INTRODUCING MYCROFT
There’s a Pi-powered home helper on the scene— actually, there are two, and you can use their code
THE MYCROFT MARK 1 LAUNCHED IN 2016, and was powered by a Pi 2, but things have moved on, and it now ships with a Pi 3 at its heart. It’s a stylish device, and with its friendly ET-style face, you could almost forgive it for listening in to all your living room conversations. Actually, non-creepiness is part of Mycroft’s design— any feature you find invasive or unnecessary can be disabled, thanks to its open-source nature. Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included site has a favorable write-up at http://bit.ly/lxf249mycroft.
The Mark 1 device is still available for $180, but it was always designed with hackers and hobbyists in mind. A successor is on the way, and the Mark 2 will be much more consumer-friendly (but sadly no longer looks like ET), featuring a six-microphone array, touchscreen, and stereo speakers.
Don’t worry, though, hackers will still be able to have their wicked way with it. Mycroft is currently taking preorders for the Mark 2, so if you’re tempted, check it out at https://mycroft.ai. Alternatively, you can run Picroft, the same software that runs on the Mark 1, on your own Raspberry Pi or Linux box. But first, some Mycroft etymology and terminology.
You probably know that Sherlock Holmes had an older brother called Mycroft. You may even be aware that in Heinlein’s classic TheMoonIsaHarshMistress, the HOLMES FOUR computer that accidentally became self-aware was named Mycroft, shortened to Mike. In case you weren’t, that’s where the Mycroft Home Assistant gets its name. Don’t worry, though—despite our best efforts, we couldn’t get the device to become sentient, and at no point did we feel threatened by Mycroft. But maybe that’s what it wanted us to think….
Scene-setting aside, you’ll want to get familiar with the Mycroft nomenclature before you start ensmartening your home, because some of it can be a little confusing at first.
• Enclosure: Any device running Mycroft—this could be the Mark 1, a Pi, or your Linux box.
• Wake word: The word that pricks up Mycroft’s virtual ears. It tries to help you with anything you say after this word.
• Utterance: A command or question directed at Mycroft.
• Intent: A task the user intends to accomplish; different utterances may have the same intent. Mycroft uses a lightweight intent parser called Adapt. A more complex, neural-network-based parser, Padatious, is also available.
• Skill: A function that Mycroft performs in response to an utterance; this could be to relay some information, adjust the temperature on your smart thermostat, or activate your home’s self-destruct mechanism. The intent parser decides which skill should be used for a given query.
• Fallback skill: If the intent parser is unable to match a skill to a given utterance, a general fallback skill is used. Fallback skills for DuckDuckGo and the Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine are included, which can answer most general queries.
Mycroft has recently begun work on the CommonIoT framework. We make reference to a few different frameworks in this feature, so you may be wondering, why another one? Fair point. It’s precisely because there are now so many partially interoperating ecosystems that bridging layers are sometimes necessary.
The important thing is that CommonIoT is available as a Mycroft skill, which enables different platforms to be controlled consistently, and saves skill writers having to fight with natural-language coding.