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Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

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Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#121

Post by microtherion »

deca6cda37d0 wrote: post #100
microtherion wrote: post #88

Apple platforms offer an API (SFSpeechRecognizer) which for some languages supports on-device recognition. Trivial to set up, super easy to use, and pretty reasonable accuracy. Disclaimer: Working for Apple, not directly on this API but in related subjects.

I guess not always. “The speech recognition process involves capturing audio of the user’s voice and sending that data to Apple’s servers for processing. The audio you capture constitutes sensitive user data, and you must make every effort to protect it. You must also obtain the user’s permission before sending that data across the network to Apple’s servers. You request authorization using the APIs of the Speech fra…

> I guess not always.

Yeah, I suppose I should have formulated that more clearly. The API offers cloud speech recognition for a set of languages, and on-device speech recognition for a subset of these.

> Which languages are processed on device and not send to Apple’s servers?

It's not a static set, because (1) availability tends to expand over time and (2) when you start using a new language, the on-device model needs to be downloaded first.

So what you need to do is create a SFSpeechRecognizer and then test the supportsOnDeviceRecognition property. If that is set, you can set requiresOnDeviceRecognition on the SFSpeechRecognitionRequest.

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#122

Post by daanzu »

barrystaes wrote: post #118
daanzu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too late to edit, but I should probably have noted that KaldiAG also would make it easy to define "contexts" when (groups of) commands are active for recognition. For example, if the TV is on, you could have commands for adjusting the volume/etc. But if it is off, those commands are disabled, so they can't be recognized, and further, the engine knows this and can therefore better recognize the other commands that rem…

Could Home Assistant use such commands by running a docker? Also the video demo is rather impressive, in how accurate (and predictable) it recognises.

I don't know much about Home Assistant, but that certainly should be possible to set up. The KaldiAG API is pretty low level, but basically: you define a set of rules, and send in audio data, along with a bit mask of which rules are active at the beginning of each utterance, and receive back the recognized rule and text. The easy solution is probably to go through Dragonfly, which makes it easy to define the rules, contexts, and actions. It might be a little hacky to do, but you should be able to wire it up with Home Assistant somehow.

Although I mainly use it for computer control as demonstrated in the video, I do have many commands akin to home automation, like adjusting the lights, HVAC, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#123

Post by stragies »

lukifer wrote: post #99

I’m currently assembling an offline home assistant setup using Node-RED and voice2json, all running on Raspberry Pi’s: http://voice2json.org/ https://nodered.org/ Requires a little customization and/or coding, but it’s quite elegant, and all voice recognition happens on-device. Part of what makes the recognition much more accurate (subjectively, 99%ish) is the constrained vocabulary; the grammars are compiled from a…

Hi Lukifer, thanks for chiming in! I had a setup using snips, that i'm looking to replace. Please do document your setup, and your little helper scripts in a blogblost or such, and ping me/us :)

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#124

Post by peglasaurus »

rs23296008n1 wrote: post #22
cosmic_ape wrote: post #11

As an aside, it seems you're interested in speech recognition, or speech to text, not voice recognition. Voice recognition is a different problem, where the particular speaker needs to be recognized from voice.

I'd primarily like speech-to-text and the ability to know who is speaking. I have low expectations of the identification of speaker however.

If you're wanting a lot of people to use your solution as you described, recognition of who is speaking could add a lot of extra possibilities.

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#125

Post by peglasaurus »

detaro wrote: post #87
mthoms wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the site guidelines: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data. Besides, the commenter was upfront about their affiliation and offered insights that appear helpful to the discussion. From elsewhere in the site guidelines: > Assume good fai…

I don't think that first rule applies here, precisely because they were upfront (and thus byteshock isn't insinuating some hidden motive, but directly criticizing what they said)

I think the guidelines almost need some "case law" examples. Although I understand why they wouldn't.

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#126

Post by villgax »

teapourer wrote: post #80
villgax wrote: post #7

Google has papers on device speech recognition, these are used in the keyboard & for live caption on Pixel devices.

They are trained on a ton of non-public data though, and I’m not sure if pre-trained models are around.

Nope, they aren't available. CC YouTube videos with captions or radio broadcasts + transcripts could prove helpful for multiple languages as well as being able to create a multilingual ASR.

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#127

Post by romwell »

driverdan wrote: post #109
romwell wrote: post #28

TL; DR: Win 10 IoT for RasPi does it. ----------------- Windows 10 IoT for Raspberry Pi comes with offline speech recognition API. It was not hard to slap some code together that turns on a light when someone says "banana" at a hackathon. Sounds like exactly what you need. >If it helps I'm happy to reduce vocabulary to a dictionary of words You will do it with an XML grammar file for offline recognition[4]. [1] https…

Does the IoT version track everything you do and cram ads down your throat like the regular version of Win 10?

I don't think this question is in good faith, but the answer is no.

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#128

Post by Havoc »

rs23296008n1 wrote: post #40
Havoc wrote: post #39

>I'm happy if they talk back via wifi to a server in my office for whatever real processing. The server might have 16 cores and 128Gb ram. Pretty sure Mycroft is capable of that - in theory - you'll need to config it manually. The standard raspberry pi route isn't powerful enough for local. Check out reespeaker for a raspberry microphone. You'll want one of the more expensive ones for range. Though at like 40 bucks t…

As discussed elsewhere in this thread by others, mycroft can't do offline processing, according to their faq at least. 128GB is the minimum I use for general purpose servers so this machine would be a repurposed machine rather than something specially ordered or built.

>mycroft can't do offline processing, according to their faq at least.

Not sure what FAQ you're reading there. There is a whole section of STT engines you can plug into it.

https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customiz...

Including a local one. It's gonna be a pain in the ass but as I said it's possible

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#129

Post by driverdan »

romwell wrote: post #127
driverdan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the IoT version track everything you do and cram ads down your throat like the regular version of Win 10?

I don't think this question is in good faith, but the answer is no.

I worded it as an adversarial way but it was a serious question. I'm glad to hear they don't.

Re: Ask HN: Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?

#130

Post by jvyduna »

carbon85 wrote: post #6

I was not able to find the same article online, but the Volume 72 of Make Magazine has a great overview of different non-cloud voice recognition platforms. Here is a preview: https://www.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=38377&i=...

Today they published an online version which covers many of the platforms listed in these comments:

https://makezine.com/2020/03/17/private-by-design-free-and-p...

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