Hy there. I’v just got my Home Assitant voice PE, and it picks up “hey jarvis” only when i’m at max 1m from the device. Its is by design, or there could be something wrong with my specific unit ?
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Im also experiencing the same issue.
Almost have to shout at the device even when in the same room.
Using the “Ok nabu” wake word.
After it has woken up, it also often misinterpret or don’t understand my commands at all unless i speak very loudly. (using swedish language with ha cloud)
Any more people having this issue?
If this is by design, sadly i’ll have to return the device.
It’s probably not “by design” but it’s just how it is. As much as the XMOS chip is hyped up in it, none of the hardware out there using it works especially well, especially if you’re used to the far-better setups used in the big-name commercial VA hardware.
In my testing, I think there’s a few issues. First, the XMOS chip is really bad about filtering out audio being generated by the device – above about half volume, wake words stop working so “stop” doesn’t work with alarms unless you’re right on top of it. I have it on my list to remove it from the case and see if it still has that problem – it could be distorted audio conducting through the case causing the problem, or it could be room echos.
Second, microwakeword is an amazing bit of code, but it really doesn’t work very well. “Okay Nabu” works reasonably, but it’s just such a dumb wake-word. I don’t especially like the whole “hey ____” thing, but I get how it helps with false-positives. But “Okay”? Yeah, no. But “hey Jarvis” is a lot less accurate. But, really, I get it – Amazon and Google have hundreds of millions of samples of people using their wake words to train with, both positive and negative. And no one has figured out how to do an automatic training that works well without real-world data. IMO, a lot of the struggle using the Vpe stems directly from this. I have one of mine reconfigured to use openwakeword and it is far more reliable. Still not even close to a $25 Google Hub Mini, but… better.
Lastly, I’ve found that Whisper’s quality of STT drops off enormously as the signal gets noisier, far more than what Nabu Casa’s hosted STT does. (Which is weird, as I would’ve just assumed they were running Whisper, but maybe they’ve got non-default settings?) So even when it wakes and the XMOS chip is doing automatic gain control and boosting levels, they don’t work from across the room without basically shouting to keep the AGC in check.
Now, some of those things can be software fixed, but a lot can’t. But – there really aren’t better options out there that are “open”, so… you have to pick your poison. You can use Alexa or Google to feed commands into your HA and be limited to the configuration they’ve got, or DIY and be limited to the hardware you can get.
Personally, I like having the Vpes. Although, so far, my wife is not as sold on them. I think part of that is the training on “hey Jarvis” is especially biased towards male voices. She can’t get it to activate 3/4 of the time.
IMO, that’s the biggest thing that needs improving – they really, really need wake words that work reliably.
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All 3 wake words work for 4 to 5 times and then they just stop working. I have to change the word in the settings and it works for 4 or 5 times again. Did not find a solution yet.
I’m experiencing the same issue with the “Okay Nabu” wake word. I have to speak very loudly for it to activate, which is quite frustrating. I’ve tried different setups, but nothing seems to help.
I’m seriously considering returning the device…
Same, wake words are hit or miss. Have to resort to hitting the button