Raspberry Pi AI: Picroft Voice Assistant

[@MarkTheMorose]

I'd advise against having Mycroft control the studio doors. At some point, he might tell you that 'the problem can only be attributable to human error', and refuse to open them.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Very good advice!

[@kevinshumaker3753]

Excellent reference to a computer first activated 12 January 1992 (in 3 days to be 30 years old) (movie reference), but hopefully more like Mycroft Holmes IV (Moon is a Harsh Mistress)...

[@brianm6337]

"Open the studio doors" "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that." "I'm not Dave!!!"

[@wheelieblind]

@@ExplainingComputers I have always wondered if it would be possible to make a doorbell with camera out of a Pi or some other maker board?

[@VeryUsMumblings]

@@brianm6337 Dave's not here!

[@AndrewAHayes]

I find it strange that Rpi Org does not have any official microphones/speakers available, spending more on a microphone than the Pi actualy costs does not sit right with me, I have loads of microphones that I would like to use but it looks as though I shall have to get hold of a USB microphone. Being an open source project I hope someone enables the changing of the wake word as I would love to call my VA by the name Orac or Zen as I am an avid Blakes 7 fan

[@dano4700]

Totally agree. 👍🇦🇺🚀

[@jscollett]

Picroft is such an interesting project. You can make it completely offline as well using a pre trained deep speech model. There is a video on their KZbin channel with a pi4 offline doing some home automation with custom skills. Would love to see more pi AI. Thanks for another great video good Sir.

[@raywood1624]

jscollett Thank you for the the offline and automation information.

[@jscollett]

@Matt I think out of all the personal assistants Mycroft is the most privacy oriented. After following them for years i can say that I trust them the most. I'm like you i don't want to rely on an internet connection.(and privacy)I want a lot of functions to work without it. For weather yeah i get that. Most other things....we can do offline.

[@rikvermeer1325]

@jscollet lol, i just posted something the same :D :D I've used deepspeech for it (my coffee machine). what did you use? Regards, Rik

[@tonyhawk123]

I lost interest when he said it uses their servers. If theres a local way this sounds significantly more interesting to me. Thanks for the info. Would be nice to know how it compares for features (still full set of internet services?), whether the local training data (and service plugins) automatically gets updated periodically, whether services can be moved fully client-side too (like WolframAlpha, suspect not), how much is the response time improved by cutting out all the voice uploads (or is it even worse depending on processing power)?

[@lolnyanterts]

Can I mimic their cloud configuration on my own VPS?

[@MicrobyteAlan]

Excellent lesson. Interesting and well presented. I like the Raspberry Pi episodes. Thanks

[@Reddotzebra]

Ah yes, let's release a free version of an AI assistant program for the cheapest computer option on the market and then only officially support proprietary hardware that costs more than the whole computer does. Brilliant!

[@qwkimball]

It's important to make that proprietary hardware difficult or impossible to obtain, optimally discontinued.

[@TheDavidPoole]

It's one way to stop it from creating a Mycroft Hive Mind that will take over the world. Or at least make it harder. At least they didn't call it Moriarty.

[@dschirpke]

I have been running picroft for around a year in an AIY kit, works great been up for 219 days continuously.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Now this impressive feedback -- thanks for sharing! :)

[@johnhanavan6833]

Great Video! Yes, more AI content please! Home automation using a Raspberry Pi would be interesting if possible.

[@europeansovietunion7372]

Yes, especially if everything could be computed locally... I don't need Big Tech to listen to everything I say (That's why I put my mobile phone away when I'm home...).

[@strupat]

This whole channel is a gem. Zero pre-tense, no click-bait, no fluff. Just good, honest content. Thank you.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@energyideas]

Hey Mycroft send Explaining Computers a thumbs up on their latest video.

[@AMDRADEONRUBY]

Ah Sunday my favorite day Aka Christopher videos day going to watch it live have a nice week

[@jeraldgooch6438]

I, for one, would like to see more about AI on the Raspberry PI or the NVIDIA Jetson Nano. Thanks.

