It's been very quiet lately for the Mycroft project, an open-source initiative to bring a full-featured intelligent personal assistant to Linux desktops, but it looks like it's still alive and kicking, and it's now available as a Raspberry Pi image.

Why a Raspberry Pi image for Mycroft? Because it will help developers, hackers, device makers, and any other enthusiast to easily deploy the artificial intelligence solution on a Raspberry Pi single-board computer and create their own Mycroft-enabled projects and various other exciting applications.

"Mycroft now has a Raspberry Pi image that is ready to run. We have created the Picroft image so the community has access to a quick, easy to install artificial intelligence (AI)," said Joshua Montgomery, CEO of Mycroft A.I.. "Our thinking is that having ready access to an out-of-the-box AI will inspire some crazy cool applications."

Runs out of the box on Raspberry Pi 3 and 2

The new Mycroft Raspberry Pi image has been designed from the ground up to run out of the box, without any interaction from the user. Just download the pre-built Picroft 0.8 image, write it on a microSD card using these instructions and use it as is on your Raspberry Pi 2 or Raspberry Pi 3 device.

No additional configuration is needed to run Mycroft. Just plug in a low-cost USB microphone, any speaker you have at hand, and you're all set to start developing your own intelligent personal assistant for existing or future projects. For first use, it is recommended that you connect a monitor and keyboard, too.

To log in, use "pi" as default username and "raspberry" as password (without quotes, of course). These can be changed later, if you want, but what's important here is that you help Mycroft's growth by contributing to its development with constructive feedback, or you can join the forums to help those in need.