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Control4 announces Amazon Echo integration


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For some reason today none of my devices are showing up in MyControl4 account for Alexa though most devices are responding.  My THEATER light will turn off but will not turn off.  Also, when I try to increase volume in some rooms, the volume is muted.... not sure what is going on there.

ie "Alexa, turn up KITCHEN volume by 10" and volume goes mute

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15 minutes ago, Spinerep622 said:

Ok, I have an audio/video question about Alexa. Will I be able to just say Alexa play pandora in kitchen? Or play Napster in the living room? I guess I need to know if I will be able to select the source and room for all of my audio and video?

 

No.

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2 hours ago, jfh said:

Which is not the same as "Play Pandora in kitchen".

 

Go ahead - try it and see what happens.

 

Yeah.... - the 'phrase he wrote' is not his question though - the question was:

Quote

I guess I need to know if I will be able to select the source and room for all of my audio and video?

Answer being - yes you can.

Either you're too hard-on for semantics, or you're backtracking.

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I was being neither.  There were actually three questions and the correct answers were No, Yes, and Yes.

His first question has come up multiple times over the last year since Alexa support has been available and been discussed many times.  It is the most logical verbal construct; the one most want to use.  And it doesn't work.  

The C4 Alexa skill cannot and does not recognize or differentiate a room (because it's still processed as a global light in a Hue hub) so <target> in <room> cannot be used. And "Play" can't be used at all.

 

5 hours ago, Cyknight said:

 

Either you're too hard-on for semantics, or you're backtracking.

 

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6 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

 The control4 integration is not pretending to be a Hue hub.

If not, it has the same restrictions.  The primary point was that the name/trigger has to be global - you can't have lights in the kitchen and bathroom each called "ceiling"..

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23 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

that is correct, but that is where you can use the voice scenes drivers to "make it room specific".

Different voice scenes w/room names.

Of course, but that still doesn't allow the natural constructs to be used, like the desired "Play Pandora in kitchen".  

"Turn on kitchen music" works fine, and is easy to learn, but isn't very intuitive.

 

Control4 is designed to work with the concept of specific locations (rooms), yet their Alexa implementation does not support location.  That is a big miss.  The ability to create Voice Scenes and rename existing lights/AL scenes online can mask the issue somewhat (and I think the rename feature is a good one), but it doesn't really address the failure to integrate the support into the C4 paradigm.

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2 hours ago, jfh said:

I was being neither.  There were actually three questions and the correct answers were No, Yes, and Yes.

Poster is a human, not a computer - you answer the actual question, not the line items.

That said, you touch (here and in the follow-up posts) on the true limitation of voice control of any kind to date - it's inability to be very 'understanding' of 'meaning' vs 'logic'.

I'm not Alexa developer by any stretch, but I think the limitation on the phrasing is not C4's as much as it is Alexa's.

 

This is frankly why I'm not all that impressed by all of it (at this point in time). Alexa really can't do a lot more than what we've had before, with similar limitations.

And those limitations are what I believe has prevented voice control from being far more common already.

Not cost or time of setup, but the learning curve people need to operate the voice-control. Voice/speech is something that for people is intuitive (and thus people feel should be intuitive in control) - but for a computer who can only operate on logic, it's one of the hardest things to 'learn'

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@Cyknight There were three questions posed, not "line items".   The first question was "can I say play something in room?"  The answer is no.  Period.

 

Whether the limitation on phrasing is more on C4 or Amazon is debatable.  Obviously Amazon has final say on the order of where the voice stream processing is done, but C4 didn't get anything in the support that wasn't already there with existing lighting support.  Not even a dedicated trigger sequence like "Alexa, tell Control4 ..." Or "Alexa, tell the house ..."  that would allow whatever followed to be treated as being directed to the local project.  This would allow use of device names/types and otherwise reserved keywords, station and service names to be used and obvious words like play and watch to be incorporated.

 

Frim what I have read, there is no technical reason C4 couldn't have done this or that Amazon wouldn't have allowed this (that was the main reason the whole "skill" concept was implemented), so in this case it's almost all on C4 as opposed to Amazon.

You raise an excellent point on the difficulties of processing meaning vs. logic.  The more flexibility allowed in the actual command, the more programming and processing logic (and, by extension, computing power) needed.  That's the main thing here -  it certainly would have taken new logic to translate the meaning of a C4 related phrase into the necessary logic to have the intended event execute.  Instead, C4 essentially hooked into what already existed rather than add anything new.  C4 could have added logic in the skill to process anything beyond a unique trigger phrase (assuming they got Amazon to support it), but they didn't.  

You are absolutely correct when saying the existing limitations need to be dealt with before voice command can become common.  I just hope C4 understands that too and works toward that goal rather than stopping where they are assuming it will be good enough for most.  Alexa (or voice control) support needs to be integrated in Control4, not just layered on top. 

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18 minutes ago, jfh said:

@Cyknight There were three questions posed, not "line items".   The first question was "can I say play something in room?"  The answer is no.  Period.

LOL mince words all you want - your answer was still inaccurate at best - you answered a straight no - not "no, yes, yes" (which would also be wrong by the way - as a no on the first would also mean a no on the second).

And no, there weren't 3 questions asked, the intended question, as one would deduce by the phrasing of the 'last' one is if the poster would have the ability to to start a music or video source in any room with a single sentence.

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You are correct that the answers should have been No, No, Yes - I just went back and realized that I missed the word "play" in the second question.

 

By stating there should have been three answers, you implicitly acknowledge there were three questions. :)

 

Not it sure why you believe the "intended" question was the last one when the first two indicate what he actually wanted to say.  

The answer to can one say "Play <source> in <room>?"  is still "No", whether you think one question was asked or three.   And that you can't do that is on Control4, not Amazon.

 

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To get back on topic...

Hopefully this is just a first step for Control4... The beta of the Voice Pod skill had taken this much further and I assume that Control4 will follow the same route. The Voice Pod skill allowed one to give a command and choose a room (e.g. "Alexa, tell VoicePod to turn on the Downlights in the bedroom". I am sure Control4 will get there!

In terms of AI, Control4 also needs to build a lot more synonyms into commands, like the Phillips Hue Brudge does with turn on and open doing the same thing, increase, raise, brighten etc. all doing the same thing.

I am sure we will see a lot of progress over the next little while...

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Alexa is in the UK official and yes we do not have the Control 4 Skill

I have just paid Ari to install his driver to get the ball rolling - Could not wait for C4/Amazon to get there act together.  

Choose not to wait. You have waited years for an echo

Sent from my STV100-1 using Tapatalk

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24 minutes ago, Gary Leeds UK said:

Yes but when you get one - Worth the wait - Now need to use with C4 - $100 is nothing compared with Days of knowing

you can use it, but have to wait for some idiot to press the OK Button to get it into Amazon Skills

Plus $100 is only a bottle of wine !!!!

Come to South Africa... you can get 3 or 4 really good bottles of wine for that price!

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