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Asked — Edited

Amazon Echo

I have purchased an Amazon Echo and am very impressed with its abilities. I would like to know if there is any way to merge my Echo with EZB so I can get the benefit of both systems through my Echo. This sounds confusing but I want the benefit of information and voice interaction of my Echo and the Robot control aspects of EZB by using my Echo's great voice recognition. I love the Echo speaker system and microphone and its ability to answer almost any question. I also want to use the Echo for voice commands to the EZB and I want to use the Echo voice for both.

I realize I may have to use Windows Cortana since the voice comes through Windows but I like Echo Better and it has the ability to connect and control items through IFTTT.


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PRO
USA
#26  
Alexa Voice Service supports speech recognition requests, you capture the voice request and you upload to their service.

Because the recognition process is not done in the desktop, it's necessary to implement a mechanism to start audio capture and some timeout/trigger to stop.

Once you have the recorded audio, you call their api and a sound result is returned, you can output the result in your desktop speakers or in the EZB speaker (via EZB SDK).

To summarize Amazon Alexa Voice Service, allows you to do Speech Recognition, request interpretation and return results.

ASFAIK does not provide a TTS functionality.
PRO
USA
#27  
Alexa Skills is a different beast, provides a mechanism to create skills/action responses applied to the speech recognition/interpretation.

Examples:
Alexa make an appointment with ...
Alexa switch off the A/C
Alexa goto my bedroom (home robot)

are parsed and routed to different applications.
PRO
USA
#28  
Amazon Echo is a consumer hardware product which uses all the above APIs, and the main objective is to materialize the concept.

Based in some reviews it seems the microphone array is very good.

I believe once the Amazon APIs take off to other devices/solutions Echo will be off the shelf, you will have the Alexa functionalities in the TV, smartphones, other hardware devices, robots, appliances etc.
PRO
USA
#29  
So far i got some success with the Alexa Voice Service, there are some gaps, for example i need to start and stop the voice recording, to be smooth it's necessary some trigger like "Alexa, ..." one idea is to use the local speech recognition engine, to start the recording until there's a silence (sound processing) or a timeout.

Alexa Skills requires a callback mechanism, which is not simple to have on a mobile desktop or tablet, there are other alternatives to solve the issue, but is the one needed to trigger the custom actions.

Cheers
#30  
:) You are traveling the same path that EZ-AI traveled.

BTW, one of the services that we use allows you to tie into Alexa.
PRO
USA
#31  
I presume in your ez-ai the "interesting part" will be connecting all the dots, skills routing with yours or other providers, content feeding, there s a lot of work to be done to integrate and unify all the tools.

So far i m only in the easy path: integration started as an iot curiosity.

i think for simple robots windows speech apis are more aligned, All the logic/processing is local (desktop), only for entertaining, a quick (poor man's) AI or other alexa providers, makes sense going out.
#33  
Yes, we are not connecting to Alexa, but one of the API's that we use can connect to Alexa. It is the one that also allows you to customize EZ-AI if you want to do this type of work. It also has ties to Cortana.

We don't use either of these two. We use others that provide more information than either and have the data approved by professionals in those specific fields. A chemist reviews the chemical knowledge, physicist the physics knowledge and so on. We also have a local database for reminders and such.
PRO
USA
#34  
@David,

when you mention same path, i assumed EZ-AI would be an AI hub handle multiple sources like Alexa, Cortana, Google now, etc.

So my last comment does not reflect the real EZ-AI direction, I apologize if I mislead anyone.
#35  
Yes, it is a hub that can connect to multiple services. These include

API.AI
Nuance Cloud
Wolfram|Alpha
Some local stuff that we have written

We have dropped Watson as these other services do a better job and cost less for the user.

API.AI can connect to Cortana and Alexa and allows you to customize EZ-AI if you want to go down that path.

Same path referring to how to handle the initial "Hey robotname" to start recording and when to stop, then submit the recorded data to other services.
PRO
USA
#36  
@Herr

Nice

it resembles me my bedroom alarm clock, my model must be version 0.1, mine have advanced features FM/AM radio, if i add a RPI2, it will be a killer product!
#37  
Hey @Herr, this is like one of the Rafiki pods which also uses EZ-AI. Really it is very similar from an electronics perspective.
#39  
I am very impressed with all the information. It seems we are going in the right direction. Can't wait.
#41  
HAH

That's great!
Just played with it and it seems to work very well.
#42  
I did to and it worked well. Should be no time until an app is made for Ezb.
PRO
USA
#43  
Just ordered the Dot to connect ALAN. I guess there are several hoops to jump through to get it ordered. They only want to sell to early adopters so you have to use the Echo to pre-order although there is a work around using the Amazon apps but will prolly close that hack soon. The Dot was about $90. Won't get it until May. Very limited stock. But it connects via Bluetooth or 3.5 Jack.
Portugal
#44  
Here is an app in python for RPi2 to use Echo. You must always have a trigger (input) when talking, that is the only downside.
#45  
If anyone is interested in trying Amazon Echo (Alexa) with EZB before diving into developing Skills or the API, I'd like to suggest you try your concepts using IFTTT. Its not as elegant, but works as a proof of concept.

IFTTT already supports a few Alexa commands. I use the Amazon Alexa Channel to create a verbal trigger

User-inserted image


Then I use the Maker Channel as described in another thread to send the command to EZB.


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