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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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The problem I have always had with voice control is that it just doesn't really seem to fit into my home automation. I don't want to give Home Assistant a verbal command to turn on the lights. I want it to detect that I've entered the room and set the lights to the appropriate scene automatically; I haven't touched a light switch in weeks. For selecting an album or movie to play, it's easier to use a menu on a screen than to try to explain it verbally.
Don't get me wrong. I'm hugely in favor of anything that runs locally instead of using the "cloud." I think that the majority of people running a home automation server want to tinker with it and streamline it to do things on its own. I want it to "read my mind." The people who just want a basic solution probably aren't going to set up HA.
Maybe I'm missing a use case for voice control?
Funny...I'm the exact opposite. I don't want it to detect that I’ve entered the room and set the lights to the appropriate scene automatically. Unless it can detect when I don't want to go into a dark room and be blinded by lights I didn't want on, I want to control when it turns on. Unless it can determine that I'm only home from work for a few minutes to go to the bathroom, I don't want it to adjust the heat settings. In other words, until it can actually read my mind, I want to be able to control it and tell it what I want when I actually want it.
I'm looking into an HA setup specifically to get away from Alexa and host everything locally. I may only want simple controls, but I want to truly control everything myself.
I loved being able to control the dimmer level or color of the lights using voices controls.
I set up a few IFTTT recipes to create lighting and music scenes for things like reading, conversation, movie watching, date night, party time, and a few others and triggered them with a voice command.
It was always a hit with whoever I brought over, but mostly it just did 4 or 5 things with one voice command.
You can have it set more intelligently than on/off.
For example, what I have (I'm excessive btw, so this is just one option) is a light sensor that tells me how light it is outside, and then combine that information with sunrise/sunset times.
I use that to set the color of the lighting (circadian lighting style), the light level, and a ramp time to the max brightness I'd want. For rooms where there is good daylight coming in, if the light coming in from daylight is bright enough, the lights lower their brightness (daylight harvesting approach).
This isn't in every room at the moment, as some of my lights are not RGBW LEDs. Those with regular white LEDs just dim.
Is it perfectly set for your eyes? No, but you can tweak it. My wife likes it bright than me, so I set values that I could tolerate for a nice compromise.
No RGB? Then drop the circadian lighting, keep the rest.
No light sensors? There are some APIs available out there for solar radiation values you can use (openweathermap for example). Less accurate, but probably close enough for what you want.
TL;DR version: add more conditions, and get what you want.
You wake up one day with a bad headache, and bright light hurts your eyes. You can close the curtains, but every room is set to turn the lights on to the brightness that you usually prefer.
How do you manage something like this? Do you have to adjust everything with your phone and reset it when you feel better?
Well that's not ever been an issue for me, that said I do have a flat override to disable and set specific values. But that's just one toggle (to disable the lighting automations) and one value (light level).
But my eyes are pretty sensitive to light in general, which is why I like the slow ramp up.
Same here.
My main use cases are Timers in Kitchen, Finding my wife's phone, and turning off music.
My main use case for voice is for things that I haven't been able to (reasonably) automate. For a couple of examples:
It's all fairly trivial stuff to do manually but I think that's probably true for the vast majority of home automation.
Try "start Netflix on the TV". Should work for most services. (At least it does with Chromecast and Home Assistant).
Even ignoring privacy arguments, I think that voice control is a great use case for running services locally - lower latency due to not having up upload your sample and the option of having it learn your accent is very attractive.
That said, voice control is irritatingly error-prone and seems to be slower than just reaching for the remote control. I agree that automatic stuff would be best, but some stuff you can't have rules for.
Something that would be interesting is a more eye- and gesture-based system: I'm thinking something like you look at the camera and slice across your throat for stop or squeeze fingers together to reduce volume. This is definitely one to run locally, for privacy and performance reasons.
Assistive technology has been focused on this for a while.
My brother had severe cerebral palsy and for years (80s-90s) communicated via analog technology, a literal alpha/iconography communication board, which he could tap on with a head wand. By 2000 he had a digital voice, but still had to use a wand.
Stephen Hawking demonstrated eye sensing technology almost as soon as it was invented and that’s been over a decade ago.
In most cases, there is a definite aspect of “bespokeness” to implementing assistive consumer communication technology, but the barriers implementing the same for an able audience would appear much lower.