[@SMorrisRose]

Since you ask, this is exactly the sort of content for which I go to this channel. Before this, despite having briefly fiddled with the Voice AIY and having an interest in voice recognition and IOT, I hadn't even heard of Mycroft. I use my "smart speakers" a lot but really don't want large tech companies in the loop when a FOSS solution exists.

[@eljuano28]

"Hey Joshua!" >>Boodeep! "Let's play Global Thermal Nuclear War!" >>Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess? "Maybe later!" "Let's play Global Thermal Nuclear War!" >>... Fine.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@warrengibson7898]

Chris has outdone himself! Packed with info presented in his usual literate and humorous style, and not least, with clean fingernails!

[@latrochemohamedabdeldjalil866]

SMINA

[@novamaster0]

Although a very handy tutorial, and it's great that it's open source, but the problem is you're still trusting a random server to promise to delete your data. Sure I'm not actually interesting enough for anybody to care about me, but given the cost of a Pi these days, it's a higher cost to make, and it's just trading out which company do you trust for a product with less features. That being said it's still a fun 'make it because' project.

[@kencreten7308]

This is very interesting. I have avoided corporate video and speech interaction devices (except for my phone that I often put in a Faraday bag) because of privacy concerns. Not that anyone is particularly interested in my life.... But, I have some linux machines around here and I'm definitely going to try this as I see they have a Linux version. Thanks very much.

[@tonysheerness2427]

Why couldn't these devices have been invented when I was a kid at school, Hey Microft do my homework. Thanks for the lesson.

[@user-aw3dh6jxc3]

Behind the scene an Asian kid will be working on your homework for money

[@1Eagler]

Teacher AI,: Microsoft get a A+, you get F-.

[@markpritchett3543]

I would definitely want to see more AI videos. In particular those that can be used in a Code Club with 7 - 13 year olds. This one, on Picroft, is good as a standalone project, but I would like to build an R Pi image with multiple AI components not exclusive to just one topic, if that's possible?

[@rikprince8414]

Interesting! I have avoided these devices as I don't want to be tied to Amazon. This looks like a nice alternative.

[@RetroSegaDev]

I'm absolutely gutted this wasn't around when I was doing my PhD! Open source voice assistants and synthesised speech via a Pi was something of a rarity back then. Things have moved on so much!

[@jasoneverett]

just wanted to drop that you have a PhD.....I get it man, that's a lot of work.

[@RetroSegaDev]

@@jasoneverett Not at all. A PhD is a lot of work but it's not the reason I mentioned it! 🙂 My work was in this area and I'd wanted an entire implementation on a PI so I could carry it around for demonstrations / studies. Unfortunately the technology just wasn't available. So I ended up lugging around a huge heavy laptop!

[@raywood1624]

Hello Chris, Another excellent video. Please continue this AI series. I would be interested to see if this can be implemented on an existing pi4 setup (overclocked, pwm fan script running, and oled display script running) rather than from scratch. Perhaps on a VM or on a docker setup? Very interested to see the GPIO control as well. Real world pi applications. Keep up the great work. Thank you.

[@lawrenceallwright7041]

Mycroft/Picroft's voice is strangely familiar. If you ask it nicely it might write the theory of everything for you. (Although I think Prof. Hawking told a better joke.) Also, you didn't mute the audio when you typed your password. Anyone with sharp ears will tell you there's no need for language like that.

[@rickbonari4493]

Yes, more AI tutorials with raspberry pi and jetson nano. Thanks for your great videos !!!!!

[@ShadowzGSD]

04:19 just what i say when i am desperate for a pee! ( sorry, a bit crude but was my first thought ) 😂 on a serious notr though this project is something i am tempted to try out, i think project videos are one of my favourites.

[@tomoneill8892]

Hello Chris :) Massive thanks to your two channels, KZbin must give this man THE algorithm. Need I say more lol In all seriousness, bestselling content delivered to your face by a interesting beast! Tom

[@tbyoda9475]

while a cool protect I am shocked in 2022 the voice engine is still a 2000 robotic sounding. sad really.

[@energyideas]

Love the testing sequence of the microphone.

