Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Remote Voice Control
There are definite advantages to being able to use your voice in several different rooms of the house. However, this
adds new complexity as you must do one of the following:
u
Run a microphone from every room in the house back to the computer
: You can purchase small
audio mixers that will combine the inputs from multiple microphones quite cheaply. The
most natural place is near light sockets and bulbs, as there's already a cable running nearby.
However, you will need to shield their cables to avoid mains hum. Some jurisdictions will
also require you (legally) to have a minimum distance between power cables and nonpower
cables. In Australia, for example, this distance is 300mm. You should be safe and check the
local laws for your country before proceding.
u
Have a separate computer in each room, and process the data locally
: This gives you the highest
level of control as multiple people can talk to the server simultaneously, and the server is only
processing request data, not audio data. This is more expensive, however, and requires that
you're able to hide a (small) PC in each room.
In each case, the acoustics of each room will differ, so you might need to record your voice from difference places
in the room.
N
Using the Siri hack is only useful for a hand-held voice control solution, because Siri requires you to press a
button in order to activate it. Indeed, this is a major block to much software that doesn't begin recording on a “trigger” or
initial “key” phrase or word.
Note
In old films, before the days of boom mics, microphones were hidden inside large props such as radios or
telephones so that they could be positioned close enough to the actors to pick up their voices without extraneous
noise. You can do the same on a smaller scale by mounting microphones (or even PCs!) inside a chair or under a
table. The main consideration is then how you get the cables (for power and data) tp run back to the voice machine.
If you're starting a home automation project from scratch or are decorating, then you have the option of pulling up
floor boards and running cables underneath. Such decisions are not to be taken lightly, however, particularly because
maintenance is very costly!
N
Old Bluetooth headsets and hands-free units were both expensive and bulky. They are now, however, much
cheaper and can provide a sneaky way of adding wireless remote microphones throughout the house for capturing voice
commands or security monitoring.
Note
For me, however, the second option is preferable because having a separate voice recognition machine isn't as
bad as it sounds. Okay, so there's a high cost involved and extra power issues, but because the machine has nothing
else to do, it can exist without keyboard, mouse, or monitor and sit quietly, untouched, for many years without
maintenance. Also, with the low-cost notebooks available, you can place (read: hide) one in two or more rooms
with their own microphones, thereby eliminating most of the problems of audio acoustics that you would otherwise
encounter, along with the ponderings on how to wire microphones and their preamplifiers between rooms. The cost
of the low-end machines preinstalled with Vista, which includes voice recognition software, is now not much more
than the cost of a software license for some of the other packages. I hope those developers will soon realize this and
the market they're missing before this topic's second edition!
Search WWH ::
Custom Search