Mycroft?

[simonmason]

Just found this:

https://mycroft.ai/get-mycroft/

I like the fact that it is open source. I am still looking for the ideal plug-in voice recognition appliance. I have Echo and dots throughout the house but it rarely gets used. No one can figure out to tell Alexa to tell something obscure to do something. Plus simple things like turn the volume up don't work because it controls the built-in music service and not my whole house audio system.

I am hoping that something like Mycroft will allow me to program it to turn the volume up and have it know that I am in the kitchen and that I want to turn the volume up on my kitchen audio zone.

[jon00]

Are you adverse with using the HomeSeer's Amazon Echo Skill ("Tell Homeseer...") as you can virtually do anything you want with that.

[simonmason]

Its not me. It is the family. "Alexa, tell homeseer to turn up the volume in the kitchen" just doesn't roll off the tongue. The family is well aware of the skills but just won't use it.

I am trying to get to voice nirvana. "Alexa, turn up the volume".

In this day and age that is an extremely easy rule to process. Assuming homeseer knows which room the command came from then it can do the rest. Just need a voice input device that allows that kind of control.

I'm hoping an open source solution like Mycroft would allow us to control what is said and how it is interpreted without being saddled with Amazon's skills.

[Kerat]

That does look cool. I wonder how effective the voice recognition is.


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[jon00]

I am trying to get to voice nirvana. "Alexa, turn up the volume".

If you only want to use the Echo's as an input device (i.e. keep it muted or don't mind what garbage it spouts), you can do this now. It is a bit messy in that you have to keep a copy of Chrome running on your server but both the echo location and text heard is available locally. No Homeseer skills needed. I use it here for several voice commands.

For example:

"Alexa, Goodnight" to set night time mode.
"Alexa, turn on the light" to turn on the main light in the room where the Echo/DOT is located.

[simonmason]

What happens when Alexa hears - "Alexa, Good Night"? I assume that even though the command is processed, Alexa responds with "I don't understand" or something similar?

[jon00]

Alexa just comes back with a standard response of "Good Night - Sleep Well"

[simonmason]

This is using your plugin/hack? I think I might need to look into that again. So I could set up a voice command for "Alexa, turn the volume up" and that would go to homeseer, and respond with something appropriate such as "ok"?

[jon00]

Yes, that is correct.

You cannot provide a response to Alexa without using the Homeseer skill.

Taking the Good night example first:

With my helper, you can set a trigger to use the skill, local or both.
If you set this to both with a trigger word of 'good night', you have 2 methods to trigger:

Local mode: "Alexa, Good night"
Alexa would respond with "Good night - sleep well" and you would get a trigger to fire the defined event/script/control etc.

Skill mode: "Alexa, tell Homeseer good night"
Alexa would respond with the text you define and trigger to fire the defined event/script/control etc.

Using your example, with "volume up" as a trigger:

Local mode: "Alexa, turn the volume up"
Alexa would respond with a beep and turn up the volume on the Echo/DOT. You would also get a trigger to fire the defined event/script/control etc.

Skill mode: "Alexa, tell Homeseer to turn the volume up"
Alexa would respond with the text you define and trigger to fire the defined event/script/control etc.

As Mycroft hardware has an on-board speaker, I expect that volume up/down would also be used for its operation. That said, as it is open source, it could be removed.

[simonmason]

I see that mycroft has a new smart speaker planned for the end of this year. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/m...ce-assistant#/ - looks very interesting. The first mycroft looked really silly but this one is much more attractive. Using a python wrapper like this - https://github.com/TheInsomniac/homeseerpy could provide very easy back and forth to homeseer.

[jjohnston]

yes, that's the one I've been looking at, is the Mark II. If i can link that to homeseer I think it would be just what I want...

[simonmason]

I have also looked at Josh AI to accomplish the task. It looks like it will do it, but it is expensive and does a lot more that I don't need. The mycroft unit on face value appears to deliver the goods.

A skill suggestion has been created in the mycroft forum - https://community.mycroft.ai/t/3rd-p...tegration/4332. Go vote for it.

[jjohnston]

LOL I actually created that suggestion

[simonmason]

I just ordered some parts to get a Raspberry PI up and running as a PIcroft. Looking forward to testing this out.

[Guest]

I just ordered some parts to get a Raspberry PI up and running as a PIcroft. Looking forward to testing this out.

Please report when you try it . I am looking at mycroft since some time