Hello,
tl;dr I am new here, and looking for tips / recommendations to build a simple RPI-based Mycroft device that can be kid-friendly.
In more detail:
My son (7yo) has just been impressed by his friend’s Alexa and now wants one too; but I would prefer a “smart” speaker to respect our privacy and be educational, I have been looking at options to build one ourselves, and this rabbit hole has led me to Mycroft (of course).
I use a couple of Raspberry Pis to self-host services, I am reasonably good with Linux and basic Python, but I am just discovering voice assistants! I have looked at alternatives but it seems Mycroft has an edge, especially now that the main rhasspy dev is going to Mycroft!
I really like Chatterbox, but as I am in the UK it seems quite expensive to ship here (+ import etc.). So I am leaning towards doing it myself, but I would miss two things that Chatterbox provides
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The graphical interface to build skills, it looks really cool and close to Scratch, which my kids already use. Does this exist somewhere? It is apparently based on blockly but I can’t find a repo. It looks like I could download ChatterOS, which hellochatterbox uses, but it’s unclear if I could get SSH access or whether it would work with other hardware… which brings point 2!
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The ready-to-use HAT, microphone, speaker and button, which could save me the hassle of trying to find compatible hardware. It looks like I can find a Google AIY Voice kit (v1, not the one for a Pi zero), but as it’s 4 years old it’s unclear if there would be incompatibilities. Are there other similar kits that people know of?
Another question for this community is how easy or hard it would be to have Mycroft / picroft entirely in French. We speak mostly French at home. The Mycroft documentation seems to show that it’s possible but I don’t know if it would result in a frustrating experience for kids.
I have tried looking the above in documentation, but I’m very new to Mycroft and getting a bit overwhelmed!
Thank you