Local Voice Control

[macromark]

from another thread.......

[simplextech]

Losing Alexa control for our house would be significant. I try to automate just about everything, but the reality is that sometimes manual control is needed. Voice control, not mobile phone, is paramount.

Am I reading/processing this correctly? When did "Voice Control" fall into the same category as "Manual Control"? When voice control becomes local and 99.999% reliable such as a light switch then I can accept that category. As long as voice control is internet dependent it will never be reliable and as such should never be counted on. Is it a nice to have convenience? Absolutely. Is it a great convenience for those with disabilities? Absolutely! should one depend on it? Never!

[rmasonjr]

Am I reading/processing this correctly? When did "Voice Control" fall into the same category as "Manual Control"? When voice control becomes local and 99.999% reliable such as a light switch then I can accept that category. As long as voice control is internet dependent it will never be reliable and as such should never be counted on. Is it a nice to have convenience? Absolutely. Is it a great convenience for those with disabilities? Absolutely! should one depend on it? Never!

I would consider voice control very comparable to manual control.

[RoChess]

Doesn't HomeSeer support full off-line voice control? It might not be as advanced in understanding the human voice as all the cloud based solutions, but the Microsoft speech-to-text should be totally local if you deny all the Cortana and other Azure based improvements that Microsoft offers (settings available under Privacy and Speech config).

Or did Microsoft sneak in an update I'm unaware of and that full off-line speech to text is no longer possible?

[drhtmal]

...Or did Microsoft sneak in an update I'm unaware of and that full off-line speech to text is no longer possible?

How could something like that happen? A ginormous multi-billion dollar global company like (insert company name here) would never do that.

[RoChess]

How could something like that happen? A ginormous multi-billion dollar global company like (insert company name here) would never do that.

It is funny though, because Microsoft after getting slapped around by the EU a few years back is much better, especially because at the front on search-engines against Google, and mobile phones against iPhone/Android they are doing very well as the "underdogs". They were the only company smart enough to be upfront on what they do and their EULA states that 'humans' might listen to voice data samples submitted.

From a developer point of view it makes sense to me that AI stuff still requires human verification to ensure new code works. However, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google all did the same human verification with a lot of non-developer reviews as well and they had no mention in their end-user agreements. That will get interesting in court cases that are happening at the moment.

I'm sure Microsoft will get swept up in that, but it stood out to me that they had it specifically stated in their agreements (not that anybody bothers to read them).

[sirbooker]

VoxCommando and Homeseer would be very powerful together
it is locally processed !!
i have been using it for a couple of years and with Kodi it is awesome but there is so much more it can do

a plugin for VoxCommando would be great i would buy it in a heart beat.
my 2 cents
Paul.

[Fellhahn]

Guess I'm posting this here as the original thread seems to have been locked.

macromark, this recent certificate hiccup seems a good time to raise a request I've often thought about, which is modifying the Alexa Smart Home skill to allow connection via either MyHS or direct to your own system.

For those of us with a valid SSL cert signed by a trusted public CA, a domain name, and a correctly published reverse proxy, the HomeSeer mobile app can be directly connected with no need for MyHS to sit in the middle. My mobile experience was unaffected by the recent certificate problem as there is no dependence on HST services, communication is directly from the app to my own server.

I'd like to see the same option made possible in the Alexa skill. When performing the initial skill connection, one of the options to select would be "Via MyHS" or "Enter a https URL", followed by credentials.

This is an option for more advanced users but there's definitely no shortage of those in this community.

While not a completely local only solution like local voice control is, this would remove dependence on at least one cloud service (MyHS). And pushing back against cloud centralisation is one the core drives of this community, and one of my favourite features of HomeSeer.

[keithj69]

VoxCommando and Homeseer would be very powerful together
it is locally processed !!
i have been using it for a couple of years and with Kodi it is awesome but there is so much more it can do

a plugin for VoxCommando would be great i would buy it in a heart beat.
my 2 cents
Paul.

I am with you on this. I would love a voxcommando plugin. I still use it but not as much as I did when I was using a vera.