What are you using voice control for, on a regular basis?

Configuration Voice Assistant
1

Now that the year of the voice has quite progressed, and wakeword support is about to get launched, I’m curious: what are you people actually using voice control for? I mean not as a novelty, or because it’s a fascinating piece of tech, but I’d love to hear what your day-to-day usecases are, where voice control actually makes a difference for you. I’m playing around a bit with it, but so far I dont see the killer application of it, for me personally.

Which are the situation/usecases where you wouldnt want to go back to a physical button or the app anymore?

2

Personally, my family just uses it to control the lights in our living room / bedroom via a Google Home right now.

As much as I want to use a local voice control, without the wake word actually available yet as well as some easy to use, good looking, quality mic / speaker system it’s what we’re likely going to continue doing for the foreseeable future.

If NabuCasa would release some hardware similar to a Google Nest / Home mini speaker at an affordable cost, I would totally go for it just to cut the cloud out of the picture for local voice control.

3

What are the concrete scenarios there? More like a “coming into the room and switching things on”, or a “sitting on the couch already and switching to the light theme for movie night without getting up” kind of thing?

What generally turns me off when it comes to voice control is the “overhead” compared to pushing a button: saying the wake word, waiting for the confirmation that it worked and the device is listening, then saying the command, and THEN the action is taken. When I compare that to my esphome-driven button in the hallway which switches off the amp and most of the lights and then the remaining lights 10 secconds later, my impatience antennas are tingling :slight_smile:

4

I tested out the Willow option and that was quite good. Fast acting as it’s fully local. At the moment I only have it on a small ESP device so their is no decent audio for playing music etc, only good for controlling HA.

5

I’m not doubting that it works :slight_smile: I’m really just curious where people are using voice control as a long-term ongoing approach without sooner or later falling back to the app or a physical button again.

6

Open the application, check your email or message, hands-free control of lighting, music, shades, climate, door locks.

1 Like
7

Much like Andrew above, I mostly use Google Home’s to control lights or open roller shutters. Those are two things I do very regularly via voice.

Apart from controlling my irrigation system, I rarely use the HA app. That’s why I have put very little effort into making fancy dashboards.

My smart home is pretty much all controlled by automations (sunset / motion/ presence etc.) or by voice.

8

Alexa…
Turn the TV on/off
turn the xbox on
turn the lights to 80%
turn the downstairs lights off in 10 mins
turn the heating to 20 degrees
turn the outside light on
will it rain tomorrow
open the blinds
next song please (we are always polite on this one)
stop the music

all can be done for any part of the house not just where the button for that task it. these may be overriding an automation such as the blinds/heating

9

Home Assistant-only alexa routines:

Alexa…
It’s dark in here
It’s bedtime
I’m reading
I’m knitting
I’m watching a movie
What’s for dinner
What’s the temperature outside
Turn the Fan On / Off
Turn the Printer on
Open / Close the curtains
Security Check
Boost the heating
Boost the hot water
Where is “name”
Dinner’s ready
Water the garden

10

For the living room we have a couch side lamp with a pair of Sengled ZWave bulbs in it and then there is a Lutron dimmer switch on the overhead lights. It’s much easier to turn everything on to a given percentage by voice than it is to go around pushing buttons. Particularly when I’m already sitting down! Also, the TV is hooked up so that when we’re all done for the night it’s as easy as telling google to “turn off the living room” and everything turns off.

For the bedroom, the bedside lights for my wife and I are Hue bulbs. Our night stands are a little on the tall side and the lamps are also tall, so reaching up to turn off the lamps is annoying when you’re trying to go to sleep. Additionally, we don’t get percentage brightness that way. My wife is of the habit of staying awake longer than I, or even coming in after I’ve gone to bed, so she’ll turn on her light to a low setting (she might use her phone for that to be quite) but then when she’s finally ready to go to sleep or if she forgets to turn off the lights before falling asleep and I wake up, it’s a very quiete “hey google, turn off the lights” and the lights are off.

So, yeah, mostly laziness and not wanting to move around too much!

11

I was in a similar position for the living room, but, realizing that we’re creatures of habit, I automated the whole thing instead.

If the TV is turned off after 6 on a week night, it means the wife and I are sitting down to watch TV while eating dinner. So, when the TV comes on, an automation runs to turn off some ambient lighting that reflects in the TV and sets the lighting in the living room. I have a ThirdReality button stuck to the bottom side of the end table where I sit. When we finish up dinner, a push of the button adjust the lighting again. Any other time, the automation just turns off the ambient lighting.

We don’t have bedside lamps. Just a personal preference. I’d wager that, if you think about it, you’d find that you and the wife often set the bulbs to a particular brightness based on the time of day. If it were me, I’d have another button sitting on my nightstand and set it up so that single click turns both lamps on to a certain brightness, double-tap turns my side off, and triple tap (or hold depending on the button) turns off both. Just a thought though.

Early on, I thought voice control was the bee’s knees and have a Google Home device in every room in the house. Once I started focusing on automating (things just doing what they should when they should) vs simple smart control (telling Google "turn off the lights and turn off the TV and turn off the sound bar), the voice aspect quickly became redundant. I still use them occasionally for one off things, but 90% of the time, lights/fans/shades just go.

