The future has arrived

[Kaido]

Behold, Billy the Bass...as possessed by Amazon's Alexa smart assistant:

http://gizmodo.com/alexa-combined-with-big-mouth-billy-bass-is-the-most-un-1788612436

That is some HGTTG-level stuff right there

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10157576067105265

 

[BUTCH1]

Meh, the novelty would wear off in a day. Why didn't Apple name the person something simple like "Kim" instead of "Alexis" , much easier to remember and speak.

 

[NoTine42]

Meh, the novelty would wear off in a day. Why didn't Apple name the person something simple like "Kim" instead of "Alexis" , much easier to remember and speak.

I'm sure Apple has some 4-letter names for Amazon's Alexa
Right now, you can change the wake word settings to Echo or Amazon.

 

[Ruptga]

Meh, the novelty would wear off in a day. Why didn't Apple name the person something simple like "Kim" instead of "Alexis" , much easier to remember and speak.

Out of my ass guess: Alexis is a relatively uncommon name, and they didn't want it getting triggered by casual conversation. Its sounds are also hard and distinct, which probably helps with speech recognition.

 

[pete6032]

Meh, the novelty would wear off in a day. Why didn't Apple name the person something simple like "Kim" instead of "Alexis" , much easier to remember and speak.

Could not be used in Korea.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I want one of these in every room all linked together. This is the future.

 

[gorcorps]

Out of my ass guess: Alexis is a relatively uncommon name, and they didn't want it getting triggered by casual conversation. Its sounds are also hard and distinct, which probably helps with speech recognition.

Bingo

These decisions aren't made randomly, there's thought put into these trigger words.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You would think they would have made it so you can customize to any name though. So it's user's choice if they end up picking a name that's common.

 

[Ruptga]

You would think they would have made it so you can customize to any name though. So it's user's choice if they end up picking a name that's common.

Why? This is simpler, and it makes it much easier for them to build a brand. Nobody wants to talk to their intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator, they want to talk to Siri.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Why? This is simpler, and it makes it much easier for them to build a brand. Nobody wants to talk to their intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator, they want to talk to Siri.

Well they can still default it to whatever, but adding the ability to change it would be super easy. I'd want to call it something cool like "hal" or "computer". Computer would be kind of cool. "Computer, set heat to 20 degrees and run diagnostic of furnace".

 

[John Connor]

Behold, Billy the Bass...as possessed by Amazon's Alexa smart assistant:

http://gizmodo.com/alexa-combined-with-big-mouth-billy-bass-is-the-most-un-1788612436

That is some HGTTG-level stuff right there

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10157576067105265

BAHAHAHAHAHA! That is so funny! I recently bought an Echo Dot and I have a Billy Bass. I wonder how I can do that?

 

[Charmonium]

"Hal" would be cool. And program the response to be a man's voice. "I'm sorry Dave but I can't order that custom EEPROM for my control circuit."

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah would be cool to program it to open/lock doors too. "I'm sorry dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" "But I need to get to work, unlock the front door!".

One of these days I actually want to experiment with some kind of custom speech recognition, I don't actually trust stuff like the echo or pretty much any consumer product, but something that runs soley on my home server would be fun. In general it would just be pre programmed commands, but could add some AI to it too. At most it would just be something to impress friends though.

I have been brainstorming my home automation system though, my current setup is not greatly modular and is already a mess of wires. I was going for using rackmount space, but something like that is really more well suited in a nema cabinet with din rails.

 

[Charmonium]

I just got a Smart Things hub and it's pretty simple to use. It automatically links up to the cloud and location services so you can control devices from anywhere and since everything is pollable you know whether things are on, off and what their state is. I'm just getting into it so I don't know a lot about it yet but it's zwave based and seems easy AF to use. The hardest thing I've had to do so far was to had a secondary controller which is a hand held remote and even that was pretty simple once I realized that I had to do it through the hub.

I have a ton of old x10 crap and I need to migrate. I've been waiting for things to gel around a standard and for there to be decent security. I don't really keep up with this stuff any more but check periodically and it seems that zwave is fairly mature now with most of functionality and features you need. Plus you can get security systems that integrate that along with video surveillance.