[HOWTO] Begin your Open Voice OS journey with the ovos-installer 💖 😍

ShosMeister · June 21, 2025, 3:52pm

We’re making progress! Thanks!!! I used the pre-built OVOS image and after some fiddling, have it listening and working.

Now I’m trying to figure out why it can’t do anything. I can ask it the time and weather but pretty much nothing else. I tried to set an alarm for 1 minute, get a random number and a couple of other things that I thought were built in but I get “problem occurred while speaking with remote llama”.

(ovos) ovos@raspOVOS:~ $ ovos-status 
  ovos-audio.service                                                                                                                                    loaded active     running      OVOS Audio
  ovos-ggwave.service                                                                                                                                   loaded active     running      Open Voice OS - ggwave listener
  ovos-gui.service                                                                                                                                      loaded active     running      OVOS GUI Websocket
  ovos-listener.service                                                                                                                                 loaded active     running      OVOS Listener
  ovos-messagebus.service                                                                                                                               loaded active     running      OVOS Messagebus (Rust)
  ovos-phal.service                                                                                                                                     loaded active     running      OVOS PHAL
  ovos-skill-settings-ui.service                                                                                                                        loaded active     running      OVOS Skill Settings Editor
  ovos-skills.service                                                                                                                                   loaded active     running      OVOS Skills
  ovos.service                                                                                                                                          loaded active     exited       OVOS A.I. Software stack.

I also get errors trying to check the skils info and server status:

(ovos) ovos@raspOVOS:~ $ ovos-skills-info 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ovos/.venvs/ovos/bin/ovos-docs-viewer", line 4, in <module>
    from ovos_docs_viewer.ovos_docs import launch
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ovos_docs_viewer'
(ovos) ovos@raspOVOS:~ $ ovos-server-status 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ovos/.venvs/ovos/bin/ovos-docs-viewer", line 4, in <module>
    from ovos_docs_viewer.ovos_docs import launch
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ovos_docs_viewer'

The pre-built image doesn’t appear to have a desktop so maybe that’s the docs_viewer error?

I managed to get it to “play a song” but I can’t seem to interrupt it to stop playing it or change the volume. Is there any full documentation on the baseline skills, operation, configuration, etc.?

Marph · July 19, 2025, 9:11pm

Not sure if this is the right place for the report. ovos-installer fails, because https://whl.smartgic.io/ seems to be down (HTTP 503). Anyone else experiencing this issue?

TASK [ovos_installer : Create /home/user/.venvs/ovos Python venv with tflite_runtime] ****************************
Saturday 19 July 2025  23:02:19 +0200 (0:00:01.119)       0:00:13.732 ********* 
fatal: [127.0.0.1]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "cmd": ["/home/user/.venvs/ovos-installer/bin/uv", "pip", "install", "--python", "/home/user/.venvs/ovos/bin/python", "--trusted-host", "whl.smartgic.io", "-f", "https://whl.smartgic.io", "tflite_runtime"], "msg": "\n:stderr: Using Python 3.12.3 environment at: /home/user/.venvs/ovos\nerror: Failed to read `--find-links` URL: https://whl.smartgic.io/\n  Caused by: Request failed after 3 retries\n  Caused by: Failed to fetch: `https://whl.smartgic.io/`\n  Caused by: HTTP status server error (503 Service Unavailable) for url (https://whl.smartgic.io/)\n"}

Nicholas_Kinar · July 20, 2025, 3:56pm

@Marph I can also confirm that https://whl.smartgic.io/ is down at this time. This is a server issue (503).

Nikolaj_Gurezkij · July 23, 2025, 8:57pm

RIP ovos-installer.

I can also confirm that https://whl.smartgic.io/ is down at this time. This is a server issue (503).

