Ansible playbooks for Mycroft AI Voice Assistant

• Ansible playbooks for Mycroft AI Voice Assistant
  • Introduction
    • What does Ansible prepi role?
    • What does Ansible mycroft role?
  • Requirements
  • Example Playbooks
    • Playbook with default values
    • Playbook with custom values
    • Playbook with prepi role only
    • Playbook with mycroft role only
    • Playbook to uninstall Mycroft
  • License
  • Author Information

Introduction

These Ansible playbooks will help you to install and configure Mycroft AI Voice Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4B (and later) board with Raspberry Pi OS distribution.

Two types of playbook:

• Interactive: asking questions to configure the roles used by the playbook
• Non-interactive: using the default values from the roles or extra variables which override the default values

The playbooks could call different roles such as prepi and mycroft, these roles are available on Ansible Galaxy too.

Before running the playbooks, please have a look to the README of both of roles listed above.

The following image is the result of the install playbook execution:

What does Ansible prepi role?

Using the prepi Ansible role will ensure your Raspberry Pi to be properly configured for the best of Mycroft experience.

The role will perform the following tasks (depending your wish):

• Update Raspberry Pi OS to the latest version
• Add Debian backports repository (customizable)
• Update firmware using the next branch which provide kernel 5.10 (customizable)
• Update EEPROM using the beta version (customizable)
• Setup initial_turbo to speedup the boot process
• Overclock the Raspberry Pi to 2Ghz (customizable)
• Mount /tmp on a RAMDisk for Mycroft TTS cache files
• Optimize / partition mount options to improve SDcard read/write
• Enable I2C, SPI & UART interfaces (customizable)
• Set CPU governor to performance to avoid context switching between the idle* kernel functions (customizable)
• Install and configure PulseAudio (non-system wide) (customizable)

What does Ansible mycroft role?

The role will perform the following tasks:

• Install and configure Mycroft AI Voice Assistant
• Myroft services integrated with systemd
• Extra skills installation
• boto3, py_mplayer and pyopenssl Python librairies installation
• RAMDisk support for IPC
• Configure Mycroft with custom user profile
• Optimize PulseAudio for Mycroft
• Protect Mycroft message bus service port 8181

Requirements

• Raspberry Pi 4B board and later connected to your network
• Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit (required for board with more than 4GB of RAM)
• Ansible 2.9 minimum (follow this guide)
• SSH up and running (howto enable SSH on Raspberry Pi)

This repository provides a requirements.yml file which allows you to retrieve the roles from Ansible Galaxy Smart'Gic namespace.

$ cd ansible-playbooks-mycroft
$ ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

Example Playbooks

Inventory file with rpi group which has one host named rpi4b01 with the IP address 192.168.1.97.

[rpi]
rpi4b01 ansible_host=192.168.1.97 ansible_user=pi

Basic playbook running on rpi group using the pi user to connect via SSH (based on the inventory) with some custom variables.

Interactive playbook

Using the interactive (asking questions) playbook to install and configure Mycroft.

$ cd ansible-playbook-mycroft
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory install-interactive.yml

Playbook with default values

Prepare Raspberry Pi, install and configure Mycroft with the default values from the roles.

---
# file: install-default.yml
- hosts: rpi
  gather_facts: yes
  become: yes

  pre_tasks:
    - name: Install Python 3.x Ansible requirement
      raw: apt-get install -y python3
      changed_when: no
      tags:
        - always

  tasks:
    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.prepi

    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.mycroft

Run the playbook

$ cd ansible-playbooks-mycroft
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory install-default.yml

Playbook with custom values

Prepare Raspberry Pi, install and configure Mycroft with some custom values from the roles.

---
# file: install-custom.yml
- hosts: rpi
  gather_facts: yes
  become: yes

  pre_tasks:
    - name: Install Python 3.x Ansible requirement
      raw: apt-get install -y python3
      changed_when: no
      tags:
        - always

  vars:
    # PREPI
    prepi_pi_user: pi
    prepi_hostname: mylovelypi
    prepi_firmware_update: no
    prepi_overclock: yes
    prepi_cpu_freq: 1750

    # MYCROFT
    mycroft_branch: dev
    mycroft_user: "{{ prepi_pi_user }}"
    mycroft_skills_update_interval: 2.0
    mycroft_recording_timeout_with_silence: 3.0
    mycroft_log_level: DEBUG
    mycroft_name: picroft
    mycroft_extra_skills:
      - https://github.com/MycroftAI/skill-homeassistant.git

  tasks:
    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.prepi

    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.mycroft

Run the playbook

$ cd ansible-playbooks-mycroft
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory install-custom.yml

Playbook with prepi role only

Install and configure Mycroft with some custom values from the roles.

---
# file: prepi-only.yml
- hosts: rpi
  gather_facts: yes
  become: yes

  pre_tasks:
    - name: Install Python 3.x Ansible requirement
      raw: apt-get install -y python3
      changed_when: no
      tags:
        - always

  vars:
    # PREPI
    prepi_pi_user: pi
    prepi_hostname: mylovelypi
    prepi_firmware_update: no
    prepi_overclock: yes
    prepi_cpu_freq: 1750

  tasks:
    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.prepi

Run the playbook

$ cd ansible-playbooks-mycroft
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory prepi-only.yml

Playbook with mycroft role only

Install and configure Mycroft with some custom values from the roles.

---
# file: mycroft-only.yml
- hosts: rpi
  gather_facts: no
  become: yes

  pre_tasks:
    - name: Install Python 3.x Ansible requirement
      raw: apt-get install -y python3
      changed_when: no
      tags:
        - always

  vars:
    mycroft_branch: dev
    mycroft_user: pi
    mycroft_skills_update_interval: 2.0
    mycroft_recording_timeout_with_silence: 3.0
    mycroft_log_level: DEBUG
    mycroft_name: picroft
    mycroft_extra_skills:
      - https://github.com/MycroftAI/skill-homeassistant.git

    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.mycroft

Run the playbook

$ cd ansible-playbooks-mycroft
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory mycroft-only.yml

Playbook to uninstall Mycroft

Uninstall Mycroft with extra variable passed on the command line.

---
# file: uninstall.yml
---
- hosts: rpi
  gather_facts: no
  become: yes

  tasks:
    - meta: end_play
      when: mycroft_uninstall is undefined or mycroft_uninstall | bool == false

    - import_role:
        name: smartgic.mycroft
        tasks_from: uninstall
      when: mycroft_uninstall is defined and mycroft_uninstall | bool

Run the playbook

$ cd ansible-playbooks-mycroft
$ ansible-playbook -i inventory uninstall.yml -e mycroft_uninstall=yes

License

MIT

Author Information

I'm Gaëtan Trellu (goldyfruit), let's discuss :) - 2020