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I use my Alexa all the time, but 99% of it is:

Alexa, time! Alexa, set an alarm for 5 minutes! Alexa how many minutes left? Alexa, turn off/on all the lights!

That’s basically it. I wrote some apps for it a long time ago to do custom stuff like read me some Reddit pages, but the SDK changed or something and eventually they just died and it wasn’t obvious to me how to recreate it/not worth the effort. I really wish there was an easy way to just put python scripts onto the device or something. The process of going through Amazon is pretty unnecessarily complex and annoying.

I know there are ways of doing this stuff with raspberry pi, but also: not really worth the effort. If I cared that much I’d just make a PWA for my house and give that to my wife and kids.

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>I use my Alexa all the time, but 99% of it is: Alexa, time! Alexa, set an alarm for 5 minutes! Alexa how many minutes left? Alexa, turn off/on all the lights!

That's also why Siri is good enough even though it is destroyed in a trivia contest against Google or Amazon.

Voice UI is very bad since you don't have a way to know what it can do reliably. Treating it as general artificial intelligence doesn't work because the experience feels like trying to get a really stupid person do something for you. It's much easier to do it yourself than to find a sentence structure that works for this particular request but not for others.

Voice UI is only good for basic commands that you know the device is capable of.

> Ok Google lock the device

>> I'm sorry I can't do that

> Ok Google clear notifications

>> Opens Bluetooth (!)

> Ok Google WhatsApp call xyz

>> I can't call with duo (!) yet

> Ok Google restart phone

>> To restart your phone <instructions>

even commands that used to work will suddenly stop working. "turn off office lights" no longer works because "office lamp" suddenly got precedence over "office room" and im too lazy to rename everything to accomodate Google

Google Assistant is incomparably worse at affecting the device it's running on than Siri.

This has been my compliant with all of this voice control stuff.

The dev teams are so damn focused on being able to answer some esoteric query that you're asking as joke, they forget that you only want to do like 5 basic things:

* Set an alarm/reminder

* Read then send a text message (while driving). It doesn't even have to be good. Just something that I can send while driving.

* Maybe.....maybe ask for the weather.

* Turn a named household device on/off.

* Play a song

It's like these services all completely overlook the actions that you'd be taking on your phone anyways.

> * Play a song Thanks to their newest Amazon Music update, they managed to break this one by only allowing shuffling unless you pay extra for Amazon Music.

Exactly. Mine is only used for timers/alarms, weather and as a bluetooth speaker. I just want those to work reliably. Every time it tries to change my behavior ("I can also...") it is actively annoying me.

But I also recognize that my usage won't generate revenue and will continue to cost. Surely they can't just keep offering free service forever on equipment that was purchased at deep discount. But I don't think offering gimmicks is the answer to this.

> Maybe.....maybe ask for the weather

I remember one time I asked my Google Home the weather to see if it was cold enough to put on a jacket, and after hearing a temperature that I was ambivalent about, I took a risk and tried asking it what the wind speed was. It started reading out the Wikipedia page for "wind speed" until I told it to stop.

They all do stuff like that. It'd be really nice to have a button to turn that off entirely. I never want a device to literally read me long-form webpages. Stop trying to LARP as a Starship AGI when you aren't one.

Alexa, what's the wind like today?

Worked for me

Totally possible that I just phrased the query in a way it didn't understand, and totally possible that a Google Home just can't do this (or couldn't at the time). If anything, I think that kind of illustrates another important point; not only is it hard to figure out what exactly a given voice assistant is capable of doing, it's also pretty hard to tell the difference between "I need to phrase this differently" and "this device can't answer the question I have". I guess it's like how professional dog trainers say that they're really training the person rather than the dog; the quickest path to getting a voice assistant that people can use isn't just training the language model, but training people to talk to it correctly. This makes sense, given how similar trends happened with text-based search engines.

Agree 100%. I realize my comment sounded like a flippant dismissal because, well, that's what the internet does, but I meant that this phrasing works on Alexa and maybe also on Google. Siri answers by telling me it's clear and 36 degrees, FWIW. What's the wind speed today? worked for Siri, but its voice response isn't the wind speed but "it looks completely calm right now". Did I ask for your opinion, Siri?

A lot of apps have tie-ins to Siri but it's very hard to discover them and understand how to use them. I think the negotiation of the shared language between us and our robot servants/friends/overlords is going to be difficult until we can answer that question.

Echo can actually tell you wind speed and humidity (with forecast). I use that a lot. Also, I like to run at dawn, so I often ask the Echo when the sunrise is.

I wonder how many of those could be run device-local on 2-4 year old smartphone equivalent hardware (so, something you could build today and sell for <$300 as an Echo-equivalent) with some kind of trust-minimized cloud backend (or homekit, etc. integration for local device control).

$300 is way, way too much. The echo is $50 base, and usually on sale or discount. It has to be cheaper than an RPi to even come close to matching the price.

To me, the use case of Alexa is doing those exact same things _without_ having to use my phone.

Sometimes I want to listen to a podcast without risking accidentally spending the next hour on Reddit.

I believe that we are conditioned to restrict our command set based on what we know the device can do.

This betrays a spectacular failure of imagination on improving what the system can do. Show me a weather map. Show me turn by turn directions. Show me the television schedule. These are simple things that the display version cannot do.

