Can Google assistant work locally or independant of Google itself?

[Deadeye]

I was hoping to have a way to control my HS3 system with voice commands, but I'm a little wary about trusting Google (or Amazon) with a listening device in my home. I would prefer to have a device that wouldn't connect to the internet, but could just have it connect to my home server to process commands. Anyone know if this is possible (or with another way besides using Google/Alexa)?

[mrceolla]

I assume you're referring to an always-listening device. You can control HS3 via voice right now via the mobile apps.

Speaker.exe can do it all locally and be always listening for a trigger, but it doesn't work well. At least it didn't for me.

I created this a while back:

https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...olume-and-more

...but the 3rd party, always-listening app that I used to trigger my app, VoxCommando, was the weak link. It triggered too often. Perhaps your environment or mics would work better.

I eventually caved and gave in to Google Home speakers and displays. It's so easy to place those everywhere, they trigger when they should, and have good mics for long distances or large rooms. They are also speakers that I can play virtually anything through via HS3 with the Chromecast plugin, including TTS.

To answer your question in the subject, I'm quite sure everything you say goes to the cloud for processing. I'm pretty sure the device simply uploads a sound file.

[Deadeye]

Oh, I didn't know that you can use the mobile app for voice. I was thinking of installing mics that would always be listening, but if you say that don't work that well, then I may avoid that path (I'm still quite a ways away from that point as I'm just getting the hang of lighting modules). I may eventually cave as well and go with google home.

Yeah, everything it hears gets processed, but it's what gets stored that bothers me. We're a populace that are purchasing our own listening devices to install in our own homes. It's the NSA's wet dream.

[mrceolla]

Yup, both mobile apps should allow voice control. If you don't want to wait for those apps to load, like me, you could try this for phone voice control:

https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...s-automate-app

Installing mics may work well, if you have a good solution to process that audio. I'm saying Speaker.exe, and VoxCommando w/ my app, didn't work well enough for me.

There is a setting to turn off the storage of your Google voice recordings. Do they still store them anyway? Who knows. Our phones are basically the same thing. They could be always listening as well.

[Deadeye]

Thanks! I'll look into that once I get into the voice automation.
Hmm, I didn't know you could turn off storage on the Google assistants. Yeah, I know our phones are listening too, but I can barely get mine to send a text message, so I suppose I'm not to worried about it sending my personal conversations to Google.

[Deadeye]

Right after I posted my last message, I saw this:
https://globalnews.ca/news/5463630/a...leted-privacy/

[Pete]

Windows 10 SAPI voice recognition works well and is much faster these days than SAPI of old and does not need the internet to function.

The Homeseer Speaker application has both text to speech and voice recognition functions.

The Kinect (buy a used one) combo and Homeseer Kinect plugin works well even though the Kinect device is large.

[mrceolla]

Agreed on the Kinect as a microphone. If you're going to attempt a PC solution, grab yourself one of those from a used video game place. Make sure it has the power supply.

[Deadeye]

Windows 10 SAPI voice recognition works well and is much faster these days than SAPI of old and does not need the internet to function.

The Homeseer Speaker application has both text to speech and voice recognition functions.

The Kinect (buy a used one) combo and Homeseer Kinect plugin works well even though the Kinect device is large.

Great! I'm actually running W10 on my Homseer box right now!
Are you talking about the Playstation KInect? That's convenient as I have an old one kicking around somewhere...

[Pete]

Are you talking about the Playstation KInect?

yes

Here test ran the Kinect plugin on the PipoX7 Atom based computer with Windows 10 32 bit and it did just fine.

Windows 10 SAPI / VR is much improved over earlier versions. Homeseer at one time sold the AT&T / Neospeech voice fonts and I purchased them way back and they continue to work today.

[Deadeye]

That is awesome! Ok, I'm hoping I kept my kinect and I'll try that route first.

[mrceolla]

I thought the Kinect was for Xbox. Playstation's device was called "Move" or something...I think.

[Deadeye]

Dang! You're right. Well, I'm sure I can find a cheap one somewhere.