Nicholas_Kinar · July 24, 2025, 9:38pm

I’ve opened an issue on Github here

github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos-installer

(HTTP 503) for https://whl.smartgic.io/ causes installation script to fail

opened 09:37PM - 24 Jul 25 UTC

nkinar

The ovos-installer does not work since a server is down. This is reproducible o…n all platforms. As per https://community.openconversational.ai/t/howto-begin-your-open-voice-os-journey-with-the-ovos-installer/14900/166 ``` TASK [ovos_installer : Create /home/user/.venvs/ovos Python venv with tflite_runtime] **************************** Saturday 19 July 2025 23:02:19 +0200 (0:00:01.119) 0:00:13.732 ********* fatal: [127.0.0.1]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "cmd": ["/home/user/.venvs/ovos-installer/bin/uv", "pip", "install", "--python", "/home/user/.venvs/ovos/bin/python", "--trusted-host", "whl.smartgic.io", "-f", "https://whl.smartgic.io", "tflite_runtime"], "msg": "\n:stderr: Using Python 3.12.3 environment at: /home/user/.venvs/ovos\nerror: Failed to read `--find-links` URL: https://whl.smartgic.io/\n Caused by: Request failed after 3 retries\n Caused by: Failed to fetch: `https://whl.smartgic.io/`\n Caused by: HTTP status server error (503 Service Unavailable) for url (https://whl.smartgic.io/)\n"} ```

goldyfruit · July 27, 2025, 6:08pm

https://whl.smartgic.io is now back online.

CalicoKM · July 28, 2025, 7:45pm

Has anyone ran into an issue after installation where they cannot see their cursor on the gui? any fixes? Thanks.

goldyfruit · July 29, 2025, 8:02am

This is expected, try to switched QT_QPA_EGLFS_HIDECURSOR from 1 to 0 in ~/.config/systemd/user/ovos-gui.service.

github.com

OpenVoiceOS/ovos-installer/blob/main/ansible/roles/ovos_installer/templates/virtualenv/ovos-gui.service.j2#L14


      
          PartOf=ovos.service
          Requires=ovos.service ovos-gui-websocket.service ovos-phal.service
          
          [Service]
          Environment="QT_QPA_PLATFORM={{ 'eglfs' if ovos_installer_display_server == "N/A" else 'wayland;xcb' }}"
          Environment="QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct"
          Environment="QT_QPA_EGLFS_KMS_ATOMIC=1"
          Environment="QT_FONT_DPI=120"
          Environment="QT_QUICK_CONTROLS_STYLE=OpenVoiceStyle"
          Environment="QT_FILE_SELECTORS=ovos"
          Environment="QT_QPA_EGLFS_HIDECURSOR=1"
          {% if "Raspberry Pi 5" in ovos_installer_raspberrypi and ovos_installer_display_server == "N/A" %}
          Environment="QT_QPA_EGLFS_INTEGRATION=eglfs_kms"
          Environment="QT_QPA_EGLFS_KMS_CONFIG=%h/.config/ovos-eglfs.json"
          {% endif %}
          {% if 'tas5806' in ovos_installer_i2c_devices %}
          Environment="QT_IM_MODULE=qtvirtualkeyboard"
          {% endif %}
          WorkingDirectory=%h/.venvs/ovos
          ExecStart=/usr/bin/{{ 'ovos-shell' if ovos_installer_display_server == "N/A" else 'ovos-gui-app' }}
          ExecReload=/usr/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID

pleia2 · August 20, 2025, 2:25pm

I pulled a Mycroft Mark 1 that I’ve never used out of the closet and tried the install. The venv install completed successfully, but it doesn’t seem to hear anything I say. I tried re-installing a couple times just in case. The only error in the logs is inability to reach https://whisper.tigregotico.pt/stt which I don’t think should be required?

I’m wondering if I’m bumping into hardware problems (it is old!) or if these devices aren’t well supported anymore due to their low specs, I haven’t seen posts here about them lately. Any suggestions for debugging?

goldyfruit · August 23, 2025, 12:43pm

Do you see any wakeword detection in the ovos-listener log?

pleia2 · August 25, 2025, 5:50pm

No errors, but also no wakeword detection logged. I also went into the venv and ran ovos-listen (and ovos-speak for good measure!), and the device didn’t seem to do anything.

