If you have a Mycroft Mark II collecting dust after Mycroft AI shut down in 2023, here is a way to give it a second life as a proper Home Assistant voice satellite with touchscreen dashboard, LED feedback and multiroom audio.
What it turns your Mark II into
- Voice satellite for HA Assist — say your wake word, ask anything, control your home
- Touchscreen kiosk — shows your HA dashboard on the built-in 4.3" display, touch to control
- LED ring that reacts to voice states — pulses when listening, glows when speaking
- Animated face overlay that reacts to voice and dances to music
- MQTT sensors — Mark II appears in HA with CPU temp, voice state, audio playback state etc.
- Multiroom audio via Snapcast or AirPlay (optional)
- MPD music player that integrates with Music Assistant (optional)
Why this is interesting for HA users
The voice pipeline runs entirely through HA Assist — so you choose what powers each step. No cloud required if you don’t want it:
| Step | Options |
|---|---|
| Wake word | Local on device (openWakeWord) |
| Speech to text | Whisper locally, Nabu Casa, cloud |
| Conversation | HA built-in, OpenAI, Google, local LLM |
| Text to speech | Piper locally, Nabu Casa, cloud |
Switch pipeline without touching the device. Same setup that works with your other HA voice satellites works with Mark II too.
Auto-login on the touchscreen
The touchscreen shows your HA dashboard automatically after boot — no keyboard needed. Uses HA’s trusted_networks auth provider so the specific Mark II IP gets passwordless access. Full setup instructions are in the docs.
Create a dedicated mark2 user in HA, set the Mark II dashboard as their default, and point the kiosk at your HA URL. The screen loads straight to your dashboard on boot.
Hardware
The Mark II has surprisingly good hardware for this:
- XMOS XVF-3510 6-mic array with hardware noise cancellation and echo cancellation
- TAS5806 23W stereo amplifier
- NeoPixel LED ring (12 LEDs)
- 4.3" 800×480 DSI touchscreen
- Volume buttons and action button
- PWM-controlled cooling fan (automatic thermal management via kernel)
All of it works on current Raspberry Pi OS (Trixie / Debian 13).
Installation
Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit, Trixie) to a USB stick, SSH in, clone the repo and run:
bash
git clone https://github.com/andlo/mark2-assist
cd mark2-assist
./install.sh
The installer asks all questions upfront, handles the hardware driver setup and reboot automatically, and resumes after reboot. Total time around 20–40 minutes.
A hardware test suite is included to verify all components before you proceed.
Mark II dashboard
A ready-to-paste Lovelace dashboard YAML optimised for the 800×480 touchscreen is included in docs/mark2-dashboard.yaml. Uses Mushroom Cards and layout-card (both HACS).
Shows clock, weather, media player with controls, quick action buttons and active timers.
Status
Working daily driver on my own Mark II. Still some rough edges and known issues documented in the repo. Contributions welcome — especially if you have a Mark II and want to help test and improve things.
Questions and feedback welcome here or on GitHub.
