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Mycroft – open source voice assistant

mycroft.ai

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Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#121

Post by dublin »

shagie wrote: post #84
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…

> Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. I'll certainly grant that... but the price point where Mycroft is, is certainly not near what I'd pay for doing those few simple tasks. Apple is at the upper end of what I'd spend for such a device (the HomePod mini is $99) - and that's because I'm fairly invested into the Apple ecosystem and…

The Ars article on Alexa's financial crash-and-burn inside Amazon missed a lot of the reason people aren't willing to engage with Alexa as much as they could or would, if things were different. First, the privacy aspects are significant. Secondly, the value proposition is just not there - worse, Amazon has deliberately broken one of the most useful things you could do with Echo products: using them for distributed networked audio, a la Sonos: The new generation Echo Show products ELIMINATED the audio output jack, so you can't even plug the output into a stereo or speaker now!

On top of that, the Echo products are just not well built, not well thought out, and have NOT been upgraded to make them better: They update, but with NO visible benefit to the owner. One example: The Echo Show 8 Cannot and will not keep its display off all night, even if you explicitly command "display off" before going to bed (yes, it does understand and temporarily obey this command!) But sometime during the night, something will wake it up, and the damn thing turns into a lighthouse in your bedroom, waking one of us up.

I'd really like to find Alexa more useful, but like most folks I know with one, it's mostly just useful as a glorified voice-controlled radio - I'd use it more to control lights and such, if I could get the damn thing to actually realize waht lights are in what rooms, and that dimmer switches and smart lights can indeed share a location that should be controlled together. (Yes, this is supposed to work, but it doesn't...)

I would pay $500 to outfit the house with a central voice recognition processor that would be capable of supporting a dozen or so very secure listeners on the local LAN. Mycroft isn't that solution.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#122

Post by vineyardmike »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #95
shagie wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples devices are smarter. This makes them cost more for the "same" hardware, but costs less for the computation. Apple isn't trying to make money with Siri. It's using Siri to make its ecosystem of Apple Music and similar more valuable to its customers. The limits that Apple puts on what it can do makes that cloud side computation less expensive. --- Consider that bit - less expensive. Apple doesn't run its own clo…

I don't think Apple is smarter. Siri is really basic. I can't even say "Turn on the lights and the fan". I have to present it all in bite-sized chunks. Come on how hard is that. I have a feeling there is no AI in these supposedly intelligent assistants. Only scripted stuff.

There is no AI beyond run of the mill NLU/ML stuff. It’s just trying to guess intent based on your query.

“What’s it like outside right now?” => GetWeatherIntent arguments=[time=current location=device_location]

There’s no Omni intelligent being making API calls anywhere. It’s NLU with a decision tree(s) based on the intent and arguments

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#123

Post by vineyardmike »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #103
dljsjr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's device specific but I use "Hey Siri, turn on the overhead lights and the floor lamp" for example all the time. I have a HomePod though.

Weird, I have a homepod (mini) also. In fact I hardly have any Apple stuff anymore, I only got homepods because it was the most privacy-friendly option out of the big three. I just have an iPad from work which I used to set them up. And most of my automation goes through Home Assistant anyway. When I give a double command Siri literally tells me she can't do two things at the same time and I have to present them as t…

> Perhaps it's smarter in US English. I'll have to try that.

Most companies treat you know English as European, and European customers as second in line for new features after America.

Or more specifically, treat American English first for voice control stuff.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#124

Post by rickoooooo »

adam1028 wrote: post #104
rickoooooo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played with Mycroft about two years ago. I had been using a couple Google home minis for a while for the usual things (play spotify, set timers, ask the weather, control lights around the hose). They worked perfectly for that. At the time I decided to de-Google my life and take back my privacy so I went looking for something open source that would provide me more control of my data. I found Mycroft and played with…

I gave up on mycroft after a long wait and built my own with respeaker and picovoice. i have 2 of them with different wake words. imo it's way better and easier than snowboy. i dont understand why people give their data to amazon to set a timer :) check their free stuff: https://picovoice.ai/pricing/

You are using picovoice as the assistant? Is it en entire solution for that? Or are you running a DIY Mycroft device with picovoice as the wake word detector? I'll have to check this out but I've been trying to stick with open source technologies where I can. I don't trust that a free tier will remain free forever, but it may be worth testing out.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#125

Post by dilek »

shagie wrote: post #99
GekkePrutser wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Apple is smarter. Siri is really basic. I can't even say "Turn on the lights and the fan". I have to present it all in bite-sized chunks. Come on how hard is that. I have a feeling there is no AI in these supposedly intelligent assistants. Only scripted stuff.

There is more processing done in the Siri local device than there is in the Alexa local device. It's not "Siri is smarter" but rather "Apple is working on minimizing cloud costs because it is entirely a cost for them." Siri is scripted and limited to make it locally "smarter". With Amazon and Alexa, everything goes to AWS because that's where the entirety of Alexa's processing happens. The hardware devices in the hom…

Amazon has been working on on-device voice for a while. Actually everyone is trying to do that. Running large speech models in the cloud is expensive, considering the number of devices, they probably need more than "surplus" :)

https://www.amazon.science/blog/on-device-speech-processing-...

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#126

Post by adam1028 »

rickoooooo wrote: post #124
adam1028 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave up on mycroft after a long wait and built my own with respeaker and picovoice. i have 2 of them with different wake words. imo it's way better and easier than snowboy. i dont understand why people give their data to amazon to set a timer :) check their free stuff: https://picovoice.ai/pricing/

You are using picovoice as the assistant? Is it en entire solution for that? Or are you running a DIY Mycroft device with picovoice as the wake word detector? I'll have to check this out but I've been trying to stick with open source technologies where I can. I don't trust that a free tier will remain free forever, but it may be worth testing out.

oh no, i meant mark II, the speaker. I use their picovoice sdk. it has wake word and intent detectors - Porcupine and Rhino. https://picovoice.ai/docs/picovoice/ and https://ttsmp3.com/

i was going to add picovoice's speech to text with rasa https://rasa.com/ but i didnt have time, will give it a try over the holidays.

