Mycroft Dinkum

Mycroft Dinkum is a consumer ready version of Mycroft created specifically for the Mark II. It is a substantial refactoring of the Mycroft Core code into what we’ve dubbed Mycroft Dinkum (after the thinkum dinkum in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

Why?

Bugfixes and new features in the existing verions of Mycroft have been difficult due to the highly inter-connected nature of the code base. Doing so required significant breaking changes from previous versions of Mycroft, and we know that those versions are in use by a range of projects.

At launch, Dinkum splits Classic Core into services, and removes anything that does not support the default Skills on a Mark II.

Architecture of Dinkum

Dinkum breaks Core into distinct services:

• audio
  • Audio playback using SDL2 mixer
  • Music streaming using VLC
  • Text to speech using Mimic 3
• enclosure
  • Wi-Fi and pairing
• gui
  • QML-based interface
• intent
  • Intent registration and matching
  • Session management
• hal
  • LED animations
  • Buttons and switches
  • Volume
• messagebus
  • Websocket-based message broadcast
• skills
  • Each Skill is loaded as a separate service instance
• voice
  • Microphone input, silence detection, speech to text

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Services

Each Dinkum service is run as a systemd unit. The sdnotify Python package is used to inform systemd when the service has successfully started, and maintain a watchdog.

The scripts/generate-systemd-units.py script will write .service and .target files to /etc/systemd/system (sudo required). For example:

cd mycroft-dinkum/
sudo scripts/generate-systemd-units.py \
        --user pi \
        --service 0 services/messagebus \
        --service 1 services/hal \
        --service 1 services/audio \
        --service 1 services/gui \
        --service 1 services/intent \
        --service 1 services/voice \
        --service 2 services/skills \
        --service 3 services/enclosure \
        --skill skills/alarm.mark2 \
        --skill skills/date.mark2 \
        --skill skills/fallback-query.mark2 \
        --skill skills/fallback-unknown.mark2 \
        --skill skills/homescreen.mark2 \
        --skill skills/ip.mark2 \
        --skill skills/news.mark2 \
        --skill skills/query-duck-duck-go.mark2 \
        --skill skills/query-wiki.mark2 \
        --skill skills/query-wolfram-alpha.mark2 \
        --skill skills/settings.mark2 \
        --skill skills/stop.mark2 \
        --skill skills/time.mark2 \
        --skill skills/timer.mark2 \
        --skill skills/volume.mark2 \
        --skill skills/weather.mark2

will start most of the default Services and Skills. The --service arguments have a priority number that controls the order the services will start. Higher numbers start later, and depend on the lower-numbered services. Skills will all start whenever services/skills is listed.

After generating systemd units, make sure to sudo systemctl daemon-reload and then you can sudo systemctl start dinkum.target

All logs go into journalctl, so they can be viewed in realtime with sudo journalctl -f -xe

You can also view individual Service or Skill logs:

• sudo journalctl -f -u dinkum-audio.service
• sudo journalctl -f -u dinkum-skill-homescreen.mark2.service

Leave off the -f to see the complete history of a service's log.

See dinkum* in /etc/systemd/system for available units. dinkum.target is the root unit.

---

Sessions

A unique feature of Dinkum is sessions. These are managed by the intent service, and allow for centralized deconfliction of the GUI and TTS systems.

With sessions, Skill intent handlers change from:

def handle_intent(self):
    self.speak_dialog("my-dialog", data={"x": 1})
    self.gui["y"] = 2
    self.gui.show_page("my-page.qml")

to this:

def handle_intent(self):
    return self.end_session(
        dialog=("my-dialog", {"x": 1}),
        gui=("my-page.qml", {"y": 2})
    )

Rather than executing commands to control the GUI and TTS, the Skill is returning a message that expresses what it wants to do. The session manager (intent service) can then decide whether or not to do it.

A new session begins when an utterance is received, and is usually ended by a Skill's intent handler (self.end_session()). When the session is over, the GUI returns to the home screen after all TTS has been spoken.

Exceptions to the default flow include:

• Using self.continue_session(expect_response=True) to get a response from the user.
  • The Skill's raw_utterance method is called with the utterance
• Common Query/Play
  • The parent Skill uses continue_session and expects the child Skill to end it

---

Skills

Each Skill is loaded and run individually by the skills Service. Skills have a skill_id, which is always the name of their code directory (e.g., alarm.mark2 for skills/alarm.mark2).

The following core Skills are available:

• alarm.mark2
  • Can set alarms for specific times, or recurring, with an optional name
• date.mark2
  • Speaks the current date, or past/future dates
• fallback-query.mark2
  • Forwards questions to query-* skills
• fallback-unknown.mark2
  • Catches utterances that fail to match any other skill
  • Say "show me what I said" to see past utterances
• homescreen.mark2
  • The default (idle) screen
  • Shows the current time, date, weather, etc.
• ip.mark2
  • Reports the Mark II's IP address(es)
• news.mark2
  • Plays news broadcasts from various stations
• query-duck-duck-go.mark2
  • Forwards questions to DuckDuckGo
• query-wiki.mark2
  • Forwards questions to Wikipedia
• query-wolfram-alpha.mark2
  • Forwards questions to Wolfram Alpha
• settings.mark2
  • Shows settings GUI pages
• stop.mark2
  • Triggers mycroft.stop when user says "stop" (handled in intent service)
• time.mark2
  • Speaks the local time, or for other locations
• timer.mark2
  • Can set multiple timers, optionally with a name
• volume.mark2
  • Allows the user to change the volume or mute/unmute
• weather.mark2
  • Speaks the local weather forecast, or for other locations