Mycroft is a home automation Linux-based device that promises to change the way we interact with our homes. The guys who are making this hardware decided to show us how it's made.
Mycroft came out of nowhere and showed the world that you can take a Raspberry Pi 2 and make something that seems to taken out of a Sci-fi movie. It's basically a small robot, powered an AI (with the appearance of an AI) that can interact with its users.
It's what we call IoT hardware. IoT stands for the Internet of Things, and it's a concept that gathers under a single umbrella all the devices that can connect online. Mycroft takes advantage of this feature, and it's capable of controlling those devices itself. It's a sort of a gateway for your IoT home.
The project also produced a byproduct called the Mycroft AI, which is the voice recognition part of the software. Linux systems have a few voice recognition applications, but they are not all that good. Mycroft AI is an open source solution, and it should top everything that's been done until now.
Mycroft is complex
The Mycroft team decided to post a breakdown of the device so that anyone can see what's it made off. This is not something that usually done with commercial devices, but Mycroft is not your normal project.
It's also interesting to note that Mycroft is now an official IoT partner of Canonical, which should help them to gain access to developers and better integrate the Mycroft AI into Unity.
"Mycroft has continued to deepen its ties with Canonical by becoming an official Ubuntu partner for IoT. We are continually grateful for Canonical and team’s commitment to this technology, and their support and guidance as we continue to grow as a project. We look forward to what this partnership will bring in terms of innovation and community engagement, and have the highest hopes for a bright future in this respect," said the Mycroft team on the official website.
Mycroft is scheduled to arrive in April 2016, but the software integration in Ubuntu doesn't have a precise date.
