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The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
How to improve voice command hit ratio
AlexVMW
Member
Hey folks,
I recently bought my Homey. I must say the support amazes me. I do have an issue and I guess more people have this. A lot of voice commands are not recognised by Homey. It either says "I'm sorry, I do not understand" or it just plainly ignores me.
Are there tips or tricks to improve the hit ratio on voice commands? I mean this in terms of positioning, what to say, maybe how to speak, at what distance?
ps: I know it's still experimental
Kind regards,
Alex
I recently bought my Homey. I must say the support amazes me. I do have an issue and I guess more people have this. A lot of voice commands are not recognised by Homey. It either says "I'm sorry, I do not understand" or it just plainly ignores me.
Are there tips or tricks to improve the hit ratio on voice commands? I mean this in terms of positioning, what to say, maybe how to speak, at what distance?
ps: I know it's still experimental
Kind regards,
Alex
Comments
The best advise is to get a Google Home Mini and use that to talk to Homey, 99% correct understanding for just a few dollars. And besides a suitable microphone for Homey it is a stunning bit of hardware on its own.
When Homey is saying " i didn't understand you" your flow is incorrect. Please read here the announcement from Athom in march 2017 and here (on how to solve it) for more information about this because at this moment you are using the card contains in the AND part and that gives this respond.
When I tell it to turn off the tv with the command 'zet de tv uit', 90% of the time it tells me 'sorry, maar ik begrijp niet wat je bedoelt'.
This has nothing to do with my flows, because when I move closer (< 1m) it works just fine.
This is the problem:
So before you tell people to check their flows, have them check the speech-input page...
https://<ip-of-your-homey>/manager/speech-input
Here's another (funny, but sad at the same time...) example:
But you are right, both are answers are incomplete but both answers together give @AlexVMW a complete answer to:
A. Check the speech input what Homey did understood
B. Check if his flows are build correct for speech
@AlexVMW you can always post screenshots here of both, maybe we can help
What does happen sometimes is that he doesn't understand anything at all, in that case nothing is said or appears on the speech-input.
I noticed that the distance to Homey when issuing a voice command is crucial and if words sound very alike, Homey tends to get confused as well. For example, my cleaning aid is a lady called Inge. I created a flow where, when she gets in and says to Homey "Inge is er" (Inge is here), Homey should start a flow where lights are turned on, her favourite music station is started and it also sends a notification to my and my wife's phone that the cleaning aid has started. The intonation of the words in "Inge is er" seems to similar for Homey to distinguish between the individual words that it usually ends in "I don't understand what you mean", unless you are 50cm away from Homey and you clearly pronounce every individual word (which sounds silly). When I change the sentence into something with more O's and A's, the succesratio goes up rapidly. But as she's not called anything like that, I constructed a workaround with a KaKu switch she can push when she comes in that triggers the flow.
However, I will cope with the current shortcomings as I have absolutely no intention of giving Google any (more?) personal information, let alone let them place a microphone in my home.
A reason for me to buy Homey was the fact that Athom guaranteed that privacy is respected and data will not leave my home. I'm quite sure Google Home has some calling-home functionality I don't like.
You may call me paranoid but I generally distrust company's like Google, Facebook and others.
Is there an official statement about this made by Athom? Are they even working on it / trying to solve it? Is it hardware that is insufficient or software? If it's hardware, are they planning an improvement Homey version?
How can they not have solved this huge problem yet? The Homey has very much potential but voice recognition imo is essential to bring this product to the large audience. I have seen the workarounds like using Google Home Mini but those are all not satisfying at all. Since there are a lot of other devices that use voice recognition you would expect this to be fixable, right?
I've been in the same spot as you are not so long ago.
I owned a "HomeWizard" which did not show any innovation or progress for a long time and I was looking to expand my home automation in a direction that would ensure easy access but future innovation as well. I looked up reviews on the net and indeed, voice control is getting ripped apart in some reviews. Some people even say it does not work at all.
The reality of things is that voice control is NOT the biggest feature Homey has. The biggest feature is Flows and the ability to drag and drop almost anything together. That combined with all the plugins you can add to make a diversity of things work with home and consequently, work with each-other in flows! And yes, if you incorporate voice a lot, you will notice more that Homey does not always understand you.
Then again, if you keep your voice commands clear and distinguishable and keep in mind that you should not yell from across the room but rather get a bit closer, your hit ratio on voice commands will go up dramatically. It also takes some getting used to. For instance, I placed my Homey wrong. It's on top of a divider that separates my desk from our living-room, which is in a corner. So Homey is to the far right in our living-room, which is not the best spot to be in as I only really am close when I'm working from home. As a result we speak to Homey from at least 3 meters distance, which increases the error ratio.
So, I decided I will get an Ikea Kallax, place Homey on top, mount my HomeWizard inside it (I still use it as it also controls temperature and measures energy usage), mount proper speakers inside and connect those to Homey so you can hear Homey more clearly and place that configuration in a central spot in our living-room. I think this will solve a lot of issues I have with voice commands.
So, my recommendation to you: don't stare yourself blind on the voice thing. Homey is so much more. You won't regret the purchase <span>
The only disadvantage (well, not really to me but more to my wife) is that you have to use the smartphone to control the lights. She doesn't like that she has to get her phone for every occasion. So the voice control would be ideal for her. She can control the lights with her voice and doesn't need the phone.
Never the less my question still remains. Is Athom actually working on a solution for this problem? I think it is currently the biggest limitation that Homey has (I read about the bad voice recognition everywhere) and it's also the biggest limitiation for reaching out a bigger audience. Also, I don't want to buy any outdated version when an improved version (with better voice recognition) might come any time soon. Any word on this from Athom?
I am not calling you paranoid but Google sold over 4 million of these things now. Do you REALLY think they are listening in to all those households while even a 15 year old knows how to track what is send out by a device?
And you do know Athom has Google Analytics running on this forum? It's not hard to block it, but I would worry way more about that then a Google Home Mini that makes my Homey understand me perfectly from every room in the house. For me it changed Homey totally.
i'm pretty sure that i am the weak link here :-))
is there a page where i can find a sort of starting guide for the voice commands?
this page called above does'nt work ;
https://<ip-of-your-homey>/manager/speech-input
but thats not what im looking for. im looking for some instructions to start with.
isnt there a sort of user manual or somthing?
https://www.athom.com/nl/support/