[@whiskeylinux]

Great stuff as usual! I would enjoy a video on other Mycroft skills.

[@lesliedeana5142]

Can we be certain that this ONLY sends data after the trigger command is given, and that it doesn't send everything to Google or Microsoft when you aren't expecting it to? That's the reason I don't use Alexa or the like.

[@peterrock2838]

I agree!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Certainty is hard with these things, but there only appears to be Internet activity after the wake word.

[@horseradishpower9947]

Can it do speech to text into a word processor? Because that is something that would have my deep interest.

[@ExplainingComputers]

This I have not tried -- but potentially, yes, as skills can be added and everything is open source. But I doubt it would work as well as, say, the "Voice Typing" function in Google Docs in Chrome.

[@horseradishpower9947]

@@ExplainingComputers Interesting information, thanks for the information! And hope you are having a lovely day.

[@sid_gm1949]

And here we meet again Greetings

[@bfapple]

The quickest first comment in the west.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings! And you get this week's gold medal for the first comment! :)

[@sid_gm1949]

@@bfapple well I am from India 🇮🇳

[@ABC-rh7zc]

"system needs to work on its comic delivery and timing" - LOL

[@foobarbarfoo2377]

Another option for the microphones is recently designed ** Miko ** USB microphone based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU (for a much improved SNR), for local speech-to-text over deep learning models to be even more private :)

[@GroovingPict]

That voice synthesizer was, quite honestly, surprisingly bad. Even Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer was better and more natural sounding than that, and that was from, what, the 1980s? even earlier?

[@phillee2814]

Arggghh! - The ISO/NATO/ITU/ICAO/any other standard in existence phonetic alphabet does NOT use London when it should be LIMA. Such a basic error in a system of this type (exactly what the international phonetic alphabet standard was designed for!) gives me little confidence in standards compliance, or indeed, any intelligence, artificial or otherwise! Now we only heard two characters, but a 50% success rate is pretty dreadful. See "send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance"! I also noticed it used some weird and obsolete (possibly US? - in either sense of the acronym!) units for temperature, instead of Celcius. What other surprises - rainfall in drops per minute per chain/square maybe, or windspeed in furlongs per fortnight? I also wonder where the weather is for, since within the UK, we don't allocate IP addresses geographically.

[@parrotraiser6541]

I'n not sure I'm keen on a servant that starts a relationship by telling me to do something. :-)* Would that be suitable for a voice-controlled wheelchair, or is there a simpler way to achieve that? Latency might be a problem with a networked device. "Stop. Stop! STOP! I said'" Cloud connection is probably necessary for audio processing (and most of the tasks it can do); who's paying for that and the processing?

[@KarlMiller]

Didn't know about Mycroft so kudos for this video. Some follow up questions, for a subsequent video, are: 1. Other English tts voice models? (Jarvis would be great) 2. Is the cloud ASR (and parts) open source such that they can be operated locally without an internet connection? Even though they promise so fervently that my data will be private, I don't (and never) will trust any external organization to be honest or even to be free from hackers. You know the adage, "if I don't have root access, then someone else does"

[@jamesdinsmore9022]

At first I could not get audio out of the stable; released Picroft image 2020-09-07 through my 3.5mm amplified speaker; so I tried the newer release candidate 2021-06-04 and it worked fine. I was also able to load it without a monitor and keyboard by the usual method of putting an empty ssh file in the boot partition along with the wpa_supplicant.conf file I always use; so headless worked great.

[@ScottGrammer]

I notice that at no point did we see Christopher except from the midriff up. “We are in Buckingham Palace, the very heart of the British nation. Sherlock Holmes, put your trousers on!” -Mycroft Holmes.

[@JohnMayfield-NS]

Picroft also works well with Home Assistant for basic things like turning lights/switches on and off, hopefully expands more in that regard. It's funny, I had no interest in talking to my phone to ask things, but got really accustomed to it with picoft in the house.

[@BaldyMacbeard]

Holy cow, that must be some of the worst text-to-speech I've heard in years. Software isn't usually THIS bad. There's open source projects like Tacotron 2 that sound pretty decent...

