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 anymore AT ALL - I've gone that route, they both work, but they want my dollars all the time, and it's become increasingly clear that if they can't get me making purchases through those devices - they will kill them off, or become ever more scummy in the attempt (Alexa is now including ads in the "did you know" section - "did you know" was already a fucking terrible decision to include, since it's going to marginally increase interaction at the expense of huge user dissatisfaction. But putting ads there has made me leave.)
So basically - I think if anything, we're seeing a speed run of 90s/2000s tech company boom/bust. A huge amount of money poured into the space with no real idea of how to sustainably profit, but the space itself doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.
It's really, really compelling to allow voice control in all sorts of interactions - but it needs to be very clearly working with me, and not trying to subvert my intent for profit. That might even mean it needs to fall back to something like "if this command, then that action" style usage. No more changing commands, no more bullshit ads, no more subversion of what I'm asking it to do.
It needs to obey me, not google or amazon. Otherwise it's a sales rep and not a digital assistant.
I got an echo (alexa) for free and use it for home assistant. It only works when I have an internet connection. So when my internet is out, I cannot turn my lights on/off with it. I understand why, but i too would REALLY like to just have all functionality dependencies for home automation to be local.
I use Mycroft with the home assistant vm running on Proxmox. I’m surprised how easily they integrate. And when the internet goes out I can locally control things from a laptop.
I'll have to check out the specifics - but your full setup does not seem like an improvement for me. If alexa is down, I can open up the app on my phone for each smart device manufacturer and manually control things that way. They only need my local wifi network to be functional, internet access not needed.
Can a raspberry pi handle the server functionality I wonder?
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, the internet is just one giant consumption stream with a few searches and purchases now and then.
That digital daemon experience taught me that I care more about physical intelligence than verbal intelligence when it comes to my technology. I'm verbally intelligent myself, I don't need an AI who can't even speak correctly, let alone understand me, be my verbal interface to the world.
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.
- 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?)
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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).
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 anymore AT ALL - I've gone that route, they both work, but they want my dollars all the time, and it's become increasingly clear that if they can't get me making purchases through those devices - they will kill them off, or become ever more scummy in the attempt (Alexa is now including ads in the "did you know" section - "did you know" was already a fucking terrible decision to include, since it's going to marginally increase interaction at the expense of huge user dissatisfaction. But putting ads there has made me leave.)
So basically - I think if anything, we're seeing a speed run of 90s/2000s tech company boom/bust. A huge amount of money poured into the space with no real idea of how to sustainably profit, but the space itself doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.
It's really, really compelling to allow voice control in all sorts of interactions - but it needs to be very clearly working with me, and not trying to subvert my intent for profit. That might even mean it needs to fall back to something like "if this command, then that action" style usage. No more changing commands, no more bullshit ads, no more subversion of what I'm asking it to do.
It needs to obey me, not google or amazon. Otherwise it's a sales rep and not a digital assistant.