Anyone gonna try this out? Amazon echo

[shanekuz]

I think that's what I said, I know the speech recognition is not a limitation of VoxCommando its of the OS and APIs it can use and these will get better over time.

I personally used a polycom device which is of very good quality but found it was detecting commands and responding to requests simply with the television on in the same room.

The amazon echo does not do this in my environment.  Again this is not a dig at voxcommando I think its a great product and as I said its the integral part of my automation.

[nime5ter]

"Alexa" is a pretty unique prefix.

What prefix have you been using with your polycom open air setup? Perhaps you could try switching it to "Alexa" as well, to see whether that has any impact on the false positives.

The Amazon Echo probably also has the advantage of being easier to calibrate or already being calibrated, whereas when users have to set up their own system there is more versatility and more experimentation is necessary.

Perhaps try reducing the microphone input volume for your polycom mic and move it farther from your television's output (speakers).

[tobiastobindev]

@shanekuz,
10-4.  I really didn't intend to be negative or anything and I apologize if I rambled on about things that you already know and believe. 

I am familiar with Polycom from work (conference room mics).  I hear what you are saying - as I ran into that exact same issues.  I would say my biggest issue was background noise.  It could be a tv, washing machine, people in another room, dogs, about anything.  Unless I had everything adjusted spot on, had silence in the room, and was positioned properly relative to the microphone (in my case a Kinect or a conference mic I got), my recognition was not good enough.  And rarely did I have the ideal conditions.  I don't really blame anything.  I understand that all sound goes in and I cannot expect it to be smart enough (at this point) to clearly understand my voice amongst all of the other sounds.  That's why I have found VoxWav to be ideal.  I have great success with it, but then my goal is to be able to just say things and not have to get a phone out.

BTW - I have not even voice trained my Echo.  I wonder how much better it would be with training.  It is already blowing my mind with how great it works, even with noise.  I can ask Alexa to tell me the definition of unusual words and I am surprised how often she gets it right.  Pretty much all the time.  Unless the noise in the room is particularly bad.  I've even had success telling her to do things with the TV on in the same room.  I do have to say it louder but it would seem she is able to lock onto my voice and focus on it (my non-technical understanding). 

In your case, or even with the Echo, I think it would be great to be able to train in such a way that the device recognizes voices like fingerprints.  Run through some kind of training routine with them and have it pick up on certain quantifiable values that can be used to know 'this is a voice, this is what I am supposed to hear, and as little of everything else as possible'.  I've seen something similar to this in S.A.R.A.H where you can use a Kinect and it will assemble a profile of you based on imaging, voice pitch, mood, things like that.  But I'm thinking even more specific, and using just the voice.  -- Just something I have thought about.

Finally, even with a wake word, I would get false positives and not really understand how (coming from TV).  A unique wake word should help with that.  On a related note, I have watched YouTube videos on my TV about Alexa development, and when the person in the video issues a command, if it is one available to all Echo users, my Echo would pick it up and respond.  The other fascinating thing is the timing would be such that she would respond to me almost exactly at the same time as she did for the person in the video.

Shanekuz, what are your plans for the future?  Are you planning to try and integrate more with Alexa over time?  Are you planning to add anything new to your environment?  Thanks again for the responses and please share any tips you have about Echo and Vox.  One thing I am interested in knowing is if you are using more than one instance of VoxCommando in your setup and how well routing the packets to the proper UDP listener is working.

Thanks,
tobias.

[Haddood]

here is my 2 cents on the topic
with polycom gentner and many conferencing mixer ... you can solve the problem of the tv easily .... my system is setup where I pass everything including the PC through gentner XAP800 ... and the PC never hears a thing ... 0, nada regardless of how high the volume is ... then from gentner I go to 5.1 system in the living room (logitech pc speakers)...
that leaves noise generated by appliances, and from the street ... adaptive ambient and filtering helps alot with that ...

however it seems that amazon echo provides out of the box good experience without the pain of tweaking for hours ....

any ideas of having multiple alexas to control from multiple rooms?

"Alexa" is a pretty unique prefix.

I noticed while working on the netflix commads (as well discussed somewhere in open mic threads) that most names with pronounced x work well especially if they are more than one syllable ... and Alexa comply to both ...

[vulcanjedi]

Amazon released two new Echo devices, notably the new Echo Dot? This seems kinda perfect for use in tandem w/ VC?
Was curious as using the Echo was leveraging a 3rd party script/api, to pass HTTP VC calls. This obviously wouldnt leverage the xml that VC generates so how hard is it to do things like "play movie xxxxx"?

[bnikos83]

I thought i would share my experience with VoxCommando and the echo as its the best thing i have setup.

I use the Echo as its voice recognition is the best i have ever seen, i use it with the amazon-echo-ha-bridge   https://github.com/armzilla/amazon-echo-ha-bridge  This project emulates a HUE bridge and then passes an HTML request on to turn devices on or off.

I use this gateway to call Voxcommando HTTP tasks so i can say "Alexa turn on the rumpas room TV" and it calls one HTML request to VoxCommand which then, Turns on my projector, turns on my pioneer amp, selects the correct source etc turns on my wemo controlled sub etc.

This allows awesome automation as the echo is simply the speech engine and its the best thing i have seen to do this.  Also this allows me once VoxCommando gets to the point where its speech recognition is as good and im sure one day it will get there i wont have to redevelop everything as its only the font end that will change

Hey Everyone, just wondering also on the possibility of using the new Amazon Echo Dot (generation2) as a mic for VC. Is the above way still functional?

[Dave]

There is now a way to send commands directly from Echo to VC:

https://voxcommando.com/forum/index.php?topic=2761.msg23625#msg23625