FutureProofHomes Satellite1 "Linux image" based on OVOS ( OpenVoiceOS) for Raspberry Pi Zero

[Hedda]

@that1guy Do you plan to also develop an OVOS ( OpenVoiceOS) "Linux image" for FutureProofHomes Satellite1 with Raspberry Pi Zero?

• https://www.openvoiceos.org

  • https://www.openvoiceos.org/press

OpenVoiceOS Foundation ("OVOS Foundation" for short) is a new non-profit organization dedicated to advancing open-source voice assistant technology (so it has similar but perhaps more narrower goals to the Open Home Foundation that Home Assistant's founders started). See:

• https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/

  • https://openvoiceos.github.io/ovos-technical-manual/

Maybe it will be the other way around as OVOS (OpenVoiceOS) is a JEOS / Just Enough OS made for Raspberry Pi? ...asking since I understand the FutureProofHomes Satellite1 HAT Board hardware will technically be able use a Raspberry Pi Zero as a compute board(?)

• https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/02/24/the-openvoiceos-foundation-aims-to-enable-open-source-privacy-and-customization-for-voice-assistants/

@j1nx (Peter Steenbergen) has apparently explained to CNX Software that they have more or less taken over the Mycroft A.I. codebase, as well as the Mycroft community forums which now resides here:

https://community.openconversational.ai

You can read more about the history of the project in the "About" section on their website:

• (https://www.openvoiceos.org/about

OpenVoiceOS is now split into multiple modules:

• ovos-messagebus – The BUS all different modules talk over to each other.
• ovos-core – The main system that handles all skills. Basically the brain of it all and is fully Mycroft A.I. skill compatible.
• ovos-listener – Access to your microphone that handles the keyword, STT, etc… again fully modular by plugins. You can fully choose your wake-word plugin (the default is still “Hey Mycroft”). You can choose any STT plugin of your liking be it on-device, on-premises, or online.
• ovos-audio – Access to your speaker. Plugin-based so the user chooses TTS (on-device, on-premise, or online). Basically everything that relates to sound output.
• ovos-phal – Platform/Hardware Abstraction Layer. A plugin-based system to handle and provide anything from hardware integrations (HATs, The Mycroft A.I. Mark1, The Mycroft A.I. Mark2, etc.) or system integrations (Network manager, Keyboard input, Camera, etc.)
• ovos-gui – The Graphical User Interface. The GUI has been split up into two systems: a bus to extend the messagebus for GUI-related communication and the GUI itself. The default is still the KDE Qt-based GUI, however, vastly falling behind as AIX the lead developer is pursuing other endeavors and there’s no Qt developer within the community any longer. An HTMX version is currently also being worked on as a lightweight alternative and the GUI’s can now even run on completely different devices if wanted.

The project is complemented by HiveMind, a separate project of jarbas, the lead Python developer of the OVOS project, that allows all the different OpenVoiceOS framework modules to be split over multiple devices. Peter explains further:

"This extends the message bus(‘s) to talk over the network with all associated security mitigations involved. This allows for instance to lift all the heavy duty over to a beefy server and have small low resource “satellites” to talk to it. So the core skill/phal systems run on a big server, while on a low-resource device, you just only run the listener for the microphone and the audio for the sound output. The best and most current example would be to run your own Home Assistant Voice cloud server and Home Assistant voice satellite."

PS: Hopefully the OpenVoiceOS Foundation and its voice assistant operating-system also plan to fully support Music Assistant for playback:

• https://www.music-assistant.io

  • https://github.com/music-assistant

[j1nx]

Hi @Hedda,

Interessting project: music-assistant ! I will have a look at it.

Also pinging @Jarbas for him to look at how this might fit in within OCP/OCM.

[j1nx]

Will also have a good closer look to that satelite device as well.

[formatBCE]

@j1nx FPH guys are well aware of Music Assistant, and have music playing on SAT1 through it. :)

[Hedda]

Point was that do not think that all developers working on OpenVoiceOS are aware of Music Assistant. Anyway, posted a separate discussion about Music Assistant player support in OpenVoiceOS (on Raspberry Pi) here:

• https://github.com/orgs/OpenVoiceOS/discussions/290

[that1guy]

Hi @Hedda (and nice to meet you, @j1nx!),

The Sat1 HAT can definitely be paired with an RPI, which could, in theory, run OVOS. That would be a really interesting project to see come to life. @j1nx, if you’re interested in exploring this, we’d be happy to answer any questions and help get things moving on the hardware side.

@Hedda, to answer your question—no, we’re not currently planning to build a Linux image for an RPI-powered voice assistant. However, we’d love to see the community take that on. So far, the ESP32 CORE Board has met our needs for our current roadmap, so that’s where our focus remains.

That said, there are some future features we’re considering that might require more powerful computing within the Satellite1 speaker. If and when we pursue those, we’d revisit the idea of an official RPI variant of the Sat1. But for now, it’s not part of our immediate plans.

[j1nx]

Hi @Hedda (and nice to meet you, @j1nx!),

The Sat1 HAT can definitely be paired with an RPI, which could, in theory, run OVOS. That would be a really interesting project to see come to life. @j1nx, if you’re interested in exploring this, we’d be happy to answer any questions and help get things moving on the hardware side.

@Hedda, to answer your question—no, we’re not currently planning to build a Linux image for an RPI-powered voice assistant. However, we’d love to see the community take that on. So far, the ESP32 CORE Board has met our needs for our current roadmap, so that’s where our focus remains.

That said, there are some future features we’re considering that might require more powerful computing within the Satellite1 speaker. If and when we pursue those, we’d revisit the idea of an official RPI variant of the Sat1. But for now, it’s not part of our immediate plans.

@that1guy indeed, nice to (at least virtually) meet you.

Funny to read that you have the exact same idea, yet completely the other way around. We also do get a lot of question about if we would like to have a look at creating hardware for our framework. However as it is so far away from our own roadmap and with the lessons learned from the downfall of Mycroft A.I. we are very reluctant to get into it.

As possible feedback for you guys to check out; The SJ-201 HAT Mycroft A.I. created for their Mark2 device is also using the XMOS chip. They used the xvf-3510 INT chip back in the day. All their schematics are still available here;
https://github.com/MycroftAI/hardware-mycroft-mark-II

As the linux driver for the chip coming from the XMOS guys where very limited towards the used (old) linux kernel and (bullseye) OS ;
https://github.com/xmos/vocalfusion-rpi-setup/tree/master

We wrote a more up to date linux kernel driver that works for 5.15 6.6 and 6.12 utilizing dtoverlays and no longer require a seperate userspace program to set the GPIO pins up, including rpi5 support;
https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/VocalFusionDriver

It is still a bit work in progress as we still need to get back to it when time allows to also have the kernel driver upload the firmware to the chip and to auto load the right rpi4 or rpi5 dtoverlay automatically. Secondly we still need to includee the tas5805 amplifier into it or create a seperate overlay for it.