[@LostInThe0zone]

Great stuff, as usual. I love the micro processor boards and seeing all the potential they have.

[@Videogame9559]

Yes great like to see more robotics . Could you do an upgrade on magicmirror 2 this would take up 5 step videos but I would love to rebuild my magicmirror. As I dropped mine on the old build broken the screen. The new build has changed dramatically. Phone app control, KZbin, voice control, much more modules. Great explanations topics easy to follow.

[@GiovanniBalestrieri]

The USB U-Green audio card for the microphone. Or the Microphone Pi Hat using SPI Might work. Give it a try! Thanks for your videos

[@trevorberridge6079]

Well Chris, would't you know it, I actually DO have a Playstation Eye hanging around. I've managed to use it with several applications on laptop and desktop pc as someone once created a driver that can be persuaded to co-operate with non-Playstation systems. As old as it is I always thought it would make a good microphone and/or webcam if only I could get it to run. As someone who previously ran an Alexa-type system on a Raspberry Pi following instructions in one of your videos (I used the recommended usb standalone mini-mic at the time) I am over the moon to see that this new Alexa-like project is compatible with the Playstation Eye out of the box. When I have time I'll try to get this all up and running. Great stuff Chris. You are one of the most inspirational and helpful people on KZbin as far as I'm concerned. You make everything so accessible.

[@stephenhargreaves9011]

Grr - you're the second KZbinr this week that I've had to ask, will you please stop saying "Alexa" - you are confusing the hell out of the one in my living room.

[@triularity]

"Hey Mycroft! What are the last 5 digits of pi?" [Mycroft makes funny noises for a minute] [Raspberry Pi explodes]

[@captbeardy]

Underwhelming. Not the explanation, that was as informative as ever, but the fact that it is nothing more than a voice client for “someone else’s computer”. The promise not to use your data is as meaningless as ‘Do No Evil’ given that the current owners of the company won’t always be the owners. Personally I’d happily forsake the internet interrogation in favour of a stand alone voice controller for a stand alone home automation solution.

[@neilthomas6042]

An interesting video, gives me some idea for how to use a future Pi . As I said before I’m not technical and like my technology plug and play, so I would need to get used to another way of working.

[@marcelbron6128]

Nice explained, but since this is a cloud service I will never ever install it despite the nice "promises" on the website. I didn't know that picrophone you're using, nice gadget!

[@aztek6358]

Wow, i just got a homework to write a paper about Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant and you uploaded this video two days ago. Wow you made my day, thanks!

[@ExplainingComputers]

That's awesome!

[@santosvision]

Love your videos, i've been working on AI personal companion at home using a jetson nano though, so I could run RNN

[@nickadams2361]

wow great stuff man cheerio mate you've really out done yourself here with such great complexity unseen in the whole of human history. A+ *KZbin filtered*

[@peterloader974]

The Andrea Headset with mic NC-181VM USB works with the Buster system as well.

[@g-r-a-e-m-e-]

Thanks, very interesting, didn't know such a project was possible. But (there is a but) the voice is terrible, and the response not great either.

[@inpurgatory]

Definitely more interested in more pi AI content :) I have a few pi's laying around from past experiments that I can use.

[@PazuzuDaemon]

This channel is so british I want some tea and jaffa cakes. Seriously speaking, thanks for all the content, always top notch!

[@JackBealeGuitar]

The speech synthesis is a little tricky to understand, I'm sure that will improve in the future, quite a fun project though

[@Mockedarche_old]

Their query works pretty dang great. The only thing they need to make better is that voice. I understand that's a bit nitpiky but boy that voice isn't always the clearest and speaks a bit too fast.

[@ronaldmullins8221]

This is really neat, but I still rather have a completely or close to completely offline solution for my technology. No matter how much someone promises they can always lie or be bought out by someone who won't keep that promise

[@iceman442ho]

This video was fascinating. I did not know there was an open-source A.I. that was into privacy. Too bad it's not written in python.

