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Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

machinelearning.apple.com

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Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#41

Post by jefhwite »

toasterlovin wrote: post #20
kharms wrote: post #17

In my experience they over-optimized, with homepod now responding to "hey Sara" instead of Siri. Drives my partner nuts.

We've been getting lots of false positives, as well, but it seems to have started happening suddenly. I wonder if it's related to a recent software update.

We often get false positives as well. I've wished there were some way to signal a false positive to the device after Siri is activated, like "Siri, I didn't ask for you," to help it learn/train it. Not sure how feasible such a function would be, but I imagine it would be helpful feedback down the line on the engineering end. Anything to reduce the false positives would be great as they are a) a nuisance and b) further confirmation to friends/family who witness it, that we've made a mistake allowing a "surveillance" device in our home.

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#42

Post by gnicholas »

athenot wrote: post #37
tdboorman wrote: post #11

I was testing a HomePod as a conference speakerphone in a large open office environment - where we often have all hands - and it did extremely well - clearly picking up individuals that were quite far from the actual device and that were speaking at a normal volume. I would love Apple to enable some sort of "Office Mode" for the HomePod similar to what they've done with the Apple TV (given the name doubt it will happ…

Cisco has the Webex Board (formerly SparkBoard). It has an array of 12 microphones on top and does audio processing to pick out who's talking, cancel the noise, and since it has an idea of where the participant is, the video part zooms into the speaker during a call. Disclaimer: Yes I'm in that BU https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collaboration-endpoin...

Purchasing the low-end version of the WebEx Board and paying for just one year of the subscription would cost as much as 21 HomePods, if my back-of-the envelope math works out. Not exactly a HomePod competitor...

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/25/cisco_spark_boards/

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#43

Post by saagarjha »

endorphone wrote: post #27
gnicholas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that my iPhone is responsive to Siri requests if I'm within 8-10 feet. It's possible that training "Hey Siri" at this distance could help. But at the end of the day, Apple won't optimize too much for this use case, since they want you to buy a HomePod, Apple Watch, or AirPods. Also, there's power consumption to think about. The HomePod is plugged 24/7, whereas you want your iPhone battery to last a long time.

As an aside, one neat side effect of hey Siri is that often multiple devices can hear you at the same time. In my office I have my XR, iPad, and for dev an iPhone 7 and 8. When I say hey Siri I often hear all of them start to respond, but then all but one cancels listening. I've never really paid attention to which one wins the battle, but it does usually seem to be the device closest to me. Just thought it was inter…

I think this is all done locally over Bluetooth: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208472

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#44

Post by BillinghamJ »

tdboorman wrote: post #11

I was testing a HomePod as a conference speakerphone in a large open office environment - where we often have all hands - and it did extremely well - clearly picking up individuals that were quite far from the actual device and that were speaking at a normal volume. I would love Apple to enable some sort of "Office Mode" for the HomePod similar to what they've done with the Apple TV (given the name doubt it will happ…

What is the "office mode" on Apple TV?

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#45

Post by zer0zzz »

mikestew wrote: post #16
melling wrote: post #2

"Unlike Siri on iPhone, which operates close to the user’s mouth," I wish they wouldn't make this assumption. Siri would be much more useful sitting on my kitchen counter or coffee table. I now use the Echo for timers, music, weather, movie times, random questions, ...

Siri would be much more useful sitting on my kitchen counter or coffee table. That's called "a HomePod". I now use the Echo for timers, music, weather, movie times, random questions, ... "Because the iPhone does not fill the role of 'smart speaker', instead of buying Apple's smart speaker I will purchase someone else's smart speaker." To each their own, but to me it's like complaining how the Apple Watch makes for a…

I have a HomePod, a google home, several Echos, and a Sonos setup.

The HomePod is incredible for voice recognition of basic commands and that makes a lot of sense based on the work they describe in this blog post. HomeKit has also really shaped up and at this point I use the HomePod as a home hub. In the small apartment I live in I’m able to shout commands from another room for things like switching the lights.