I see your point but not every open source project lives forever, like sonos killed snips.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#127

Post by adam1028 »

adam1028 wrote: post #126
rickoooooo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using picovoice as the assistant? Is it en entire solution for that? Or are you running a DIY Mycroft device with picovoice as the wake word detector? I'll have to check this out but I've been trying to stick with open source technologies where I can. I don't trust that a free tier will remain free forever, but it may be worth testing out.

oh no, i meant mark II, the speaker. I use their picovoice sdk. it has wake word and intent detectors - Porcupine and Rhino. https://picovoice.ai/docs/picovoice/ and https://ttsmp3.com/ i was going to add picovoice's speech to text with rasa https://rasa.com/ but i didnt have time, will give it a try over the holidays. I see your point but not every open source project lives forever, like sonos killed snips.

seems rhasspy is good too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703035

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#128

Post by shagie »

dilek wrote: post #125
shagie wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more processing done in the Siri local device than there is in the Alexa local device. It's not "Siri is smarter" but rather "Apple is working on minimizing cloud costs because it is entirely a cost for them." Siri is scripted and limited to make it locally "smarter". With Amazon and Alexa, everything goes to AWS because that's where the entirety of Alexa's processing happens. The hardware devices in the hom…

Amazon has been working on on-device voice for a while. Actually everyone is trying to do that. Running large speech models in the cloud is expensive, considering the number of devices, they probably need more than "surplus" :) https://www.amazon.science/blog/on-device-speech-processing-...

It could certainly rack up a big bill.

This is also part of the work that Apple has done (and is likely part of the making Siri cost less for cloud compute).

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/use-siri-offline-ios/

> In iOS 15, Apple moved all Siri speech processing and personalization onto your device, making the virtual assistant more secure and faster at processing requests. This also means Siri can now handle a range of requests entirely offline.

> Once you're using iOS 15, you don't need to enable anything for Siri to work offline. The types of requests that it can handle without phoning home to Apple's servers include the following:

    Create and disable timers and alarms.
    Launch apps.
    Control Apple Music and Podcasts audio playback.
    Control system settings including accessibility features, volume, Low Power mode, Airplane mode, and so on.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#129

Post by horsawlarway »

kuberlog wrote: post #116
horsawlarway wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I worked on a project in 2016 that told me all I needed to know about the space. It was an online voice assistant and I couldn't find myself wanting to interact with it. Even though I spent a lot of time on the project, I scrapped it, because it was just lame. It looked kind of cool, but was lame. I personally don't think there is enough cybernetica to control with voice. At some point there may be, but right now, th…

Honestly - I don't think anyone really wants an "online voice assistant". The key problem word there is "online".

There is no way that a device can meaningfully parse information from the internet and present it to you right now. At some point? Sure maybe. But it's definitely not now.

What I want, and what I was pretty clear about in my list of use cases is the ability to push a button (or run a function with parameters) with my voice.

My exact use cases

- Kitchen timer: StartTimerFor(duration, timerName?), HowMuchTimeOnTimer(timerName)

- Alarms: SetAlarmFor(time, alarmName?), WhatAlarmsAreSet(), CancelAlarm(alarmName | time)

- Lights/devices(ex: tvs, ACs, etc): TurnOff(DeviceName | RoomName | ALL), TurnOn(DeviceName | RoomName | ALL)

- Conversions: WhatIs(numberOfUnits, inSecondUnit)

- Current time: WhatTimeIsIt(inlocation?)

- Current weather (optional, I don't use this a ton and it requires an upstream source, although HomeAssistant already gets that info for me): WhatWeatherIsIt(atTime?)

---

I've found basically all of the voice assistants I interact with are actually really damn good about understanding roughly those patterns (Alexa was the best, but only for the first year or so [honestly - it was actually wonderful as a beta product] - it's gone markedly downhill over the last several years as they try to cram in more detection and more features).

They just insist on trying to sell me on other parts of the experience (check out this tv show, there's a sale on, use this product, did you know this? did you know that? etc). And I don't want it.

But I'm more than happy to pay a fair sum of money for a thing that will just reliably do those commands.

It's incredibly liberating to be able to do those things with my hands busy, or my eyes closed, or while lying down.

Tack on an HDMI port or a display so I can view a recipe and I will literally give you money right now for this thing (and I have - since I've tried most commercial voice assistants).

Long term - I'll probably end up just cobbling together my own version using Rhasspy/Mycroft or another text parser/STT engine, and HomeAssistant or OpenHab if I can't get what I want commercially. I just know that I'll end up spending more money and time on it that way (which is not the end of the world, I just have other hobbies at the moment, and a very young child).

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#130

Post by twobitshifter »

smoldesu wrote: post #76
jm4 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This makes no sense to me. Apple's plan works because... their lock-in is better? I can "control most of the lights in my house, stream Apple music and set kitchen timers" with Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana and even Bixby. What is Apple's actual advantage here? How is Apple making money from this when Amazon does not?

I think the point is that apple produces software that doesn't directly make them money as part of their business model. Pages, Numbers, iMovie, Maps are all given away for “free” with devices. Siri is just another example of that. As you say, being able to talk to your phone is table stakes, not an advantage. But having that offering keeps sales of Apple hardware moving.
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