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Alexa

Voice control feedback - comparing Homey and Amazon Alexa and integration via IFTTT

umdobsonumdobson Member
edited April 2018 in Ideas & Suggestions

I am new to Homey and tried unsuccessfully to make my own voice controlled flows.

I have several Amazon Echo/Dots alexa devices around my home. Their voice commands work for maybe 95%

Amazon logs each voice command, and via the alexa app it asks did it do what I expected. 

If Homey had similar functionality it may help users to debug the voice control.

I think it is also essential to be able to selectively disable the in built Homey voice triggers, to be able to avoid strange results.

At the moment I am using Amazon Alexa  to process my voice commands and then invoking Homey flows via IFTTT.

Whilst this incurs delays and extra security issues it does work vey reliably

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Comments

  • bvdbosbvdbos Member
    You can see what Homey heard on https://[homey-ip]/manager/speech-input :)
  • PeaoPeao Member
    @umdobson ;
    Kind of off-topic: how did you get IFTTT working on alexa? I thought the IFTTT-Skill is US only for now. 
    I recently bought Echo dot to improve my homey with its voice recognition. Unfortunately no IFTTT Skill/App with Echo Dot yet.


  • umdobsonumdobson Member
    Thanks that gives me what it has understood. What is needed is the ability to give a feedback to the server to be able to tell it if it has been understood correctly.
  • Erwin75Erwin75 Member
    I think it is also essential to be able to selectively disable the in built Homey voice triggers, to be able to avoid strange results.

    I aggree completely 
  • bob76bob76 Member
    edited November 2016

    the voice activation of Alexa is way better in mine opinion homey needs work on that i know its stil in development and the one thing homey missing is to be able to stop it in the middle of speech  say Alexa stop and she stops speaking no matter  what she is telling.

    very important function for al apps and flows when in the middle just the option to stop in right away 

  • umdobsonumdobson Member
    Peao said:
    @umdobson ;
    Kind of off-topic: how did you get IFTTT working on alexa? I thought the IFTTT-Skill is US only for now. 
    I recently bought Echo dot to improve my homey with its voice recognition. Unfortunately no IFTTT Skill/App with Echo Dot yet.



    IFTTT says ALEXA is only for USA but does work (at least for me) I use the specific phrase option then as action invoke a homey flow. Does not always work 100% but in 95% of cases. Nice feature is that it works via any alexa device in the home. I have 2 dots an echo and a fire TV so you can 'talk" to homey from any room with an alexa device

  • umdobsonumdobson Member
    bob76 said:

    the voice activation of Alexa is way better in mine opinion homey needs work on that i know its stil in development and the one thing homey missing is to be able to stop it in the middle of speech  say Alexa stop and she stops speaking no matter  what she is telling.

    very important function for al apps and flows when in the middle just the option to stop in right away 


    I agree that homey need to work on its voice input - it is in my opinion the most natural way to interface to home control. My wife who hates gadgets, loves to use alexa for information and playing track or artists she wants.

    But Amazon development team is several orders of magnitude larger than Homey so we cannot expect the same quality of voice to text, nor the response time. Alexa is nearly instant, Homey takes many seconds to think..

    Speed is less important I think than accurate speech to text.

  • umdobsonumdobson Member
    Peao said:
    @umdobson ;
    Kind of off-topic: how did you get IFTTT working on alexa? I thought the IFTTT-Skill is US only for now. 
    I recently bought Echo dot to improve my homey with its voice recognition. Unfortunately no IFTTT Skill/App with Echo Dot yet.


    Where did you buy your echo. I bought 4 in the USA. maybe there is a lock on the ones from Europe. Will see just ordered some more from the UK for a friend
  • bob76bob76 Member
    edited November 2016

    my echo was from the u.k and ifttt works for me

  • PeaoPeao Member
    edited November 2016
    Thanks for your answers! I guess I can't use it because I live in germany and Echo has been launched here recently (IFTTT comming soon as stated on their website)
    I bought mine in UK and I live in germany. There is no IFTTT Skill aviable to download and if I am using the "trigger" word it says "sorry IFTTT is not yet aviable in your region"... Changed my location to US but this didn't change anything. I guess its a geo-lock for german IP-addresses. 
  • batteries4everbatteries4ever Member
    Well, I was sarting to consider a combo Homey + Alexa, despite the privacy issues which bother me.
    Just then I came across this: "15-second ads coming to Amazon’s Alexa" 
    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/amazon-alexa-ads-voicelabs/

    Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse...     



  • Robert66Robert66 Member
    bob76 said:

    the voice activation of Alexa is way better in mine opinion homey needs work on that i know its stil in development and the one thing homey missing is to be able to stop it in the middle of speech  say Alexa stop and she stops speaking no matter  what she is telling.

    very important function for al apps and flows when in the middle just the option to stop in right away 

    I fully agree..voice of Homey is poor..bad even...Alexa is much much better..
  • swtttswttt Member
    Don't forget the money that Amazon invested in something like this and the access to data they have.
    Let's hope homey will get there some day, but i do think its a matter of money as well.

    Remembered i was talking to someone from Athom about using the Alexa speech service (they provide their speech part as a paid service as well, just as google does) but even if they could afford that now (paid per request so total_requestsxamount-X) users will start to use voice more and the request will grow.

    My 2 cents on this matter, integrate with as much speech thingies as possible (Alexa, Google Home, Siri etc.) and when the time is right, start with collecting voice data anonymous and use that to create their own service.

    If they have enough users, i do think they could create a good service on their own and don't being reliable on 3rd party.
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