←back to thread

The era of open voice assistants

(www.home-assistant.io)
878 points _Microft | 1 comments | 20 Dec 24 00:29 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
lxe ◴[20 Dec 24 04:42 UTC] No.42468351[source]▶
Here's what I'm looking for in a voice assistant:

- Full privacy: nothing goes to the "cloud"

- Non-shitty microphones and processing: i want to be able to be heard without having to yell, repeat, or correct

- No wake words: it should listen to everything, process it, and understand when it's being addressed. Since everything is private and local, this is now doable

- Conversational: it should understand when I finished talking, have ability to be interrupted, all with low latency

- Non-stupid: it's 2024, and alexa and siri and google are somehow absolutely abysmal at doing even the basics

- Complete: i don't want to use an app to get stuff configured. I want everything to be controlled via voice

replies(5): >>42468394 #>>42468471 #>>42468967 #>>42470013 #>>42471806 #
danparsonson ◴[20 Dec 24 04:55 UTC] No.42468394[source]▶
> No wake words: it should listen to everything, process it, and understand when it's being addressed

Even humans struggle with this one - that's what names are for!

replies(2): >>42468438 #>>42481564 #
antonyt ◴[20 Dec 24 05:07 UTC] No.42468438[source]▶
Yeah, I’m having a hard time imagining how no-wake-word could work in practice.
replies(3): >>42468837 #>>42470838 #>>42473855 #
ethbr1 ◴[20 Dec 24 13:18 UTC] No.42470838[source]▶
Like that really annoying friend who jumps in every other sentence with "Well actually..."
replies(1): >>42472167 #
1. marcosdumay ◴[20 Dec 24 15:56 UTC] No.42472167[source]▶
I have a coworker that set up an Alexa an year or so ago, I don't know what was the issue, but it would jump into Teams meetings after every noise in his house.