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The $10 Echo

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Re: The $10 Echo

#31

Post by Igglyboo »

frik wrote: post #23
dperfect wrote: post #18

One of the more impressive things about the Echo is its far-field mic. I've used a lot of different voice recognition technologies, but Echo blows everything else away in terms of being able to speak in a normal voice from the other side of the room and have it still understand you. The actual intelligence behind the service may be lacking (or at least behind some of the competition), but for a general-purpose home a…

> Normal voice from the other side of the room. High end smartphones have a similar high quality mic. It's no problem at all talking or using e.g. GoogleNow.

How often are you talking to your smartphone from the other side of the room? Usually it's a few inches from your face.

Re: The $10 Echo

#32

Post by cs2818 »

Bjartr wrote: post #24
dperfect wrote: post #18

One of the more impressive things about the Echo is its far-field mic. I've used a lot of different voice recognition technologies, but Echo blows everything else away in terms of being able to speak in a normal voice from the other side of the room and have it still understand you. The actual intelligence behind the service may be lacking (or at least behind some of the competition), but for a general-purpose home a…

In my limited experience using Echo at my parents house over the holidays I was distinctly not impressed by the Echo's abilities to understand voice from across the room. We often had to repeat ourselves, only louder and slower to get the Echo to understand us. We do not have strong accents.

Exact opposite for me, does a great job at recognizing speech but a horrible job providing answers to even simple questions.

Re: The $10 Echo

#33

Post by jimrandomh »

I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones in their homes. Cell phone spying is bad enough. If these become widespread, then ten years from now instead of a political debate about call metadata it'll be a debate about literally every word ever spoken.

Re: The $10 Echo

#34

Post by dominotw »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #29

compared with ok google and siri, echo is not much better (if not worse) in terms of intelligence. What made echo was the physical form factor. Intelligence is hard to mimic, but physical form factor is not. All google or apple needs to do is come out with with a similar speaker/mic combo and it will totally blow echo out of the water.

My impression of it was less for answering random questions and more for predefined tasks like home automation,listening to news ect.

Re: The $10 Echo

#35

Post by squeaky-clean »

notlisted wrote: post #15

I love my echo (alexa), especially the convenience of "no button but wake word" when I have my hands full in the kitchen. That said, google voice is so much better at parsing my questions that I'd pay a bunch of money for another standalone device with wake word which would integrate with with google voice. Any chance of hacking that, or linking your device with both? (Ask Amazon / Ask Google)

Google's question parsing is ridiculously good. You can also do neat things like say "When I get to work, remind me to email John" and you'll get a notification when you arrive. I don't have an Echo, but I imagine it can't do such contextual things.

You could get a dedicated Android phone/tablet, and leave it always plugged into a charger somewhere. I just tested it on my Phone (LG G3 Android 5.0.1), and I'm able to get my phone to respond to "Ok, Google" questions, even with the screen off.

Though the microphone probably won't be nearly as good as the Echo, and from the setup it seems like you have to train "Ok, Google" to respond to your voice, so I don't know if it will work with multiple users.

Re: The $10 Echo

#36

Post by a3_nm »

notlisted wrote: post #14
[deleted] wrote: post #5

[deleted]

Silly. The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based. Nothing is recorded and sent until the wake word is uttered and after that only the part until you finish your question. If you are truly worried about spy devices, you should really consider dropping your cell phone in the toilet. (Yes, I love my echo)

> The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based

For now, maybe. If some update changed this, how and when would you figure out?

I'd say it's not entirely silly to be worried about something in your home which is controlled by a third party and could turn into a spying device at any moment, even though it seems not to have become evil yet.

Re: The $10 Echo

#37

Post by frik »

Igglyboo wrote: post #31
frik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Normal voice from the other side of the room. High end smartphones have a similar high quality mic. It's no problem at all talking or using e.g. GoogleNow.

How often are you talking to your smartphone from the other side of the room? Usually it's a few inches from your face.

In my kitchen and in my office, it lies on the table. It very practical to just speak, I can walk around and do other things at the same time.

Re: The $10 Echo

#38

Post by TeMPOraL »

Igglyboo wrote: post #31
frik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Normal voice from the other side of the room. High end smartphones have a similar high quality mic. It's no problem at all talking or using e.g. GoogleNow.

How often are you talking to your smartphone from the other side of the room? Usually it's a few inches from your face.

Not to mention smartphones seem to be explicitly designed to not provide this use case. Where is my always listening Google Now? If I have to take my phone out of my pocket and unlock it, I may as well type the question myself.

Re: The $10 Echo

#39

Post by scholia »

cek wrote: post #9
wsr wrote: post #6

According to Alexa Voice Service page ( https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo... ) Amazon is starting a $100M fund for anyone building voice related services. This is very interesting. Has any company been funded via this fund?

The Alexa Fund page lists a sub-set of the companies that have received funding from the fund so far: https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa...

So how does Amazon make money from Alexa running on non-Amazon devices? (Not obvious to me, sorry.)

Re: The $10 Echo

#40

Post by frik »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38
Igglyboo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often are you talking to your smartphone from the other side of the room? Usually it's a few inches from your face.

Not to mention smartphones seem to be explicitly designed to not provide this use case. Where is my always listening Google Now? If I have to take my phone out of my pocket and unlock it, I may as well type the question myself.

It's called loudspeaker or speakerphone mode. Of course it's not the default mode if you speak next to your ear.
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