Another problem is the clunkiness of accessing the apps. Ask foobar to tell me a joke … why not just “tell me a joke,” and remember that foobar is the preferred app to handle it? I have to remember two things. I have to remember that foobar is the app that I want, and tell me a joke is the command I must give to it.

Finally, volume control. When I ask it to turn it up, it stupidly increments it by one notch. Instead, it should take a sample of ambient noise, and pick a setting that is slightly above that. Otherwise, why would I be asking it to turn it up?

Just really simple simple things. I bet they could take 10 very smart people, that have never used this in the first place, and just watch them while they imagine all the possible things that could help around the house.

People want voice control because they see it in movies and TV.

But what they forget that the only reason movies and TV have it in the first place is because that way the audience hears what the character wants!

It's not because it's actually a better interface - because it's not!

Same with glass interfaces with no buttons - they make them because they are cheaper, not because it's better. But they look really cool, so people start to think they are actually better.

I'm sure there are tons more examples of things people think are done because they are better, but are actually done to save money or for some unrelated reason.

Maybe shoelaces that are laced inside-out. In the box they want the ends to point inward, but when you wear them you are supposed to relace them so they end up pointing outward.

I get your point

> Same with glass interfaces with no buttons - they make them because they are cheaper, not because it's better.

But are you saying current smartphones are somehow worse than button phones? I'll pass on that. And they ain't cheaper too :)

Current smartphones have infinite number of buttons due to touch screen.

Same way I used my google home.

And then one time out of 10 or something it added crap like "by the way, if you ever wanna know about blabla, you can just ask me to do blabla".

Now I don't own a google home mini anymore.

Amazon has been adding that too which makes me want to switch away (I'm already uncomfortable with the security risks of a third party controlled cloud microphone, but it's ok in my kitchen and bedroom where no sensitive audio happens.)

I suggest putting everything you can into home assistant and relying on that, since you host it yourself. It's also far more powerful than anything amazon provides anyway.

Then, the only integration you need is Alexa-> Home Assistant, so there is only one thing that can break.

What is Home Assistant? Google doesn’t help….

https://www.home-assistant.io/

> I really wish there was an easy way to just put python scripts onto the device or something.

Doesn't https://mycroft.ai fit this purpose?

Looks like you can ssh in: https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/mark-ii/advanced/ssh-access

and has python running on it:

https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/skill-development/introdu...

Has anyone got one though?

We really need free versions of virtual assistants, but Mycroft doesn't seem to be getting there.

It seems to be $350 (no international pricing?) which seems far too high to be realistic. More subjectively, that's quite an ugly-looking unit.

Also, not shipping till Jan? I'd be interested to see a review if anyone has managed to get one.

I use Alexa for everything.

- To ask for the weather, weather alerts, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed

- To ask about outdoor air quality, indoor air quality (requires air quality monitors)

- As a baby monitor (crying detector routine)

- To know when to empty the dehumidifier bucket (humidity > 60% routine)

- To know when someone left the AC fan off (high CO2 routine)

- To know when to open the window (high VOC routine)

- To know when to turn on the HEPA filters on high (high PM routine)

- To turn lights or on off

- To manage the thermostat temperature

- For music during lunch/dinner

- Reminder for meetings, taking out the trash, etc.

- Timers, alerts, alarms, reminders...

- To automatically turn off devices at night via smart plugs

- Vacuuming, mopping

- To locate my phone by calling myself

- Stock prices

I couldn't live without it.

What do you use for VOC/PM detection that integrates with Alexa?

Alexa Smart air quality monitor.

so from the perspective of an executive trying to make money off it: utterly useless

I also order stuff as it runs out.

Or they could just charge for costs + profit and let people decide if it’s worth the price. The SV business model is good for small companies to get rapid growth but after that it’s just bad economics

I wouldn't say useless. He'll look to buy other smart peripherals that fit into the Alexa ecosystem, not a competitor's. It helps build up the brand. There's also a lot of data there to collect.

Maybe not the most lucrative revenue stream, but not nothing.

Nah you totally could.

> Vacuuming, mopping

Please elaborate.

Probably having it start the robot vacuum

What seems interesting to me about many of these (all the HVAC, home automation stuff) is that a device with a voice interface sort of seems like a local maximum in terms of usability. You're spending lots of time getting info from Alexa and then telling her what to change to keep the environment ambient.

I would expect that in the future, home automation does all the regulation for you without any interaction. You set up a bunch of configuration in advance, and maybe train the device a little bit initially on things like your temperature preferences (because we think we want a certain temp, but actually usually find it slightly too warm or whatever). Then you almost never have to make changes, let alone expend your executive function on deciding what instructions to give the devices.

I'd love to do all this stuff too, but if the price I have to pay is an unauditable always-on listening device in my home that sends my every utterance to a server controlled by a FAANG, and which speaks verbal ads to boot, that's an absolute dealbreaker.

It's horrifying to me that anyone would allow such a device in their home. Someone gave me an Echo as a gift once. I smashed it and buried it in the back yard.

I could never get used to the thing. I got one for free and I went ahead and hooked it up - every once in a while I ask it to play some music, but for the most part, I'm just aware of it because my daughter has a friend named Alexa and I have to be careful not to say her name or else the Amazon device will wake up.

Same here. I love my Alexa speaker and use it several times daily — for the same use cases as you, plus asking Alexa to start music streaming. Been doing so for many years and it’s unlikely that would change anymore.

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