Thank you for your support it’s very much appreciated.
I am still working hard to get the outside case to look right its a bit of a slow process as I am new to fusion 360 and to the whole more professional CAD designing.
but i am making progress for sure the next major part will be designing the inside and the mounting points as well as finallizing the parts i will be using i am currently debating between using the respeaker 2 mic hat or the respeaker 4 mic hat.
the respeaker 2 mic hat will work and i have tested it on another raspberry pi but its not amazing and leaves a lot a spare space left over as well as being nice and cheap. it also would fit in the current top of the Mycroft design making it much easier to do.
the respeaker 4 mic hat is better at picking up sounds and provides a better audio clip but will not fit in the current mic location it would have to sit 20mm down from the top of the Mycroft and would sit close to the top of the screen how ever would provide a good space for a push button to mute the device.
overall i am thinking of going for the respeaker 4 mic hat as it provides better range and audio quality while not costing the earth to buy.
tell me what you think and if you have any tips for my using fusion 360.
I am currently working on the front plate of the case which is a difficult shape to create. it is not perfect and still needs some work but I think I am making more progress towards the correct shape. its the correct size however I need to get a smoother shape. what do you think check out the pictures below and tell me what you think?
just a short update, I am still trying to get the correct shape I think this is closer to the Mark 2 design. I am not an expert at fusion 360 by any means.
I am not sure about releasing the file as of yet I was hoping some of the Mycroft staff might have commented but nothing yet. this is just the shell not internal structure.
i have done the first full print of the case. so things right of the mark the case is to thin, need screw holes and mounting points added but i wanted to make sure it looked ok before continuing to add more time and effort to this currently design.
I think it would conflict with the camera, I have started fusion 360 check points all over the place and offline backs of most of the check points for safety as I don’t want to lose the hard work I have done so far. its possible when the files are release you could go back and edit them.
I agree. I was so excited when that prototype image was released. I was beyond disappointed when they released the zero creativity, cheap 80’s alarm clock rendition. The Mark 1 is sold out, and has been for a while. Such a disappointment. I went from “take my money” to “I wouldn’t put that in my house if you gave it to me.”
I have my own Mycroft AI on a small HP mini Elitedesk, but I would have loved to have a more portable version that actually looked like it belonged in a home and not a garage sale.
This will show you how I smoothly blended the angled display surface to the pill shape (revolve). If you ever want to share your Fusion 360 files, I will take a look.
Thanks a lot Dominik! I downloaded the files but noticed that there seems to be a mixup with some of the files. The file labeled “top” is the same as the center button. Any chance on fixing that?
Is your project doing good? I am really interested in this design, because I don’t really like the Mark 2, but this version is really pretty. Anybody thought using another hardware? I think Raspberry Pi 4 is pretty big, and not made for this, would be better if you can use Pi Zero 2 W but, that is cutting edge on RAM, but there is a comptetitor which I have in my hands: Radxa Zero. Which is the size of Pi zero, and faster then Pi 4. I would be really glad if that can make it work. Raspbian is running well on it, so I can’t think of a problem with it. Would be better in heat problems too, because it is not going over 50-60 in celsius at 100% CPU neither. Maybe I will try to use Picroft with it, if anyone is interested in this project nowadays.
Pi zero 2 was released more recently than would have allowed for its inclusion; the mk2 started a few years ago, and the kickstarter was premised with the pi3 at the time. The pi zero was around, but wasn’t sufficient to smoothly run mycroft. The zero 2 fixes the CPU, but still limits the RAM, so ends up being a compromise as well. The radxa zero defaults to 512mb, so be sure to get the 1gb version if you do want to try it. The cpu on the radxa is the s905y2, which by all major benchmarking tests is closer to a pi 3 than a pi4. It’s arm’s A53 architecture, the pi4’s bcm2711 is A72.
On top of that, the sj201 board is almost the size of a pi itself–it handles the audio and buttons. The lower part of the mk2 enclosure is speaker box (and thus empty) to help sound quality, and even the upper part has a great deal of empty space.
There’s a number of ways to fix pi heat issues (sinks, fans, etc) that could also be tried, the mk2 has a fan, I haven’t seen how it’s positioned on the production models. Add a heat sink and it’d be hard to overheat it. The production version of the mk2 supposedly reorients the fan and pi board positioning to better handle the heat flow.
Pi3 is still pretty good in handling things, also I have tested Pi4 and Radxa IRL, and Radxa is pretty smooth because it is not all about CPU power, but it has a very fast NAND for storage which a microsd can’t compete. I wouldn’t use 512 version, because I have the 4GB version which needs no explanation in performance. Also, I do not want to add heatsinks in no way fans if I can handle the problem this way.
All in all it is good to hear that there is a lot of space in this model, because that gives a lot of opportunity.
Thank you for the lightning fast and very accurate answer!
Keep up the good work!