But where do you put the camera? If you're sitting in front of the TV, then near the TV makes sense. What if you're sitting facing a different direction with a book though? What if your hands are full?
A camera based system would be much more limited, and probably wouldn't work in the dark.
You're assuming that we can't have both. Why not have it as an complementary input?
I think looking at a device and talking is better than saying hey $brandname before everything, but having both would be better still.
My #1 use case is setting timers. My hands are messy in the kitchen, need to set 35 different timers to get the kids outta the house in the morning.
I love voice control specifically for telling the house to warm up before I get out of bed. I don't even have to grab my phone. I also use it almost daily to have music start playing from spotify.
I thought of doing that but now it is essentially my alarm clock. In a bit annoyed at maintaining separate alarms but:
My kids like it sometimes for asking it to tell knock-knock jokes, that's about it though.
The majority of people do not have perfect whole house motion sensors setup to turn on and off lights. Congrats, you're the 0.0001%.
Not everyone even wants lights to turn on just because the room is occupied.
Maybe when the sensor can locally detect that im eating in front of the TV so turn on the main lights, and when I put the plate down its time to turn those off and use the dimmer ambient lights
How does it know what scene you want? If you walk in to a room and want to watch TV, you might want the lights to be dimmer than if you're going to read a book, for example.
How? I can put on my best Captain Picard voice and say 'Computer, play the album Insomniac by Green Day' much faster and easier than I could pick up the remote, turn on the media player, scroll to music, scroll to G, find Green Day, scroll to Insomniac, and press play.
I've got Amazon devices (bought before I knew how bad both they and Amazon are), and they're not great. Even with them, I can walk in to my living room in the night with my hands full and tell them to turn my chosen lights on, set the brightness and colour, start playing my chosen music, or turn the TV on and start playing certain media, all while I'm walking to my seat.
The only media that I can't play is what I haven't set up to use with Alexa yet, but that would be the same for any automation.
When I get around to it, I'm going to add either Plex or Jellyfin to my voice control setup, and hopefully be able to play anything from my library in the same way :)
When you don’t want lights on all the time, it’s a good option. You can’t program automations to do things you can’t detect automatically, such as eating vs snacking, or watching a scary movie with the spouse vs watching a “scary” movie with the kids, vs watching a kids movie.
You can automate a lot, but when you have overlapping routines that don’t work together, and don’t have a way to be detected, you’re limited in your options. Voice is one solution.
Heh. That's like "traffics".
In this case, I was referring to Home Assistant automations, where an automation is a cause and effect configured by the end user. So “automations” is a plural referring to a group of singulars.
Edit: A word
Well, Ibought a few Google speakers back in the day for easy voice commands, mostly for lights and weather.
I unplugged them for privacy. Still use one in the garage for music, but it might as well be a Bluetooth speaker at this point.
And easy to hook up local home assistance would be ideal for me. I don't want to spend weeks of my time fussing with it. It's not a hobby to me, just convenience
I don't use voice control since I'm against all cloud based services but am definitely interested and waiting for a good local option, paired with some decent devices that I can disseminate around the house.
I have been using ha for a very long time but am the opposite, haven't gone down the rabbit hole and have only half a dozen automations. With the exception of living room lights that come on 39 minutes before sunset, I don't control lights. I have absolutely no problem using a switch as I enter a room, and see no point overcomplicating things in trying to guess what should happen when someone enters a room.
Being able to look for a recipe, set a timer, choose a youtube video, a song or a playlist while I am kneading dough and my hands are caked? Id love voice control while I'm in the kitchen and can't touch a phone without having to clean wash and dry my hands
This is a thing. If you don't want motion sensors and you want it to know your cousin from your cat, Cisco and others can pinpoint the location of people on a real time map (like that map in Harry Potter) by your cell or Bluetooth.
Local cops use it to log where people were during concerts and events and see who was nearby when a bad thing happened.
This is my eventual goal. I want the house to be automated to the point that the only interaction I have, is just living.
If I walk into a room, the system takes into account the time of day, day of week, outside light level, and brings the lights up.
If it's really cold outside, it raises the radiator flow temperature. If only I'm at home, and it's a monday morning, it only raises the temperature in the bathroom, kitchen, and my office. That kinda stuff.
Spot on.
[standing ovation]
Friends have voice stuff, it's pretty annoying