Deploy Mycroft AI voice assistant on Raspberry Pi utilizing Ansible

Mycroft AI is a digital assistant software that may reply to verbal requests and full duties reminiscent of looking the Internet for some data you want, or downloading your favourite podcast, and so forth. It’s a advantageous piece of open supply software program that, in contrast to related software program from firms within the enterprise of harvesting private information, supplies privateness and platform flexibility.

Mycroft AI, written in Python, can set up on many alternative {hardware} platforms. The well-known Raspberry Pi board is a well-liked alternative (however not the one one) to run the voice assistant. Conveniently, Mycroft supplies a picture for Raspberry Pi, which is known as Picroft. Picroft is a wonderful resolution, however it does have some limitations, reminiscent of the dearth of 64-bit assist.

Raspberry Pi 4, the platform of alternative and my goal

The Raspberry Pi board is common inside the Mycroft neighborhood as a result of it is cheap, has numerous academic potential, and supplies the potential for attention-grabbing expansions because of Mycroft’s expertise and the Pi’s easy accessibility to General-Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins (for instance, the wake word LED GPIO skill).

The mannequin 4B has sufficient CPU energy and reminiscence to run Mycroft easily. I take advantage of the mannequin 4B with 8GB of RAM, operating Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye 64-bit Lite, which you’ll obtain from RaspberryPi.org.

Another automation story

Building your personal Mycroft AI system does imply that you will need to take note of some particulars. According to my preliminary expertise (from a 12 months in the past), here’s a record of necessary technical particulars you will need to take note:

• Audio output (speaker configuration)
• Audio enter (microphone configuration)
• Microphone high quality (the precise {hardware} you purchase)
• Wake phrase response (“Hey Mycroft!”)
• Latency of response (“What’s the weather like?”)

These aren’t problems with Mycroft AI, they’re simply the issues you will need to take note whereas selecting your {hardware} and configuring your working system. The Pi itself is able to operating Mycroft AI, however there are changes that require particular configuration. Specifically, these are:

• CPU scheduler
• SD card performances
• PulseAudio configuration
• Network latency

I needed to do numerous analysis and guide actions to resolve the complications from the record above, however I did obtain the “ultimate” purpose—the smoothest expertise!

Ansible to the rescue!

So now that I’ve created the smoothest expertise, how do I be certain that each motion completed to realize this purpose will get captured and will get re-applied provided that required on any Raspberry Pi 4 board?

Ansible to the rescue! Ansible is idempotent by design, which signifies that it applies the requested adjustments provided that required. If every little thing is configured accurately, Ansible doesn’t change a factor. This is the fantastic thing about idempotency!

To obtain this final purpose, I take advantage of two Ansible roles:

• One to configure and tweak the Raspberry Pi
• One to put in and configure Mycroft AI

Ansible prepi position

The Ansible prepi role applies some configurations to acquire higher performances from a Raspberry Pi 4B board and put together the trail to Mycroft.

• Update Raspberry Pi OS to the newest model
• Add Debian backports repository
• Update firmware utilizing the subsequent department, which supplies kernel 5.15 and edge firmware
• Update EEPROM utilizing the beta model, which supplies edge options
• Setup initial_turbo to hurry up the boot course of
• Overclock the Raspberry Pi to 2Ghz
• Mount /tmp on a RAMDisk
• Optimize / partition mount choices to enhance SDcard learn/write
• Manage I2C, SPI & UART interfaces
• Set CPU governor to efficiency to keep away from context switching between the idle* kernel features
• Install and configure PulseAudio (non-system broad)
• Reboot the Raspberry Pi when new firmware or EEPROM will get put in

Ansible mycroft position

This Ansible mycroft role installs and configures Mycroft AI Core from the GitHub repository primarily based on the dev_setup.sh Bash script offered by the Mycroft core staff.

• Python 3 digital setting
• Systemd integration
• Extra expertise set up
• Boto3, py_mplayer, and pyopenssl libraries set up
• RAMDisk assist for IPC
• File configuration assist
• PulseAudio optimizations
• Secure Mycroft message bus websocket

I’ll want an Ansible playbook to orchestrate the 2 roles.

