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The night alexa lost het mind
Nice read:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-night-alexa-lost-her-mind/
Luckily we can still control homey without a connection to the cloud.
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Comments
That was an awesome read... thanks for sharing. I wonder, though... how much of the functionality of Homey will be left in a case like this?
Really cool piece to read!
It does put me to think about this type of problems. What about Homey has some errors and cannot control the lights... That's my big problem with some devices, I don't want to be dependent of just one non-hardware device. Same with KaKu, I can still control them when Homey is malfunctioning. I think my wife kills me when she can't turn on lights.
Using Homey makes it easier to do some things or automate processes. But I don't want to be dependable of it to do the things I using to do now.
When Homey can't reach our servers, it will tell you so (one of the advantages of local text-to-speech software). And you can always use the smartphone apps to control all your devices! (Take that, Alexa).
And you can keep using your light switches if you use kaku/zwave/zigbee...
Was it not also the idear that Homey saves a succesfull action locally, so that when you say 'turn on the lights' it processes them online once but after that it gets quicker because the translation of the vocal command to the action is performed locally? This should mitigate the problems with standard, regular actions somewhat, the more complex things can then wait untill the service is restored.
No, that's actually not possible, because audio data is never the same.
Previously it has been told that Homey can store some predefined speech commands. On whos server and service we are depending on?
The google speech to text engine works in an offline mode as well. Why needed to move away from that? In the case of internet blackout could the speech to text fall back to an another offline engine? I don`t see why this would not be possible.
You can always set-up your own speech-to-text server at home ;-)
If you can tell me where I said that, I'll buy you a beer
Offline speech recognition is terrible. And we're not Google, so yeah..
Isn't it the idea to send the data to multiple speech servers? So if one is down it doesnt matter? Though we'd still be depending on Athom's servers I guess
Athom's servers forward the request to a few servers, to always get the fastest result
And our servers are redundant as well, so little chance it goes offline.
If the Homey servers are out, voice would still work I guess?
If the on premises internet is out, voice but also push message won't work.
Did I get that right?
@Emile, when Homey has a scheduled backup/update/whatever to your servers (which are down in this example), would Homey report that?
And if it would take another attempt, for example 15min later, would Homey report that again?
I suggested that somewhere but @Emile responded that I would be a good idea. You never said you'll implement it...
@emile, Is it possible to host your own homey server ? instead of using Athoms public servers ?
For the speech to text? You'd have to write your own servers and change the DNS records in your router :-)
Hi Everyone,
This has happened to my as well. As an experiment, I removed all wall light switches from the living room just to see if it would work. Of course my girlfriend wasn't too happy about it, but it was in the name of science, so she conceded to participate in the experiment. Lights were controlled by motion, time of day, smartphones and a backup remote. It went reasonably well for a few weeks until the router and HomeWizard lost each other. I'm not exactly sure what the problem was, but having to reboot 2 devices in 2 different rooms in pitch black darkness is not ideal. After this happened a second time, I was putting back the light switches and had to cook dinner for a week (or sleep on the couch).
There are several very interesting things which I learned from the experiment and you should keep these in mind when you automate your home.
1) No matter what you will do, technology will fail you at some point.
2) People have certain expectations and you cannot (and should not) change that.
Let's start with people. We are creatures of habit and we should organize accordingly. When we are not in our comfort zone, we have to be able to rely on the basics. Light in a room is very essential. Not only for you, but also for your guests.
Secondly, when technology fails, whether it is the internet breaking down, your router failing or homey catching fire, you, or another person in your house really needs to be able to create light in a room.
I strongly recommend to have the main light in the room wired directly to a switch without depending on any wireless protocol. There are plenty of switches or lamps which you can also control remotely AND via a wall switch like the KaKu AWMD-250 or the Philips Hue lamps.
The Philips Hue lamps are slightly less intuitive because you might need to flip the switch twice. If the lamps are turned off remotely, you need to switch the power to the lamps off and on to have the lamps turn on to their "default" color and brightness. The KaKu AWMD-250 will always toggle the lamp on if it is off and off if it is on. The disadvantage of the KaKu AWMD-250 is that it will first turn on to full brightness and then dimm to the last set dimmed value.
We are current running a setup with KaKu AWMD-250. My girlfriend can always depend on being able to switch on the lights when she enters the room, and I can too without getting up from my computer. The best part is when she forgets to turn off the lights when she crawls into bed and realizes she has to leave the warm blankets and walk over the cold floor to the wall switch. That is when I unleash the arcane power of smart home technology with a wave of my hand turn the lights to a very soft color for a few minutes before they turn off completely without leaving the bed...
@JaapPels, http://zwave.me/index.php?id=35 this is the z-wave equivalent of your KaKu AWMD-250 which will need a blue wire to the switch (which will not be there in normal situations).
It can switch the lighting without wifi or any other wireless protocol.
Will be replacing my switches with these, over time.
A nice thing is when you double click another device/group can be switched so they can even replace a double switch. Since they have power from the mains it also works as a repeater for the Z-Wave mesh network!
And that is the exactly right reason why I am also switching from KaKu to Z-Wave for the last months to prepare for the arrival of my Homey. I bought 4 new Fibaro Dimmer 2 (Z-Wave Plus) and waiting for 8 new Qubino modules with Z-Wave Plus. Qubino should work better with low watt led lights than Fibaro.
I have sold my HomeWizard with Engerylink and a lot of KaKu modules lately on marktplaats. For temporary solution I'm using Domoticz on a Raspberry Pi with P1-USB cable, Z-Wave Usb stick, RFXcom and S0PCM-05. This is working super I have to say. Can't wait to receive my Homey and see if that will work better than Domoticz
For the future I would certainly consider making such server available. Even with redundant servers you can never guarantee (and I would never expect) 100% up-time.
Ah yeah, I won my girlfriend over to the domotica side with exactly the same example..
+1 over here
.
Also the Coffie in the morning was a very nice point.
Jaap, Robin, Bas.
As I can see you guys have been searching for kaku replacements for a while, I am also interested in changing AWMD-250's towards Z-wave.
Is there any possibility one of you guys could sum up the different z-wave devices you have found?
Apology for the two misconcept: I was sure that you will keep some voice commands on the homey (but at least I am not the only one who had this fague memory) and indeed the google offline speech engine is only available if you develop on android. The offline engines are not great but definitely still better than nothing. The own speech server is not necessary a solution. My routers were killed twice by lightening so most likely I would lose the voice control due to a router issue.
@p0nts for me a device like this: http://www.robbshop.nl/switch-with-double-output-in-duro-2000-2x1700watt-687 which switches even without being connected to a Z-Wave network.
Robin, thank you for the response. So you put this switch behind your default light switch, and are able to switch the light behind the default light switch by hand + the homey?
This requires a blue power cable behind the switch right?
Yes, the blue wire is required.
No, this completely replaces your current switch. But since my whole house is filled with the Busch Jeager enduro 2000 creme this is perfect for me.
Just curious: how does the smartphone app connect to homey? Is there a direct connection from the app to homey when the smartphone is connected to the same network as homey? If all connections are made via the Athom server, then an internet connection would still be required.