ovos-raspbian

Run ovos on top of RaspberryPiOS

Ever wanted to run ovos on a device that an image is not provided for? Give this a try.

This guide DOES require an internet connection

Step 1: Create the boot medium

• Download latest lite image and install to SD card or USB.
  • There are lots of guides, but this one is the official guide
  • This is the suggested download

Step 2: Setup the system

Boot your newly created medium and follow the prompts to create an user.

• Create user ovos with password ovos
  • The system will reboot and ask you to log in. Log in with the above credentals

You need to configure your device with the nicely provided raspi-config

sudo raspi-config

Here you can enable several services, but a few will be necessasary.

Enter the System Options page

Enter the Boot / Autologin page

• Use the second option in the menu. Console Autologin
  • This enables the ovos user to login to a console terminal on every boot

Go back to the main menu and enter the Interface Options page

• Enable SSH, SPI, I2C
  • After SSH is enabled, the rest of the guide can be done from a remote computer

Back to the main menu and enter the Localisation Options page

• Configure Locale, Timezone, WLAN Country

After these are set, you can optionally setup WIFI from here also.

• An internet connection WILL be needed. Either WIFI here, or a LAN connection.

Optional: Setup WIFI

Return to the main menu and enter System Options again.

Enter the Wireless LAN section and follow the prompts

We are almost done with the device setup.

sudo reboot now

** From this point on, you should be able to access your device from any SSH terminal. ** For guide for how to do this, see https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/remote-access.html.

First you need to make sure your system is up to date. It should be close as you just installed a new image.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Now we can work on installing OVOS

Step 3: Install OVOS-CORE

There are a few packages required for ovos, so we will install those first

sudo apt install build-essential python3-dev swig libssl-dev libfann-dev portaudio19-dev libpulse-dev

Also install a couple of other packages needed later

sudo apt install cmake git libncurses-dev python3-pip

I have also had better luck installing using pip from a local directory I also install them all localy instead of system wide

Lets start with cloning a couple of repositories

• git clone https://github.com/builderjer/ovos-raspbian.git

This repository has files that will be used in the guide

• git clone https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos-core.git

This is the main ovos-core repository. While you should be able to do this without cloning the repo, I have had more luck with a fresh clone to work with.

Now we can install ovos.

This guide assumes that you are creating a headless device (no screen), so we only need some of the packages provided by ovos-core

• pip install ./ovos-core[audio,PHAL,stt,tts,skills_lgpl,skills,bus,skills-essential]

If you are installing a complete system with a screen, use the following command

• pip install ./ovos-core[all]

Step 4: Install the systemd files

We will be installing the systemd files as a regular user instead of system wide. The official ovos buildroot images installs these files in /usr/lib/systemd/user/. There are guides that say user systemd files can also be placed in /etc/systemd/user. or $HOME/.config/systemd/user/. We will be using the users home directory to avoid using sudo here.

Enter the cloned repo ovos-raspbian assuming you cloned this to your home directory

• cd ~/ovos-raspbian/systemd/

Copy the files from there

• cp * ~/.config/systemd/user/

Reload the systemd daemon

• systemctl --user daemon-reload

Enable the system files

• systemctl --user enable mycroft*

Step 5: Install the executables

These are the files that systemd uses to start ovos. These include hooks for restarting and stopping the services.

• cd ~/ovos-raspbian/libexec/

Here we need to use sudo to copy the files to the right location.

• sudo cp * /usr/libexec/

And make them executable

• sudo chmod a+x /usr/libexec/mycroft*

These executables require sdnotify

• pip install sdnotify

Do a reboot

• sudo reboot now

This takes a while, especially when you are used to a Rpi4 or x86 install. Loading everything is about as much as a Rpi3 can handle I think.

You should now have a running ovos device!!

Check with this

• systemctl --user status mycroft*

It takes a while to load, but they should all say active (running)

Step 6: Install skills

OVOS-core does not come with any pre-installed skills, so they need to be manually installed.

Once again, I like to use pip where ever I can. There are certain skills that I feel should be installed first.

I install straight from git, because they ususally have the latest bug fixes and such.

date-time

• pip install git+https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/skill-ovos-date-time.git

weather

• pip install git+https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/skill-ovos-weather.git

Do this for each skill you want installed. As a warning, pip installed skills are NOT automatically loaded on install. A restart of mycroft is required.

• systemctl --user restart mycroft

Step 7: Extras

There are a few things that are usefull to me. ncpamixer and ovos-cli-client

git clone https://github.com/fulhax/ncpamixer.git
cd ncpamixer/
make
sudo make install

pip install git+https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos-cli-client.git

I hope this helps people, and if there are mistakes, please let me know