Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings • Hacker News Board

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#71

Post by gnicholas » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

lozaning wrote: post #67

gnicholas wrote: post #7

> Directional noises generated by household appliances such as a vacuum cleaner, hairdryer, and microwave From what my friends with HomePods tell me, the HomePod is amazingly good at hearing people — even with lots of background noise. Interestingly, Apple's problem may cease being "can the HomePod hear the user?" and become "How loudly do we have the HomePod respond so that the human can hear the response while a va…

The team at Amazon has already figured out how to have it whisper back to you if you whisper at it. Seems like it would be easy to run that backwards.

The point I was trying to make is that HomePod can hear you even when a vaccum is running — but your hearing is not accurate enough to hear HomePod if it replies to you at the same volume level because you don't have the impressive array of mics. HomePod would have to figure out how far away you are from it, and how far you are from the vaccum, to calculate the appropriate volume to reply with so that you could easily hear it.

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#72

Post by fetus8 » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #55

fetus8 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed that certain queries that used to work have stopped giving you the expected response? I've started noticing more false positives since iOS 12 launched, and there's a couple requests that now don't give me the expected response. The most annoying issue happens to be requesting Siri to set an alarm. I'll ask: "Hey Siri, turn on my 6:15am alarm." to which she'll respond, "Which alarm do you want to turn…

If you think about what you asked Siri it's a sensible response. You didn't ask her to set an alarm for 6:15am. You asked her to turn on an existing 6:15am alarm. Which since I am assuming it didn't exist Siri asked what others you did want to turn on.

Late response, but here's the thing...that alarm does exist and is listed off when Siri goes through all the existing alarm options that can be turned on...

Re: Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

#73

Post by eridius » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #69

eridius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it uses the same logic that Handoff does to determine what your "active" device is. If the "active" device hears the Siri request, it responds. Otherwise I think it prioritizes HomePod. If multiple HomePods hear it, I'm not sure, possibly using volume to determine distance?

Since they have an array of six mics, they could triangulate the sound to calculate the distances.

Wouldn't a strict volume check be better in general? If I'm physically closer to one HomePod but something is in the way, obscuring audio, then I probably want to talk to the HomePod that's further away but unobscured. Or to put it another way, if I'm standing in my living room next to the door to the Office, the Office HomePod might be physically closer, but I'm probably trying to talk to the Living Room one.