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The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Homey & Amazon (dot) integration in the works?
techniman
Member
Hi @Stefan
You mentioned that the team was looking into linking an Amazon Dot to Homey,
Can you elaborate on that, how do you (athom) envision that and how do you think this will work?
Will this also open up the possibility of sending texts to Homey and have it interpret them as if they were spoken?
(this to minimize the number of flows needed )
For the people interested, the video is here :
edit:
wanted to add the timecode (had to view the thing again)
it's at ~34:44
You mentioned that the team was looking into linking an Amazon Dot to Homey,
Can you elaborate on that, how do you (athom) envision that and how do you think this will work?
Will this also open up the possibility of sending texts to Homey and have it interpret them as if they were spoken?
(this to minimize the number of flows needed )
For the people interested, the video is here :
edit:
wanted to add the timecode (had to view the thing again)
it's at ~34:44
Comments
The idea of controlling your home by voice is nice, but i gues hard to do it right for a start-up. I'd rather see integrations with amazon dot, apple siri or even google assistant. Siri as an example really improved the last years to an assistant that gets speech right every time.
My idea: Stop working on your own speech processor, and try to implement 3rd party speech things. An amazon dot can be placed all around the house. I only see benefits (once they support dutch as well).
Yes that would be my preference as well, I do understand losing the "OK Homey" would be a negative point for athome but speech recognition would certainly benefit (when amazon supports dutch)
and in turn the Homey Owners & community benefits..
The time this could free from the developers would be substantial and enough to warrant this.. imagine Homey being homekit certified :-)
In tandem I'd like to see the text handling enabled, this way we can create out own solutions while they work on echo/home support.
Side note, I noticed it's possible to install Alexa on a RPI2/3
Apparently Alexa is based on Node.js.. the same stuff as Homey, someone (more skilled than me) might be able to creat an Alexa App replacing the speech recognition of Homey..
I'm not sure about this last part, since the Homey trigger is likely hardcoded .. but it's just a thought
I truly hoop Alexa will support dutch someday...
I'm still planning to hack my own through google now, I know that works and homey's speech recognition is not usable ( and I mean NOT usable no matter what I say it no longer reacts/hears me, already rebooted several times )
They said that they still can tweak the microphone, but for now it only works on max 3 meters away here. Still do-able, but don't use it that much.
Their iOS app works flawless by the way, so that indicates it really seems a hardware issue.
Still, amazon, google, apple and even microsoft has tons of more data to analyse and improve their speech. That with a device like the Echo Dot (dedicated to hear you and just do http calls) should give a better speech to text experience then we are having now....
On a different note, I also managed to build a connection between Google Home and Homey using the API.AI service. Last week, I finally managed to get this to work and I will write a guide on the proof of concept shortly. However, I'm not convinced about this solution because there's some user friction while using GHome and Homey together. For instance, I always need to activate my 'Homey bot' so that I can him/her a command. This basically means that I always need at least two voice commands for one action unless they follow each other quickly. Additionally, this solution really seems to be focused on using the Google cloud which also makes it less interesting for private users. For example, I still would need to host a script that speaks to Homey on my specific Homey accouny. Then I would also wanna make sure that Homey users can connect their accounts to my service that connects to the API.AI service. Quite cumbersome and not something I'm looking forward to building in my own spare (and limited) time let alone the skills that I lack to do such thing, haha. I tired connecting GHome through ifttt with Homey but the delay in triggering a flow makes this connection just not that useful in most cases.
The upside of Google Home / Assistant is the fact that we as users can have a conversation with the bot vs plain commands that Echo offers.
In short, I would really encourage Athom to look at these options especially because the media writes that global launches are planned for later this year. It seems to be one of the better directions for solving problems that some (or a lot) of Homey users have including yours truley
Combined with Hue and the Harmony skills it can pretty much control must of my devices.
Strange though, I felt like I was cheating on Homey when I brought Alexa into the house!
But she is soooooo tantalising!
And that voice!
And she always respond to me!
And she always listens!
And does what I want!
(I am married btw!)
To be honest, i looked into alexa before. (when the first echo device could be ordered)
Never tought they would grow sooo fast. The Dot has an awesome price tho, and even read some articles that Dutch might come soon as well.
To sum it up, i just applied for an Echo dot
(also I do not see this being available in NL, which would mean you'd need import one.. which in turn would mean that it will not be operating at the EU zwave frequencies )
I bought my Smartthings hub AFTER I bought Homey, and I don't regret it one bit. Also with that I have connected my Amazon Echo and Logitech Harmony Hub. Sorry, but this works better than my Homey (especially via voice). Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking your opinion and yes I do still have my Homey, although not using as much as my Echo, Smartthings, & Logitech combo because...this combo just works.
For you the smartthings hub might be a good alternative...for others it isn't.
Homey has so many different protocols packed in that little head, not sure what the smart things hub has...but my guess is less.
In my opinion Homey has way more potential then any other hub i had in the past. (to be clear: i never tried smart things tho) But they surely never should have promoted the speech recognition sooo much like they did in the beginning.
I am still convinced that dropping the speech input, and integrating with Alexa is the best way to go. At least it is for now...
To bad we didn't see any other statements made about this integration...maybe @weejewel could write a little something about it in the forum updates? Or @Annemarie could try to find out what their ideas really are?
they *could* facilitate the purchase in NL for the reduced price.. but thats it (at least what i would expect)
http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/02/07/alexa-voice-service-now-available-uk-germany-new-version-logitech-zeromount-celebrate/
caseda [21:53] so google home intergration also?