[@CHITUS]

Hello Chris, Another excellent video. Please continue this AI series. I would be interested to see if this can be implemented on an existing pi4 setup (overclocked, pwm fan script running, and oled display script running) rather than from scratch. Perhaps on a VM or on a docker setup? Very interested to see the GPIO control as well. Real world pi applications. Keep up the great work. Thank you.

[@SchoolforHackers]

Now you can voice-control K9; can you reverse the system and let him voice-control you?

[@stephenashdown2581]

Great video, very interesting as always. Would you be interested in expanding to show running a python script (e.g. take a photo) and controlling gpio as part of a home automation system?

[@ExplainingComputers]

Noted. :)

[@ivanrlynn]

You'll be able to nab yourself a PS3 Eye camera from CeX for £2.50, defenitly worth picking one up for testing 👍

[@An.Individual]

11:37 Chris needn't bother masking the audio because he shown the reg code on the video 🤣

[@ExplainingComputers]

The code on screen appears as "LJLJLJ" -- masked to match what is in the equally edited audio. :)

[@An.Individual]

@@ExplainingComputers code shown as LJ3FWA

[@HITASCL]

Thank you for the excellent video. Please make more content from this topic. For me the greatest concern is, which data is transmitted to the cloud. I do not know how save this is respectively where are the security flaws. Thank You

[@dnoodspodu1159]

14:42 & 18:29 - Why didn't you ask it, what is the meaning of life? Or if we are living in The Matrix?

[@zackaboy1236]

How have you not got over a million subscribers yet Chris?? Not far off though!!

[@PS_Tube]

Another neat Pi project from our favourite channel EC. Nice DIY voice assistant.

[@LadyNicola]

Still got a bunch of PlayStation Sing Star microphones. Maybe they'll be useful again one day? 😊😊😊

[@TheGregEgg]

When he says "So, let's go and get started." I keep thinking he's saying "So, let's go and get sotted".

[@desertlightning7335]

It would be awesome to see a series on this. I like the idea of virtual assistants, but I don't like using the off the shelf solutions for a number of reasons. Ideally I'd like to see local speech processing, and the ability to interface with either LAN devices, or Zigbee/Z-wave hubs. Deep learning would also be cool to see. Great video as always!

[@williama29]

i like the raspberry pi Ai videos i rather see Raspberry pi be the future machines of everything

[@XSpImmaLion]

Heh... this has a more "Dr Sbaitso by Creative Labs please enter your name" vibe to it. xD

[@shariarrahman7562]

I love this video. Please do more raspberry AI stuff if possible

[@williamstevenson2649]

Very interesting, even though I have no interest in speaking to my phone or PC. It's useful to see how it's done!

[@andrekz9138]

"needs to work on it's comic delivery"-- I guffawed

[@garygill378]

I’m very interested in how to get it to use the gpio pins for control and monitoring. Very good video.

[@KwidzaxD]

Oh man, the quality of this video is incredible. Good job!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks. :)

[@jmr]

I'd love to see this as an Android app. I think many of us have old phones with good processors we would like to repurpose.

[@anonimuso]

Wow dude. You have the most polished videos. I love the way you have the setup options pop up in a box on the video. Makes it so helpful for following along. 👍

[@josephsagotti8786]

You should make a video of having everything run offline.

[@ExplainingComputers]

That would be tough on a Pi.

[@danohlemacher9525]

I second the request. I’m using a Alexa. When the internet or AWS. goes down, I’m dead in the water which means my home automation is down

[@josephsagotti8786]

@@ExplainingComputers True, true. However! I think you should try this on a desktop linux system. The exposure could benefit many who are concerned with privacy, or like Dan, are worried about depending on a centralized service to do their home automation.

[@matmamat9690]

@@josephsagotti8786 yeah desktop Linux would be great using the pie.

[@josephsagotti8786]

@@matmamat9690 no no no not using the pi, using a regular computer

[@bardmoss]

Mycroft itself was a bit underwhelming.

[@EarnestWilliamsGeofferic]

Was the Mycroft response time edited? That's *so much* faster than the last time I played around with it. The former delay was the chief reason I stopped playing around with it. I'd love to see more videos about practical uses of SBCs, in particular some edge computing cases that would be useful in the home (especially SBCs with AI processors built-in/added). This video was - wait for it - excellent.

