error on the homepage. Hug of death?

~~~
reality101
Error establishing a database connection. And it didn't say that in clear
voice.

~~~
RadiantUnicorn
I mean, I would say that's consistent behaviour compared to other voice
assistants I've tried.

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sfi6zy
Mycroft can also be used on Raspberry Pi-like developer hardware which is
awesome :D

Check out this example with the MATRIX Creator and MATRIX Voice:
[https://www.hackster.io/matrix-labs/matrix-devices-
running-m...](https://www.hackster.io/matrix-labs/matrix-devices-running-
mycroft-ai-ee9d4a)

~~~
di3goleite
I have used it! The MATRIX Devices are very good choices to deploy this kind
of voice processing solutions.

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RMPR
Not really the first one though :p

[https://github.com/rcbyron/hey-athena-
client/commit/50b37628...](https://github.com/rcbyron/hey-athena-
client/commit/50b37628f8bec3aba20135ea1e590c2b3c5cb37f) (2015)

Vs

[https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-
core/commit/8e470ce7c15...](https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-
core/commit/8e470ce7c157ac7ec01d6559e580964f69408f07) (2016)

Jokes aside, it's a great work, I'll probably try it in my spare time.

~~~
goda90
Home assistant is a home automation tool, not a voice assistant. You can even
hook up Mycroft to Home Assistant.

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nojvek
I’m getting “error establishing database connection”

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xigency
I made a fully offline voice assistant on a Raspberry Pi with Pocket Sphinx
and Festival Lite glued together with Python. Performance wasn’t great but it
was a fun project nonetheless.

------
dang
A thread from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256709)

------
bradhe
Bummer their site is still down. Not sure why a marketing site needs to
maintain connectivity to a database to render the homepage?

~~~
aaronax
Most web pages need to be able to be updated. I think the two most popular
options for that are a CMS or a static site generator. In general it is easier
for "less technical" users to update the content in a CMS. Hence you get a
database for rendering.

Alternate analysis: Personally it is not surprising to me at all that a
marketing website would be run on Wordpress, Drupal, etc. And therefore it is
quite clear that a database connection would be needed.

~~~
viraptor
Even with wordpress you don't necessarily need the database connection. Either
a colocated reverse proxy can cache the result, or you can configure
cloudfront or some similar 3rd party service which will not hit the origin
unless it has to. Or you can even use one of the wordpress plugins which
caches the resources/pages as static files.

It requires extra half an hour of work, but... it's probably worth it.

------
tekchip
The website is down but a lot of work happens at the forums and the forums are
still up. If you're interested in some insight in to the community around the
project have a look over there.
[https://community.mycroft.ai/](https://community.mycroft.ai/)

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riedel
Stupid question: has anyone hooked up a voice assistant sucessfully against
upnp renderers and media servers? Would be willing to invest some effort if I
could use them to browse music. Seems quite tricky particularly for non native
speakers :)

~~~
nmstoker
Interesting you should mention this needs, as there's something that
integrates Mycroft that just came up in one of my feeds:

Plasma Bigscreen from people involved with KDE:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/03/26/plasm...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/03/26/plasma-
bigscreen-is-a-new-smart-tv-experience-powered-by-raspberry-pi-4-and-kde/amp/)

[https://youtu.be/yylFiE4QtUE](https://youtu.be/yylFiE4QtUE)

~~~
nmstoker
And it got posted here too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693172)
(which has a more authoritative link than my original one)

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Krasnol
I wonder if you can change it's name now.

Last time I asked, the dev asked me back how much I'd be willing to pay for
it...

~~~
goda90
Like change the trigger word? Looks like you can: [https://mycroft-
ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customiz...](https://mycroft-
ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customizations/wake-word)

~~~
Krasnol
Awesome.

I'll have a loot at it again.

------
js4ever
Site is down, any WordPress and php based stack will crash after 30-50
simultaneous requests ...

I am amazed that this doesn't seems to bother anyone ... And adding a cache
layer is not a real solution ...

And in other parts of the internet there is few stacks delivering 5k to 150k
rps per core without cache ...

But still everyone use WordPress ...

~~~
vinniejames
This is flat out false, WP is able to handle much more than this. I've scaled
WordPress personally to 10M+ users per day

~~~
js4ever
Because the way PHP work (1 process per request), it can't handle a lot of
simultaneous requests and also anyone can crash ANY wordpress website with a
single WRK command ... If you have all the content cached by your CDN it might
be ok, but if you have a dynamic website with API/DB, not just static content
... wordpress is slow as hell from my experience

~~~
hacktember
I've been using WordPress for 4 years with good scaling and no downtime. It's
only "slow as hell" if you don't actually know WordPress (which most WordPress
users don't). ;)

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bwl
Would be very cool of them to at least alias the mycroft.xxx domain

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tacomplain
is there any good terminal assistant? something that accepts these kinds of
queries but with in a cli, preferably without the need of constant internet
connection

~~~
trynewideas
Mycroft has a curses CLI: `start-mycroft.sh cli` or `mycroft-start cli` if
services are running, `start-mycroft.sh debug` or `mycroft-start debug` to
start services and go straight into the CLI.

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SubiculumCode
So maybe MyCroft and Mozilla should get together?

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Johnyma22
Hug of death.

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steveharman
their home page has gone all errory.

Error establishing a database connection

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agumonkey
Named after Alan ?

~~~
oldgradstudent
I'd guess it's named after the computer in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress.

~~~
rschulman
No, they're both named after Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes' equally
brilliant brother from the series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

~~~
oldgradstudent
I guess we'll find out once the website is up again.

[https://mycroft.ai/blog/why-name-it-mycroft/](https://mycroft.ai/blog/why-
name-it-mycroft/)

Edit: Google cache has a copy[1]:

> Mycroft is named in honor of Mike, the supercomputer in Robert A. Heinlein’s
> classic novel “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. Heinlein’s Mycroft was a High-
> Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L” – a HOLMES
> FOUR. Mycroft’s friend Manuel named him “Mycroft” after Sherlock’s elder
> brother Mycroft Holmes. This was later shortened to Mike.

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?ei=mwx-
XrKxLauV...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?ei=mwx-
XrKxLauVlwTNh4DgAw&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmycroft.ai%2Fblog%2Fwhy-name-it-
mycroft%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmycroft.ai%2Fblog%2Fwhy-name-it-
mycroft%2F&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-
serp.3..0i71l5.10095.10095..10404...0.1..0.0.0.......0....1.OJSin5nxASA)

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shirshak55
i see error establishing database connection.

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imvetri
How does it work

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stevavoliajvar
db error :p

