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Mycroft – open source voice assistant

mycroft.ai

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Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#61

Post by VikingCoder »

rexreed wrote: post #26

The voice assistant space is dying: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... Some of the comments below are part of the explanation why. It doesn't work as well as people were hoping, and it's a solution in search of a problem with limited application and it seems little monetization. The above article sums it up better from the big tech company's perspective.

Ours is a voice-driven music player for our kids. They love it. We have a YouTube Premium subscription just because of the Nest Minis we have in every room. Sometimes we ask it "What's the animal of the day?" or "Tell a story" or "What year was Abraham Lincoln born?" but mostly the Nest Hub Maxes we have are just photo slideshows, which we love, and sometimes we ask "What's the weather?"

That set of functionality alone makes them well worth the money for us.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#62

Post by cupofpython »

horsawlarway wrote: post #49
rolenthedeep wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice assistants which are trying to force engagement to squeeze money out of you are dying. Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. It is, however, very, very bad for Amazon and Google, because those tasks don't make them money. That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute sp…

Yup - I think this is the truth. I'm willing to spend several hundred dollars right this second for a simple voice assistant for things like weather, time, timers, unit conversion, alarms, and home assistant control (mainly lights). I've actually pre-ordered the Mycroft Mark 2, although no chance to evaluate it yet. I'm very interested in devices that can do this locally. I'm not interested in Alexa/Google home anymo…

>they both work,

I got an echo (alexa) for free and use it for home assistant. It only works when I have an internet connection. So when my internet is out, I cannot turn my lights on/off with it. I understand why, but i too would REALLY like to just have all functionality dependencies for home automation to be local.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#63

Post by cupofpython »

jm4 wrote: post #53
rexreed wrote: post #26

The voice assistant space is dying: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... Some of the comments below are part of the explanation why. It doesn't work as well as people were hoping, and it's a solution in search of a problem with limited application and it seems little monetization. The above article sums it up better from the big tech company's perspective.

I don't think the entire space is dying. Amazon is having problems because Alexa has little benefit to them outside of direct monetization. They wanted people to use Alexa to buy things and no one wants to shop like that. So they have these devices and all this infrastructure to run people's kitchen timers, lights and play music. People will buy Alexa devices on Prime Day, use them dozens of times a day for years, an…

Apple and the garden of eden. Dont take a bite unless you're going all in

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#64

Post by dividedbyzero »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #52

I installed their self-hosted minic3 tts the other day to add a voice to my home assistant on prem smart home. It sounds unbelievably good compared to the picotts crap I was using before. Pretty stoked. Now I want to try getting the voice assistant hooked up too. https://mycroft.ai/mimic-3/

Sadly their German voices sound broken, as if they stress and lengthen/shorten random syllables. And that's with their demo text.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#65

Post by splitrocket »

The key feature I haven't seen any of these opensource projects implement is microphone response coordination: If you have multiple microphones and speakers, which one responds?

My google home's are terrible at this: often one in another room responds, but at least it's only one. When I tried to run Genie (https://genie.stanford.edu/) I had multiple devices responding simultaneously. It was a disaster.

For me, this is the core feature that will enable me to swap out my corporate listening devices for an opensource, cloud-free alternative.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#66

Post by veidr »

voakbasda wrote: post #40
veidr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, I find that thesis absurd. Maybe you meant it like, "the voice assistant space isn't going to generate huge profits, and thus giant corporations will lose interest". But even that is absurd. They will still have to do it as a loss leader. Maybe not Amazon — because they just ship us our toilet paper and protein bars and shit. They don't have an "ecosystem" (although they gave it a halfhearted tr…

I will never have a voice assistant unless a completely open and self-hosted solution appears on the market. And with current patent landscape, that seems incredibly unlikely to happen before 2032.

OK, I can't keep reading this website any more tonight, but for fuck's sake you do realize that the submission you are commenting on is a completely open and self-hosted solution that is on the market, right?

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#67

Post by veidr »

toqy wrote: post #46
veidr wrote: post #11

Would love to read about experiences actually using this (I mean Mycroft in general) — good, bad, or otherwise. Also, though: why don't we have "text assistants"? Seems to me the process of deciphering spoken text is (or should be) entirely orthogonal to performing the actual task — changing the lighting, cranking up the AC/heat, arming the security perimeter, or whatever. I think the reason is that voice recognition…

> why don't we have "text assistants" Siri has this as an accessibility feature since iOS 11, but might not be exactly what you're looking for

That is right, and I did try it, but they made it so that if you enable that then voice input no longer works. (T_T)

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#68

Post by [deleted] »

splitrocket wrote: post #65

The key feature I haven't seen any of these opensource projects implement is microphone response coordination: If you have multiple microphones and speakers, which one responds? My google home's are terrible at this: often one in another room responds, but at least it's only one. When I tried to run Genie ( https://genie.stanford.edu/ ) I had multiple devices responding simultaneously. It was a disaster. For me, this…

[deleted]

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#69

Post by mod »

moffkalast wrote: post #35
HankB99 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will that initiate actions like the voice thing does? I thought it just returned search results.

A lot of assistant functionality is just getting data from the internet, which search engines already know how to present and format in a useful way. If you need to go to a specific spot in the house to write some text that turns on a light it seems easier to just walk to an actual light switch? For general automation then I think there are some visual block-based configurators to set up triggers for smart appliances…

Why do I need to go to a specific spot? I have devices that take text input on my body at all times, and I sit in front of one for most of the day.
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