Cloud Computing: Meet Mycroft, The Open Source Alternative To Amazon Echo

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Editorial Staff.

Mycroft, an open source artificial intelligence startup opened its Kickstarter campaign last week. It is getting ready to take on the heavyweights such as Amazon Echo, Apple Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft Cortana. Thanks to Apple Siri and Google Now, voice-activated personal assistants are in vogue.

Abundant bandwidth, affordable computing power, and advancements in machine learning made this technology accessible to consumers. Amazon Echo is one of the first dedicated voice-activated assistants available in the market. Though it started as a smart speaker, it will become the cornerstone of Amazon’s IoT strategy…

Mycroft utilizes many open source hardware and software components for its artificial intelligence platform. At the heart of the device is Raspberry Pi 2, the powerful credit-card sized computer. Based on a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with 1 GB of memory, Raspberry Pi 2 is powerful enough to be Mycroft’s engine. The funky display, which shows the status, is powered by the popular Arduino platform. On the software front, it is powered by Snappy, the minimalistic Linux OS from Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu. Once hooked to the home WiFi, Mycroft can talk to a variety of smart home platforms including Nest, Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo, and Samsung SmartThings. It also supports many online services such as YouTube, Netflix, Pandora, and Spotify. Through the integrated speaker, it can play your favorite Pandora playlist…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2015/08/20/meet-mycroft-the-open-source-alternative-to-amazon-echo/