Personal necessities

Here is a listing of necessities for this challenge:

• Raspberry Pi 4B board (or later) related to your community
• Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit
• Ansible 2.9 (or later)
• SSH, up and operating

To burn the Raspberry Pi OS picture to the SD card, you should utilize Etcher or the imaging instrument of your alternative.

I overclock my Pi to get a lift in efficiency, however this may be harmful to your {hardware}. Before utilizing my Ansible playbooks, learn them fastidiously! You are accountable for the alternatives made with this position. You resolve which firmware, which EEPROM you need to use. The similar rule applies to the overclocking characteristic. Remember that overclocking requires a correct cooling system.

Execute the Ansible playbook

The first step is to retrieve the Ansible playbooks from GitHub. Use the next git command:

$ git clone https://github.com/smartgic/ansible-playbooks-mycroft.git

This repository accommodates an Ansible necessities.yml file which supplies a listing of Ansible roles required by this playbook, the roles should be retrieved from Ansible Galaxy.

$ cd ansible-playbooks-mycroft
$ ansible-galaxy set up -r necessities.yml
Starting galaxy position set up course of
- downloading position 'mycroft', owned by smartgic
- downloading position from https://github.com/smartgic/ansible-role-mycroft/archive/essential.tar.gz
- extracting smartgic.mycroft to /residence/goldyfruit/.ansible/roles/smartgic.mycroft
- smartgic.mycroft (essential) was put in efficiently
- downloading position 'prepi', owned by smartgic
- downloading position from https://github.com/smartgic/ansible-role-prepi/archive/essential.tar.gz
- extracting smartgic.prepi to /residence/goldyfruit/.ansible/roles/smartgic.prepi
- smartgic.prepi (essential) was put in efficiently

The second step is to edit the Ansible stock offered within the repository to reference the hosts I must be managed by Ansible.

[rpi]
rpi4b01 ansible_host=192.168.1.97 ansible_user=pi

[rpi] is the group and shouldn’t be modified. This group has one host named rpi4b01, which has IP 192.168.1.97 and supplies pi as Linux (default on Raspberry Pi OS) person for Ansible to attach with.

Now the tough half: what worth would you like for every possibility? It’s as much as you, however here is my go-to configuration:

# file: install-custom.yml

- hosts: rpi

  gather_facts: sure

  change into: sure
  pre_tasks:
    - title: Install Python 3.x Ansible requirement
      uncooked: apt-get set up -y python3
      changed_when: no
      tags:
        - all the time
  vars:
    # PREPI
    prepi_pi_user: pi
    prepi_hostname: mylovelypi
    prepi_firmware_update: sure
    prepi_overclock: sure
    prepi_force_turbo: sure
    prepi_cpu_freq: 2000
    prepi_pulseaudio_daemon: sure
    # MYCROFT
    mycroft_branch: dev
    mycroft_user: "{{ prepi_pi_user }}"
    mycroft_skills_update_interval: 2.0
    mycroft_recording_timeout_with_silence: 3.0
    mycroft_enclosure_name: picroft
    mycroft_extra_skills:
      - https://github.com/smartgic/mycroft-finished-booting-skill.git
  duties:
    - import_role:
        title: smartgic.prepi
    - import_role:
        title: smartgic.mycroft

The content material must be saved in a file (for instance, install-custom.yml).

And now the second of reality: run your freshly created playbook.

$ ansible-playbook -i stock install-custom.yml -k

The -k possibility from ansible-playbook command is barely required if not utilizing the SSH key. During the playbook execution, the Raspberry Pi may reboot a few occasions. The playbook is sensible sufficient to deal with this.

Once Ansible is completed, you see a congratulatory message, which prompts you for the subsequent steps it is advisable take.

Ansible makes {custom} Mycroft straightforward

These playbooks are the teachings I realized since beginning my journey with Mycroft AI. It permits me to construct, re-build, customise, and replicate my set up with the peace of thoughts of getting consistency in all places!

Do you’ve gotten any feedback, questions, or considerations? Leave a remark, go to me on Twitter @goldyfruit, or cease by Mycroft channels.