Hi there,
Not really sure if this would be appreciated or considered to be SPAM, but I am running a series of Blog posts about my journey;
"[DIY] HOME (PERSONAL AI) ASSISTANT"
Not sure how many parts I end up with, however next up is the installation of Raspbian Stretch Lite + MyCroft + ReSpeaker + PulseAudio system wide services. All working as expected and would give enough pointers to get a PiCroft Stretch image out. (Possibly RPi 3B+ support as it uses the latest Stretch lite image)
Sounds like my jurney to. But having all the stuff, and getting it to work is one thing - That I can do. But getting it all set upfor real use is much more difficult for me. I am layzy, and changing all lights to zwave, registering all flowers, connecting all devises and so on is soooo borring. The fist ones is exiting, and then i get layzy 
But I can se what I can do, and where it can go…And having Mycroft as voice makes it fun.
Last night I let mycroft tellng my 7 yr daughter that it were time for bed, and a little later that she has to remember to brush teeth, and then a littel later to do i proprly. And she just replyed as if it were me tellng her all that….Yah yah in a slightly iriitating voice
Loving it! A get the kids to bed skill
“Hey MyCroft, get the kids to bed please”
“Consider it done sir”
We appreciate the insight. Always helpful to know what works and what is a challenge.
Thank you, it is good to learn about other’s experience.
Much appreciated! Write ups are OSS community gold!
@J_Montgomery_Mycroft @krisadair @eric-mycroft Thx!
Just pushed PART-4 online !
Have a look at it. For anyone would would like to validate all the steps by starting an install from scratch. By all means, do so and shout out to me. Happy te help if something is not clear or plain wrong (could be, hard to understand my own crappy notes sometimes)
For the people that keep on running into sound and / or microphone issues. Have a look at the Pulseadio section.
All the steps get you an “Raspbian Stretch Lite” PiCroft type of installation. I have no clue who made the last Jessie PiCroft image. But I strongly believe that those steps could be used to create the next Picroft image based on Raspbian Stretch lite and therefor would also work on the new Raspberry Pi 3B+
The information on creating your own Picroft are not fully complete as I believe Picroft runs with a dedicated “mycroft” user. Anyhow, that should also work with this method of pulseaudio as system wide service.
Let me know what you guys think.
That almost makes me want to have small children again. Almost.
Great write up, @J1nx! And I really appreciate the kind words, great to see our hopes and thoughts are ringing true with others.
Thanks Steve,
Blockquote “really appreciate the kind words, great to see our hopes and thoughts are ringing true with others.”
Personally I liked this one the most.
Blockquote “You can invest in the Company! I strongly believe that, investing into that company at this stage, is like investing in Apple Inc. at the time they where creating those ugly, different color Television / Computer things. Nobody knew who they where other then the stuff they did under their Macintosh brand. If you would have invested a few hundred dollars back then, it would have made you a millionaire now! Just saying…”
And strongly believe it is true 
Now let’s see if we can get those LED’s to do some proper things on that ReSpeaker HAT for PART-5.
Part-5 is online where we are preparing our HDMI to show something usefull. (in the near future).
Again, if you follow me and run into problems, just let me know. More then happy to help anybody out.
Keep it up. This is amazing. This is what the community needs. This is what everyone needs. Maybe a few will learn from it. Maybe Mycroft will follow it and also learn about some of the troubles people have in general. Again, this is really good . Keep it up.
Thanks, much appreciated!
Next up will either be the addition of “Home Assistant” including skills / addons to get them properly connected. I don’t want a full blown HA install on the device controlling everything. Just some local mycroft related automations. However need to figure out, if HA already allows a proper Master-Slave configuration.
Or the addition of “Kodi” of course with a nice MyCroft themed skin (blue-isch + wallpaper for now) including the Kodi-Mycroft skill to control it.
And then last, to connect all three of them…
Wow this series was getting good then I saw that our website is down. Bummer. Hopefully we will see it back and going again soon
No worries. Working hard on it. Started it all on my old blog and as usual screwed it all up by updating some stuff.
Theme incompatibility crap.
Anyhow: Working hard in the few spare time I have, but all content is still preserved. Hope to be online again before the weekend.
Just for the few that might following me.
https://www.j1nx.nl/project-1/diy-home-personal-ai-assistant-intermediate-roadmap-part-6/
Part 7 online. This one has not much to do with Mycroft other then the last section mentioning the great work of @pcwii
https://www.j1nx.nl/project-1/diy-home-personal-ai-assistant-installing-kodi-part-7/
On to the next parts …
On a roll … Part 8 (installing HASS)
https://www.j1nx.nl/project-1/diy-home-personal-ai-assistant-installing-hass-part-8/
Next on the list is either installing WPE Webkit (still some compiling troubles) or connecting the dots; Mycroft <-> HASS & Mycroft <-> KODI
OK guys, not yet a “PART-9” however part of PART-9 
Sharing it here in the hope, others join me in this task to speed up some things.
Thanks!
Part-9 is currently on hold as I need to upgrade my knowledge by self learning involving WPE Webkit.
However just for your information, PART 1 of another blog series is just pushed online to create some awareness and perhaps create some helping hands here and there;
Doing a clean compile run now and then the fun part begins. Testing, where I already screwed up in the first place 