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Google’s unabashed clone of the Amazon Echo is interesting. They certainly have more cloud/back-end capability than Amazon when it comes to services and natural language parsing.
Amazon Echo is limited by only understanding US English and the although it has good speech recognition, I would call the interface a “voice command line” as it doesn’t have any real natural language understanding or context.
Google is really good, too good, on having context and being able to parse input based on current or prior contextual history. Unfortunately, that is often “too good”, I don’t like Google knowing so much about me and what I have done and Google is fast and loose when it comes to privacy – they only care about selling data to advertisers, not protecting user privacy.
Ideally, I would like to see Apple’s Siri 3rd party toolkit continue to evolve (what they just opened up at WWDC 2016 is very interesting).
It would be awesome if Apple, or maybe a smart 3rd party h/w guy, were to develop a far-field microphone array that perhaps used bluetooth to connect to Siri. One or more remote microphones plus Siri would be strong competition to Amazon Echo and the upcoming Google device.
Until Apple has some kind of microphone input that is not tied to pulling your phone out of your pocket (and limited to having to have an iOS phone/device), they are going to be left out of the “voice revolution” – at least for home control.
Thanks!
I’ve decided to keep it to the local LAN only and use the OpenSprinkler plug-in for Indigo as the primary control point. Since Indigo has secure remote access, that does everything I need in one place.
I would avoid IFTTT, it is ok for use as a demo or toys, but the latency and unreliability for a production or mission-critical system is questionable.
Bear in mind it is a free service, so there is no incentive for good customer support or longevity. They might be buried under the weight of their own popularity.
Personally, Siri has been disappointing, I have had much more success with Amazon Echo/Alexa (I have both Siri and Echos). There is such a huge difference in having a voice command system that doesn’t require having an iPhone and taking it out of your pocket.
My wife and other family members hate using Siri but have taken to Alexa “organically”. They watched me use it and started talking to it on their own, imitating my voice commands, without my having to nudge them or instruct them in how to use it.
Alexa is also “platform neutral” because you don’t have to have an IPhone, so Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and non-phone users are not left out.
I would suggest anyone working on plug-ins or integrations take at look at the Echo. Right now, it is the most popular voice control and “Multi-product automation hub”. (Yeah, Google has an Echo clone coming out later this year, but nobody knows if it will be a dud like many of their other hardware products or a contender – too early to bet on that yet.)
