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Plasma Bigscreen

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KDE

  • Plasma Bigscreen – A Dive Into Mycroft Skills, Voice Applications & More

    In this blog post I would like take you through an introduction to Mycroft GUI Skills and Voice Applications technology on Plasma Bigscreen and showcase some of the interesting stuff I have been working on for the Plasma Bigscreen Project which are available on the beta image release for the Raspberry PI 4. This beta image show cases not only media-rich voice applications but also applications specialised to fit the Bigscreen experience all developed under an open process, more information on them in the sections below.

    Plasma Bigscreen is the free open-source user interface experience for those big TV Screens, It consist of KDE Plasma technology powering the User Interface with Mycroft AI’s voice assistance technology packaged together on the image to provide a Smart TV platform and is based on KDE Neon.

    The experience when sitting 10 feet away from your TV just isn’t complete without having the ease of access to control it and that’s exactly the space in which Mycroft AI the open-source voice assistant experience fits right in to provide you with that hands free easy interaction.

  • Plasma Bigscreen

    Today I want to introduce a project I have been working on together (mostly in the background) with some colleagues of mine… Now with beta status reached, it’s time to more publicly talk about it: enter Plasma Bigscreen.

    Smart TVs are becoming more and more complete computers, but unfortunately there the experience tends to be a tight walled garden between proprietary platform, services and privacy-infringing features. Features which are very cool, like voice control, but in order to not pose a threat to the user privacy should be on a free software stack and depending less on proprietary cloud platforms where possible.

    Plasma BigScreen is a platform intended to use on smart TVs (trough a powerful enough small computing platform, such as the Raspberry Pi4, or any tiny computer if you need more power) with big remote-friendly UI controls, and Voice activation. What technology did we use for it? Plasma (of course!) and Mycroft.

Plasma on TV: Presenting Plasma Bigscreen

  • Plasma on TV: Presenting Plasma Bigscreen

    Plasma Bigscreen is KDE's user interface for big TV screens.

    Plasma Bigscreen powers the interface on a Single Board Computer and uses the Mycroft AI voice assistant to provide a Smart TV platform. Plasma Bigscreen will deliver not only media-rich applications, but also traditional desktop applications redesigned to fit the Bigscreen experience.

KDE’s Plasma Bigscreen Project Aims to Bring Plasma Desktop

  • KDE’s Plasma Bigscreen Project Aims to Bring Plasma Desktop to Smart TVs

    As its name suggests, Plasma Bigscreen will be a variant of KDE’s Plasma desktop environment for TVs that can be controlled with the remote control of your smart TV.

    The project is designed to support single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi and takes advantage of the open-source Mycroft AI voice assistant project to deliver voice control capabilities on big TV screens.

    By default, Mycroft AI uses Google’s speech-to-text (STT) system to send anonymized utterances to Google. However, users are free to de-activate voice recognition or switch to a different backend, including a self-hosted STT system like Mozilla Deepspeech.

Turn Your Regular TV into a Smart TV With KDE Plasma Bigscreen

  • Turn Your Regular TV into a Smart TV With KDE Plasma Bigscreen

    Smart TVs are the new normal these days. Mostly based on Android, these smart TVs let you play YouTube, Netflix, Spotify and other streaming services. You can even use voice commands to control your smart TV.

    One major problem with these so-called smart TVs are that they probably are spying on you. Your data is being collected with or without your knowledge.

    This is the problem KDE’s Plasma Bigscreen project is aiming to solve.

  • Plasma on TV: Presenting Plasma Bigscreen

    The KDE.News site is carrying an announcement for the Plasma Bigscreen environment, which is meant for large-screen televisions.

KDE’s Plasma Bigscreen is an open source user environment

  • KDE’s Plasma Bigscreen is an open source user environment design for TVs

    In a nutshell, Plasma Bigscreen brings the sort of features you’d expect from a smart TV platform like Apple TV, Android TV, Fire OS, or the Roku user interface. It’s optimized so that you can easily view everything while sitting on a couch ten feet from the screen. And you can navigate using a remote control or voice controls rather than a mouse and keyboard.

    Instead of small icons, apps are represented by large cards that should be easy to see from your couch. And rows of apps are arranged by category such as games, applications, and voice apps. There’s a Recent section at the top of the screen to help you find that thing you were using last time you turned on your TV.

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