Voice Command and Home Theater Control

Community Playground General Discussions
1

This might be out of the scope of what VERA is able to do now or even later but I thought I would ask.

Please don’t laugh, I’m just curious. :slight_smile:

Will or does VERA support the ability to hook up wireless Noise Canceling Microphones so I can give VERA voice commands to start different scenes within my home along with support for a speaker so she can talk back?

Also, is there such a thing as an IR to Z-Wave Adapter that can sit within line of sight of my A/V equipment. If so, is it compatible with VERA so she can control my Home Theater?

Example Dialogue1:

[ul][li]Me: Vera[/li]
[li]VERA: Yes Sir.[/li]
[li]Me: It’s Movie Time[/li]
[li]VERA: Acknowledged, please give me a moment to setup the scene.[/li]
[li]VERA: Movie Time Scene Complete, Enjoy[/li]
[li]Me: Thank you[/li][/ul]

Example Dialogue2:

[ul][li]Me: Vera[/li]
[li]VERA: Yes Sir.[/li]
[li]Me: I’m heading out[/li]
[li]VERA: Would you like me to arm the security system and lock the doors behind you.[/li]
[li]Me: Yes[/li]
[li]VERA: Confirmed, have a great day/night[/li][/ul]

2

;D I must say that this idea is funny, it’s like a picture taken from an old movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger , about the future’s technology ;D

The answer : No, Vera does not have the ability for that ::slight_smile:

3

Well, if you do a little search, you’ll find earlier posts discussing IR distribution a lot.
The way Vera designed makes things you’re talking about more then feasible.

Just one of the threads on the subject… http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=16.0

Speech recognition used to be resource demanding, so I don’t think Vera will be able to do it, but - wire the microphones into your PC(s), and make it issue commands to Vera, which in turn will control Z-Wave and IR…

4

I think I’ve been watching too much “Iron Man” and have been dreaming of a home AI like “Jarvis”. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(film)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(film)[/url]

Also, I’ve been checking out Microsoft’s new AI called “EVA” with the future version of Sync. [url=http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/08/ces-2009-ford-shows-off-future-of-sync-to-partner-with-best-bu/]Autoblog Sitemap

I dream for a day that I can speak with VERA. lol

I hope Micasaverde adds IR to Z-Wave functionality in the future with the proper codes to control my A/V Equipment.

5

Man, you sound like MLK in his “I have a dream” speech… :slight_smile:

BTW, Happy MLK day, which was yesterday.

6

;D Thanks Denix.

oh, and a little off topic but… Congrats on your new president Barack Obama. I think you guys picked the right guy for your president this time around.

7

I would love to have the speech recognition incorporated but it is a resource hog and doesn’t get used as much as you would think. NOT far fetched at all though. Check out the HAL 2000 or, better yet, Homeseer. It’s not hard to set up on the software side but gets complicated with the VERY RECOMENDED noise gates and expensive array microphones in each room. You would need a pretty beefy computer to handle everything. Then there is the tedious task of going through all the speech learning in Windows. That sux. But anyhoo. Don’t feel silly. Your not asking something that can’t be done by someone with a little home automation experience. Everyone else just didn’t check the facts before replying :slight_smile:

8

Okay, I couldn’t help thinking about Voice Command / Recognition / Control again today, and here’s what I dreamed up. See what you guys think:

  1. MCV would make a toll-free 800 number available for any Vera user to call
  2. After entering a PIN and (if not calling from a registered phone) phone #…
  3. …the user/caller would be logged into his own Vera, via voice prompts.
  4. Vera would give a brief greeting and any status messages.
  5. Vera: “Choose a room … Press or say 1 for Living Room, 2 for Deck, etc.”
  6. User: Presses 1
  7. Vera: “Press 1 for devices, or 2 for scenes.”
  8. User: Presses 2
  9. Vera: “Select a scene … Press or say 1 for Coming Home, 2 for Away, etc.”
  10. User: Presses 2
  11. Vera: “Scene ‘Away’ activated successfully. ‘Front Door’ locked, ‘Motion Sensor’ in ‘Den’ armed, ‘Porch Light’ turned on, ‘Thermostat’ set to ‘Off’.”

and so on.

This dial-in arrangement would prevent Vera having to be granted her own voice recognition skills, much less the $$ investment of microphones, telephone interfaces (or in some cases, even the addition of a landline for this purpose). All the VOIP could be handled by MCV’s own server, which answers the 800 number and handles logging into Vera.

If your Vera is down when you call, the voice command could even explain, “Your Vera unit #NNNN has been down since HH:MM this morning. Please check your home network or try again later.”

Is all this asking too much?

9

Speaking of speech recognition, dial2do.com does similar stuff and a lot more - they allow user-defined voice commands, and few months ago I suggested them to add a simple HTTP GET as one of the options - to call Vera’s actions, but so far I haven’t seen this implemented.

As for IVR and DTMF controls… Asterisk would be the natural option, but it’s not exactly trivial for uninitiated users; there are few convenient platforms that offer IVRs for users: pbxes.com, voip.ms, etc - but none of them allow HTTP GET; and again, I tried to persuade pbxes.com to develop this option… with no success.

Technically the easiest way to offer it to all users is findvera.com, which I suspect already uses some SIP based platform. Keep in mind though that offering Toll Free number for the entire user base is not cheap, so it most likely will go into the paid subscription.
On the other side MCV could also offer SIP URI so users could use their own toll free or local numbers to dial in - it’s easy to setup.