I will try some more Linux-native debugging to see if it’s a speaker/microphone hardware problem on the device, but I wanted to see if there was a known status for these older devices that I might be bumping into.

mikejgray · August 25, 2025, 11:24pm

I’ve got a couple of Mark 1 devices and I’ve experienced that the audio hardware just stops working inexplicably. Eventually it starts again, which is very frustrating, but I haven’t been able to pinpoint anything specific. Could be a loose connection inside the enclosure.

goldyfruit · August 26, 2025, 12:04am

Sometime it is just related to corrosion, you will have to re-sit the daughter board/clean the PINs with IPA.

postman · September 1, 2025, 7:53pm

Many thanks for this. Worked without a hitch.

I just got a touchscreen for the RPi5 that has been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to get around to doing something with.

cooljimy84 · September 18, 2025, 2:52pm

Just installed on my mark 1 and it didn’t seem to detect it as a mark 1. Tho no errors in the install log, and the eye just spin.
Rerunning the installer gave an error detecting I2C, but that didn’t happen first time around.
reinstalled a few times, with the eyes spinning, without the eyes spinning, with apt upgrade, without.

Is there any way to force it to install the detection of a mark 1 ?

I’m also lucky enought to have a mk2, but that is deeper in my cupboard, i shall try testing on that soon.

cooljimy84 · September 19, 2025, 9:02am

for the mark 1, after enabling SPI & I2C in the raspi-config menu and rebooting it now fails to get the avrdude-aarch64 file. when in -d (debug) mode on the installer

goldyfruit · September 25, 2025, 3:31pm

Just pushed few changes, I was able to provision my Mark 1 with the latest OVOS version.

lbt · November 4, 2025, 11:29am

Not having much luck with the installer I’m afraid.

I’m doing a minimal ‘server’ install with base skills.

I created a minimal and pristine trixie system as a VM with docker but neither stable/testing/alpha would install using containers.

I think that’s because smartgic/hivemind-cli doesn’t have :testing or :stable variants and that stopped those.

The alpha variant failed with ovos_core hitting

mkdir: cannot create directory '/home/ovos/.local/share/mycroft/skills': Permission denied

probably because the uid of my user didn’t match the uid in the container and the volume mapping went to $HOME/.local/share which had mismatching permissions
Once I forced 777 to that area it hit:

PermissionError: \[Errno 13\] Permission denied: '/home/ovos/.config/mycroft/mycroft.conf'

At this point I thought I’d switch to venv based install but that failed because

`lxml` (v4.9.4) was included because `hivemind-presence` (v0.0.1) depends on `upnpclient` (v1.0.3) which depends on `lxml`

that fails to build on python 3.13 in trixie because

  src/lxml/etree.c:5988:39: error: implicit declaration of
  function ‘\_PyInterpreterState_GetConfig’; did you mean
  ‘PyInterpreterState_GetID’? \[-Wimplicit-function-declaration\]

even though lxml is installed to the venv via

(ovos) david@ovos:~$ pip install lxml
WARNING: The directory '/home/david/.cache/pip' or its parent directory is not owned or is not writable by the current user. The cache has been disabled. Check the permissions and owner of that directory. If executing pip with sudo, you should use sudo's -H flag.
Requirement already satisfied: lxml in ./.venvs/ovos/lib/python3.13/site-packages (6.0.2)

goldyfruit · February 8, 2026, 9:02pm

burns · February 25, 2026, 8:19pm

Ok, I’ve tried to install on a Mark 2 about 10 times, and getting slightly closer. I see you mentioning Trixie lately, so I first installed Trixie (which requires a new Imager btw, or it will not do all the username and SSID stuff). Then I ran the OVOS install as you specified above. It finally appears to have installed everything correctly (i.e. it said so), and rebooted. I see above you have something on the screen of the Mk2. I have nothing. When I say “Hey Mycroft” the SD card adapter light blinks slightly but no tone, and no response to the question (what time is it). The volume up and down seem to have no effect. I tried with the mute switch in both positions. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks.

BTW, there were a lot of references to 127.0.0.1 (i.e. the local IP address) but then it said whatever it was doing at the time was ok. And I was SSHed in at the time, so obviously the external network was working