That said, HomePod lacks integration with any services or devices outside of apples echo system (ignoring HomeKit). You pretty much have to use airplay for almost everything unless you want to use that god forsaken Apple Music; which is fine, airplay is the fantastic, and there are even some good open source implementations too but it just means the voice assistant aspect of HomePod is severely diminished. So I end up using the echo for almost everything because I can hook one up to a pair of speakers and boom I’ve turned them into Bluetooth speakers, or I can use the echo to control Spotify on my Sonos multi room audio setup (and no, airplay on the HomePod is still not as good for this use case imho).

The google home is a clever search engine in a speaker but for some real world queries it’ll do stupid things like read Wikipedia instead of telling you the thing you want. So at this point I only use the google home mini as a cheap bathroom speaker because it’s a better than the old gen echo dot (until my new echo dot 3 arrives). The google home overall is the least compelling of all of these.

Oh yeah, did I mention HomePod makes a fantastic speaker for an Apple TV (or iPhone/MacBook) connected to a tv for watching video? The low audio network latency of airplay makes it a great stand in soundbar replacement.

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#46

Post by microtonal »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #44
tdboorman wrote: post #11

I was testing a HomePod as a conference speakerphone in a large open office environment - where we often have all hands - and it did extremely well - clearly picking up individuals that were quite far from the actual device and that were speaking at a normal volume. I would love Apple to enable some sort of "Office Mode" for the HomePod similar to what they've done with the Apple TV (given the name doubt it will happ…

What is the "office mode" on Apple TV?

I think they refer to conference room display:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202618

It's a mode where the Apple TV display instructions on how to connect with airplay and a pin code for authentication. It's really a handy feature in combination with Direct Wi-Fi, since it allows anyone in a conference room with a Mac or iDevice to present things.

We use it in meetings (though I prefer hooking up to by cable, since Airplay doesn't do 4k yet for 'screen sharing').

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#47

Post by tonywastaken »

neom wrote: post #32
PascLeRasc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean if your phone is in your pocket upside down, Siri doesn't work on the Homepod? That's very weird.

No, it has to be laying flat face down on the table for this to happen - I presume it's a result of the iPhones facedown detection but not sure why it's preventing my HomePod from registering.

Does Siri on the phone respond when it is face down? You should contact Apple Care.

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#48

Post by jedieaston »

tdboorman wrote: post #11

I was testing a HomePod as a conference speakerphone in a large open office environment - where we often have all hands - and it did extremely well - clearly picking up individuals that were quite far from the actual device and that were speaking at a normal volume. I would love Apple to enable some sort of "Office Mode" for the HomePod similar to what they've done with the Apple TV (given the name doubt it will happ…

Amazon has Alexa for Business[1] which is a similar offering. It integrates with your conferencing platform (WebEx, Skype for Business, Exchange dial-in info) and you can use it as a conference phone and to control A/V in the room. It's pretty nifty and has some cool APIs for internal skills. The Echos have similar farfield microphones, so it should be around the same quality as the HomePod.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#49

Post by bigiain »

Does anybody else wonder how advanced audio surveillance tech is, if commercial off the shelf consumer products are _this good_ at eavesdropping?

Has anyone ever tried putting a HomePod at the focus of a large parabolic (audio) reflector, and pointing it at their neighbours windows or people across the park?

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#50

Post by toasterlovin »

jefhwite wrote: post #41
toasterlovin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been getting lots of false positives, as well, but it seems to have started happening suddenly. I wonder if it's related to a recent software update.

We often get false positives as well. I've wished there were some way to signal a false positive to the device after Siri is activated, like "Siri, I didn't ask for you," to help it learn/train it. Not sure how feasible such a function would be, but I imagine it would be helpful feedback down the line on the engineering end. Anything to reduce the false positives would be great as they are a) a nuisance and b) furthe…

I would guess that they are inferring this based on whether the device gets another request in rapid succession.
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