Smart Home devices

[Serena]

Hello wall mount…

[Aloha]

Pretty neat.  Pretty soon your home will recognize you and all your devices will come alive with little more than your presence.   

[Serena]

Pretty neat.  Pretty soon your home will recognize you and all your devices will come alive with little more than your presence.

It already does. I never arrive in a dark house. The lights go on when I approach my house.

[Aloha]

Pretty neat.  Pretty soon your home will recognize you and all your devices will come alive with little more than your presence.

It already does. I never arrive in a dark house. The lights go on when I approach my house.

Alrighty then   

[Kev D]

I've got geolocation set for my heating, when I get within a mile of my house it turns it up to the normal evening set point if it isn't already at it.  My mum  lives with me so generally it is already there nowadays.

I'll never get to Ipad on a wall level of automation though, I've already got 3 smart plugs I don't know what to do with.  I could do with a few more bulbs at some point and a couple more sensors though.

[Kev D]

flash deal on amazon so I snapped up 4x sonoff basics

https://sonoff.itead.cc/en/products/sonoff/sonoff-basic

They look good, I could do with a couple of those for some outside lights rather than having to replace all the bulbs and put them in a group.

[Poncho65]

  the wall mount and it would be cool to get my home to that point sometime but I am sure it is a long way from that

Also cool devices, Whoey I am still trying to get my head around the idea of what to do with some of these devices

Still can't justify the price of a Nest thermostat though May wait a while and see if the prices come down more and see what else comes out

[ezdog]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Kev D]

It was getting a hive thermostat and control system when I got my new heating system last Feb that started all this for me. Hive is very much like nest, and comes with it's own app to control it all remotely, and that also came with a bulb and plug. It is all integrated with my amazon echoes now so it just gets better.

The addition of room sensors and geolocation is quickly automating it to a point where you don't even have to ask it to do it for you, the routines you set up to trigger off those sensors do it automatically.

The only downfall will come when there is an internet outage and everything goes offline and you have to use the manual buttons on the front of the plugs, etc.

[Whoey]

It was getting a hive thermostat and control system when I got my new heating system last Feb that started all this for me. Hive is very much like nest, and comes with it's own app to control it all remotely, and that also came with a bulb and plug. It is all integrated with my amazon echoes now so it just gets better.

The addition of room sensors and geolocation is quickly automating it to a point where you don't even have to ask it to do it for you, the routines you set up to trigger off those sensors do it automatically.

The only downfall will come when there is an internet outage and everything goes offline and you have to use the manual buttons on the front of the plugs, etc.

and that right there, along with the listening in factor, is why I'm tempted to throw custom firmware on devices and use a brew your own assistant solution over alexa/google devices. IMHO, it should run local 100%, and if the internet is down only things requiring outside connection should be affected.

[Kev D]

My hive system would continue working as it has it's own hub, as would the light and socket I have on it, I just wouldn't be able to control it from the app.  The amazon echo alarm clock type alarms would work because they are stored locally, everything else would stop working as the first thing it does when you give it a command is send it to the server to determine what to do. I'm guessing the google assistant does the same.   If you can create a server/hub that keeps all the control local and still utilise one of the assistants you should patent it and get it out there as the all in one hub. 

Just to use the hive system and philips hue bulbs I have to have a hive hub and a hue bridge, and apps for them all as well.  It would be nice to just have one hub to run everything.

[Don Pablo]

It was getting a hive thermostat and control system when I got my new heating system last Feb that started all this for me. Hive is very much like nest, and comes with it's own app to control it all remotely, and that also came with a bulb and plug. It is all integrated with my amazon echoes now so it just gets better.

The addition of room sensors and geolocation is quickly automating it to a point where you don't even have to ask it to do it for you, the routines you set up to trigger off those sensors do it automatically.

The only downfall will come when there is an internet outage and everything goes offline and you have to use the manual buttons on the front of the plugs, etc.

and that right there, along with the listening in factor, is why I'm tempted to throw custom firmware on devices and use a brew your own assistant solution over alexa/google devices. IMHO, it should run local 100%, and if the internet is down only things requiring outside connection should be affected.

I thought those voice assistant things needed the cloud for processing power?

[Whoey]

Jasper has a Speech-To-Text engine that works without the internet, but will also use others that do require sending the text over the internet.