[@ExplainingComputers]

The response time was not edited -- I even left in the occasion when it did not respond and I had to ask again. It does depend on the question asked (and skill involved) -- eg it replies to the time far faster than asking what something is. So maybe things have improved. Edge computing and SBCs is on my list. :)

[@Robb403]

Can you make a Pi Microft answering machine that frustrates people to tears as they try to find someone human to talk to, just like with government?

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@SchoolforHackers]

Yes, just add voip and you’ll be scamming the scammers. ;)

[@AndersJackson]

Hm, now I know what I shall do with my Google RPi box.

[@taurus548]

Please make more videos about AI on Raspberry Pi!

[@amandao6686]

A secure voice command not giving data to a company is what we need.

[@TheKayliedGamerChannel-YouTube]

Was I the only one expecting a Lara Croft esque voice to greet you ....

[@RalphPetersAmsterdam]

For a moment I expected it would say "Urbana, Illinois" when you asked it where it was born. Just like the HAL 9000

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@paulmaydaynight9925]

you mean this amazon uk "Sony PlayStation 3 Eye Camera Eyetoy (PS3/Windows) (bulk packed)" flat lens & curved. *built-in 4 microphone array.*

[@ExplainingComputers]

I believe so -- but the item is no longer sold (there is one item one in stock on Amazon UK as I type this, but there wasn't one when I made the video). :)

[@gavinpalmer9174]

"What is a penguin?" Wow, it really had to think on that one!

[@mtranchi]

Cool stuff. Yes, would love to see how to go about controlling gpio pins or something. Didn't know about MyCroft. What I don't know is how they're making money. Their servers cost money. Do you know how they're making money?

[@ExplainingComputers]

There is an option to become a member to help pay for the servers, and they are selling Mycroft hardware. But I imagine the strategy right now is to develop the system and build users . . .

[@wktodd]

Excellent, saved the time setting up that load of crap 8-)

[@knightmare47]

I'm trying to do this off of limited resources and i have a USB webcam with a mic. Any chance it would work with the project? thanks for the tutorial btw!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Yes, a webcam with a microphone -- in effect for this project, a USB microphone -- may well work.

[@perrymcclusky4695]

Actually that project looked like I could reproduce it. Of course you did all the research! How about adding Mycroft to your raspberry pi tank project? “Hey Mycroft, turn left.“. Of course having AI use the tank’s camera to navigate on it’s own would be a fascinating but complicated project. Looking forward to your next video!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Hi Perry. I've thought of adding it to the robot Pi tank. It could certainly work, but the response lag would be an issue . . .

[@perrymcclusky4695]

Excellent point.

[@jamestucker2583]

Great stuff! Maybe at some point, you could explain the whole process of file integrity. When downloading various os's for linux and raspberry pi, I noticed these SHA256 file integrity checks that they encourage you to use. Could you explain what these are and how to use them?

[@christopherfekete5453]

They're basically a way to verify a file hasn't been altered either maliciously or accidentally (say some data gets corrupted while downloading the file). So it's similar to a fingerprint for the file, it's usually very unique and hard to duplicate. It's generated by the file provider to allow you to verify the file integrity. For a bit more detail, SHA256 is a hashing algorithm so it basically takes some input data, your file, then performs some calculation on it and spits out a long unique string. Small alterations to the source will cause the unique string to look completely different and it would be very very difficult to make an alternation that matches the original fingerprint, though it is possible.

[@roomchannel5861]

More videos about Raspberry and AI, please

[@alerey4363]

why the heck does mycroft needs the physical location of the device inside your house?

[@ExplainingComputers]

I imagine it is similar to Alexa, where it can be used across multiple devices located in different rooms. So if you said something like "turn on the lights", it would need to know which room you were in.

[@alerey4363]

@@ExplainingComputers let's hope it's that reason and not some obscure data mining process; in your setup in fact it could be great to power the Pi via some powerbank to carry the whole device with you if you move around the house/office, since the usb mike limits the voice range