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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Does it actually work for you though? I've quickly abandoned Google assistant because it just misunderstands what I say about 2/3s of the time. A friend of mine who has all his lights controllable by voice complains about the same issue - a lot of the time, Google just doesn't understand the command so by the time you get it "right" you could have walked up to the switch 3 times.

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I had Alexa controlling the lights for a while, but I found talking requires much more cognitive effort than picking up a remote, finding the right button by touch, and pushing it.

I can literally do the latter three quarters asleep, but not so much the former.

It would be far more useful to have the process almost completely automated. Lights go on when someone enters a room and go off when everyone leaves, with optional manual override.

This turns out to be a hard(ish) problem that needs better sensors and/or some form of personal ID.

Using Alexa you can set up routines, which are effectively macros triggered by a keyword, and tend to be recognised more consistently. I’ve got mine set so “bedtime” turns off the main lights and turns on dimmed side lights, and “goodnight” turns off all the lights in the house.

I switched from g-assist to Alexa because at least in my experience I found that while google was way better at random trivia, Alexa was way better at understanding the narrow set of commands she supports.

I think this is both a mic quality issue and a nlp issue. All the online comparisons compare random trivia but I almost never ask trivia because the failure rate on both is too high (that domain is way too open ended for assistants right now I think).

It does, just need to remember that they require a specific way of talking. I'm always by default talking more loudly and articulately with simple expressions, then it gets it for the first try. (At least Google Assistant, Siri has way way more issues understanding me.)

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