I added this topic:
https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/6694/suggestion-should-we-add-a-list-of-2-way-mirror-vendors-to-wiki

What do you think?

PS. Very nice mirrors there!

At the end of the day year, the biggest hurdle of any of the currently available voice products I have looked at, are:

The useless (at best) or complete lack of installation instructions!

I have no idea what is going through the heads of all these developers who spend weeks and months of hard effort to produce software, that nobody will use, just because, anyone else who are not exact Matrix clones of them, will not be able to install, nor use it. Please understand that these are all wasted efforts if you’re not interested in having other people being able to use it.

I’ve been around long enough to confidently say that the vast majority (~98%?) of failed projects on github are only because of lacking usage instructions and lacking participation of the original developer or repo owner. I’ve seen and follow many great projects and ideas out there, but most will die a slow death of ignorance in the invisible shadows of murky README documentations. People come, look, move-on and forget.

In the current context of voice interaction to your MM, this is particularly disturbing. Although, many MMM’s here are fairly well presented in this forum or in their READMEs, the voice related ones are extremely lacking. This was a bit surprising to me, since people were able to voice interact with their C64’s already in 1985. While 99% of you probably have no idea what a C64 is, its not important. What is important, is that one of the main differences was that SW in the old era was usually extremely well documented. It was a sales advantage. Even yo’ mama could understand it!

So if you have spent countless hours thinking about and developing this great module that could improve the life of all MM owners, and you have a this l33t group of really super awesome developers and hackers, that project will never really make any significant difference, unless you can make it accessible also to the novice, whether or not this person is technically interested or just a plug-and-play grandma.

---

Here are the most important points in writing documentation:

• Don’t assume any previous knowledge!
  This is by far, the number one doc issue and failure!
• Does the software depend on any other, previously installed software?
  • If so make sure to either re-iterate the steps or link to equivalently good installation instructions.
  • Specify exactly what it depend on, and where to find it.
• Are the steps following a logical order of operations?
  You’ll be surprised!
• Is the information you give, correct?
  Don’t guess how things work!
• Are all the steps up-to-date with current master repository code and functionality?
  This is the hardest to keep up, since most SW in github are under some development.
• Are your screenshots up-to-date with how the UI actually look?
  You have screenshots, right!? A million of your words, could never replace them.
• Have you started from scratch and followed your own installation instructions?
  This step is what fails 99.9% of all documentation. Unfortunately developers are incredibly lazy in this regard, since they think it’s a waste of time. I’m sure NASA has something to teach you about this.
• Can anyone complete the steps successfully?
  Can your 9 year old baby sister or grandma follow the steps without asking for help?
• Can anyone raise a question in the github issues?
  • Are you going to answer respectfully, short and concise and point the user to where to find the information, and take into consideration that perhaps something is not clear from your documentation and need more attention. (Perhaps the UI, a dependency or link has changed?)
  • Or are you going to be a cocky ass and give degrading comments?

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IF YOU WRITE IT GOOD, THEY WILL COME!

Now, available here:
https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror/wiki/Documentation-HowTo

@chef Hi Chef!

Yes, I recently had the same “issues”. Pretty much everything using/parsing JSON are Promises, almost by default, but listen to this. You can probably ignore most of this, including any async/await stuff. Please look how my Flights module is parsing the promises from the API. If not there, look at the api itself. In addition you might even wanna use the Tabulator thing for your own purpose.

@baldrick
After a fresh reboot and just after starting MM and getting a black screen.
Run with:
'cd $HOME/MagicMirror/installers/; pm2 flush && rm ~/.pm2/logs/mm-* ; pm2 start mm.sh

And make sure that your mm.sh reads:

cd ~/MagicMirror
DISPLAY=:0 npm start

Can you please (open a new issue on Github) and post the output of:

1. uname -a
2. dmesg -x -d -T
3. journalctl -b
4. sudo cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
5. sudo cat /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log
6. systemctl list-unit-files -t service -all
7. cat ~/.xsession-errors
8. cat ~/.pm2/logs/mm-error-0.log
9. cat ~/.pm2/logs/mm-out-0.log

I can confirm that address: "localhost" does not allow access from LAN. That is specifying the interface. So it need to be an interface facing your ethernet/wlan, i.e. “0.0.0.0” (any iface).

I’m very frustrated by all the different and poorly maintained/documented MM voice modules “out there”. So to make matter even worse, I’m proposing to create yet another one!

However, this will be “The One” that does all of the above below! Meaning it will work, and be easy to install and well maintained.

What would the features of this MMM be?

• It would concurrently accept wake words for: Google Assistant, Alexa and Snowboy (for MM control).
• It would be more modular so that other new speech technologies can be implemented later, (such as Bixby, Siri and others.)
• It would focus on low CPU usage and memory foot print to be ideal for embedded RPi3 (and above) devices.
• It would be properly integrated so that it is also able to respond to future requests, like:
  • Wake me up tomorrow at 8 am.
  • Set the timer for 20 minutes.
  • …and various follow-up questions, to previous responses.

The project would probably not need to be built from scratch since there are a very few modules that more or less work (such as MMM-Assistant) but they need a lot more TLC, so we might need to fork it up to a higher level of maintenance and perhaps try to repackage it into something more fresh.

What do you guys and girls think?
Who’s interested?

Just to have it said.

The biggest challenge for any new (voice) user, is to correctly setup:

• the ALSA audio (if you haven’t used it before)
• the Google/Alexa developer accounts.

I’m working on a descent HowTo, but I find it very boring, so I keep putting it off… Anyway, I’ve made some changes, so please contact me if you encounter any problem, and I’ll try to walk you through.

@noelandrews That’s correct.

apt-get update        # Updates your system packages list to see what need to be upgraded 
sudo apt-get upgrade  # Actually performs the update of the system packages

cd ~/MagicMirror
git pull              # update your MagicMirror

The packages is not really code, just version info etc. Just delete and pull.

PS. Make sure to backup you config.js file and other personalized module changes you have done, if any.

@hnperkins Don’t update voice modules!! Unless you know exactly what you are dong. Because you will likely overwrite in-code settings. Since many modules depend on editing and hard coding the API keys in the code or other files.

@noelandrews No prob. Always glad I could be of help to someone else. So many have already helped me with all my own stupid questions…