Choosing an STT engine
You need to choose which Speech-To-Text (STT) engine Jasper should use. An STT engine is basically a piece of software that takes recorded speech and transforms it into written text. If you say “foo”, but Jasper understands “bar”, it’s either a problem with your microphone or a bad or misconfigured STT engine. So choosing the right STT engine is crucial to use Jasper correctly. While most speech-recognition tools only rely on one single STT engine, Jasper tries to be modular and thus offers a wide variety of STT engines:

Pocketsphinx is a open-source speech decoder by the CMU Sphinx project. It’s fast and designed to work well on embedded systems (like the Raspberry Pi). Unfortunately, the recognition rate is not the best and it has a lot of depencies. On the other hand, recognition will be performed offline, i.e. you don’t need an active internet connection to use it. It’s the right thing to use if you’re cautious with your personal data.
Google STT is the speech-to-text system by Google. If you have an Android smartphone, you might already be familiar with it, because it’s basically the same engine that performs recognition if you say OK, Google. It can only transcribe a limited amount of speech a day and needs an active internet connection.
AT&T STT is a speech decoder by the telecommunications company AT&T. Like Google Speech, it also performs decoding online and thus needs an active internet connection.
Wit.ai STT relies on the wit.ai cloud services and uses crowdsourcing to train speech recognition algorithms. Like you’d expect from a cloud service, you also need an active internet connection.
Julius is a high-performance open source speech recognition engine. It does not need an active internet connection. Please note that you will need to train your own acoustic model, which is a very complex task that we do not provide support for. Regular users are most likely better suited with one of the other STT engines listed here.
Important: Except PocketSphinx and Julius, all of the above STT engines transfer the microphone data over the internet. If you don’t want Google, Wit.ai and AT&T to be able to listen to everything you say, do not use these STT engines! In this case, use PocketSphinx instead.

We also do not recommend using Internet-connected STT engines for passive listening. From privacy and performance standpoints, Pocketsphinx/Julius are superior solutions.

[Poncho65]

(Image removed from quote.)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That looks even farther out of my price range Cool looking though

[Poncho65]

It was getting a hive thermostat and control system when I got my new heating system last Feb that started all this for me. Hive is very much like nest, and comes with it's own app to control it all remotely, and that also came with a bulb and plug. It is all integrated with my amazon echoes now so it just gets better.

The addition of room sensors and geolocation is quickly automating it to a point where you don't even have to ask it to do it for you, the routines you set up to trigger off those sensors do it automatically.

The only downfall will come when there is an internet outage and everything goes offline and you have to use the manual buttons on the front of the plugs, etc.

If I was changing out the thermostat I had anyways I would opt fo rthe wifi one for sure

[Kev D]

It was getting a hive thermostat and control system when I got my new heating system last Feb that started all this for me. Hive is very much like nest, and comes with it's own app to control it all remotely, and that also came with a bulb and plug. It is all integrated with my amazon echoes now so it just gets better.

The addition of room sensors and geolocation is quickly automating it to a point where you don't even have to ask it to do it for you, the routines you set up to trigger off those sensors do it automatically.

The only downfall will come when there is an internet outage and everything goes offline and you have to use the manual buttons on the front of the plugs, etc.

If I was changing out the thermostat I had anyways I would opt fo rthe wifi one for sure

Thats the only reason I did mine. If my heating boiler hadn't died just before Xmas 2017 and needed a full replacement I wouldn't have my hive system. 

One of the things I really love about it is you can take the Thermostat off the wall and put it on a little stand so can control the heat in your house to whichever room you want rather than having just one thermostat.  They are just too expensive to have multiple thermostats dotted around the house.

[Whoey]

well this is interesting: http://bjoernkarmann.dk/project_alias

Alias is a teachable “parasite” that is designed to give users more control over their smart assistants, both when it comes to customisation and privacy. Through a simple app the user can train Alias to react on a custom wake-word/sound, and once trained, Alias can take control over your home assistant by activating it for you.
 

When you don't use it, Alias will make sure the assistant is paralysed and unable to listen by interrupting its microphones.

[Poncho65]

That sounds very promising for home privacy

[Whoey]

I also like that you can use a custom trigger word, and it automatically whispers the actual word to the device... IE you don't need to say "ok google" or "alexa"

[Kev D]

I wonder how long it takes for them to get mass produced and on sale.  It'll be interesting to see if amazon sell them when they do

[Poncho65]

 

[Whoey]

my Sonoff wifi smart switches arrived! 

Too bad I don't have time to play with them right now...

[Don Pablo]

(Image removed from quote.)

 

It would be awesome to be able to use that wake-up word on Google assistant!

[Whoey]

I believe "computer" is one of the alexa alternative keywords

Also the Google devices have provisions for custom keywords, but apparently only a custom built device can use it for now, which is a huge fail by google imho.

[ezdog]

I believe "computer" is one of the alexa alternative keywords

Also the Google devices have provisions for custom keywords, but apparently only a custom built device can use it for now, which is a huge fail by google imho.

Amazon or Echo or Computer were the original alternatives here at least.

[dks]

I just call her "sexy"

she does not reply, but I am sure she likes it...

[Whoey]

Imho you should be allowed to train it to whatever word/wordcombo you want.

like: artoo, marvin, android, gort, hal

 

[Don Pablo]

Imho you should be allowed to train it to whatever word/wordcombo you want.

like: artoo, marvin, android, gort, hal

 

Ask your Alexa to "open the pod bay doors". You'll be surprised. 

[Whoey]

I don't have one.

[Serena]

I would love to rename my GH Mini's amd HomePods to something I want it to be!
Now it so often get's triggeref by YouTube videos etc. Actually really annoying.