12

I would love to have it all just “happen” but no, our life isn’t that regularly structured. We use the living room at different times of the day, in different lighting conditions. Sometimes with the TV, sometimes with. Depends upon guests. We have folks that rent rooms from us too, and their schedules change fairly often as they’re on changing shifts regularly. Nobody sits in the same place all the time (a 4.5 year old makes sure of that :smiley: )

Our bedtime routines are highly varied depending on the day and there’s no calendar to push when things are happening.

So, voice activated makes it easier for everyone involved where it matters.

13

As others have noted, the obstacle for me to 'every day" use of HA’s voice assistant is the lack of hardware interfaces that can be strategically placed around the house. To have to go to a device (tablet / phone / whatever), and select a sequence of screen options to activate the voice assistant is pretty much a functionality killer. (We haven’t yet been able to play with the wake word function.) Also being privacy focused, I am looking forward to not using Alexa or Google devices as solutions. As a result, my main use of HA voice assistant is to add items to my shopping list. It’s better than typing everything out on my phone.
I took a look at the Willow project mentioned above and find that to be very interesting. Something to watch as it provides for an “all local” solution with relatively low cost hardware. I’ll have to add the ESP32-S3-BOX to my shopping list.

14

Just Alexa related:

  • Reminders & countdowns
  • What time is it
  • Morning alarm
  • Daily weather forecast
  • Music

HA related:

  • Alert me if high power consumption is detected
  • Voice reminder for stuff to do planned in HA Calendar (Garbage, water the plants, change water filter, …)
  • Light management
  • AC management
  • Activate cinema mode
  • Announce kids that lunch is ready
  • All alexa play an alarm sound at max volume when my alarm is triggered
  • Tells me “good night” when in the evening I connect my phone to charge
  • Alert me if the refrigerator is unpowered
  • Turn on/off cinema
  • Switch lights between night and day mode
15

We have Google Home’s in most rooms. The system is integrated with home assistant, and is reliable enough that the WAF is high (with the 4 kids as well).

Some things we use it for:

Starting the coffee in the AM when we get get up. We know it takes 5 mins to brew, so we ask at the right time, and coffee is waiting for us when we get downstairs.

Setting alarms, so we know when to wake up. With the kids going to three schools with different schedules and flexible jobs, it’s not always a consistent time, so we ask it to wake us up the next day at the time we need for that day. Likewise, the kids schools have block day schedules, so it’s not consistent during the week.

Setting multiple timers when cooking, or working out.

Asking it to open the gates, so when we expect company, they can come in without using the keypad, doorbell.

Telling HA to turn on the BBQ Gas valve when I am heading out to grill. The grill’s gas line has a valve controlled by zigbee, so it turns off after 2 hrs of being on (normally), this way I never forget to turn the gas off on the grill, and have it be on for 24 hrs.

Playing music in the whole house music system (I use chromecast audios). Great for playing songs or playlists that are all synced with phones.

Turning on and off lights in the rooms, but also controlling thermostats - we have a heat pump system with a few zones, so this is very handy if the program isn’t automatically doing the right thing.

Asking for a weather forecast, both locally or remote location if I am packing for travel the next day. Asking about traffic on the way to work.

Opening closing the garage doors on the way home from work, or closing them if I forgot to click the button the car to close them.

Turning on the hot tub, or pool lights, etc… It’s very nice that the voice control on our phones and the voice control act exactly the same way.

There are a lot of other things I suspect as well, but that’s what comes to mind. The ability to get at calendars, map info, traffic weather etc…in the same interface both on the hubs and the phones is very very useful. At a minimum I need it to work in the car as well.

16

Turn ON/OFF lights or fan in current room
Lock doors at night
Open motorized gate

Wish i could eliminate alexa but no hardware and dont feel like making anything

17

With the just announced HA / ESPhome wake word stuff you will be better off using that over Willow. I’m about to switch over myself.

18

I watched the Chapter 4 video today and was a encouraged and intrigued by the direction. I’ll have to take a look at what hardware can be used or what existing hardware I have that can be re-purposed.

19

We use HA via Google (3 different Google Minis cover the house) every day:

  • Good Morning (Puts the house in Day mode: disarms the alarm, adjusts thermostats, adjusts lights)
  • Good Night (Puts the house in Night mode: arms the alarm “Stay”, adjusts thermostats, adjusts lights, turns off TVs and fans)
  • We’re going on vacation (Puts the house in Vacation mode: arms the alarm “Away” after 10 minutes), adjusts thermostats, lights, etc)
  • Open the garage door (from Android Auto - opens the garage door, disarms the alarm, puts the house in “Day” mode, adjusts the thermostats, lights, etc)
  • Movie Mode (Change the lighting and from then on is controlled by Google TV - when we pause, after 20 seconds the lights come up. When we resume play, the lights dim after 20 seconds. When we such off the TV the lights come back up and the mode is exited.
  • (various lights and fans we commonly voice control and do not use switches)

My favorite integration used to be voice controlled, but now is automated: “Coming Home, Prepare House” - when my phone is within 30 miles of home, moving to home, and the home is in Vacation mode, it will warm up/cool down the house and send a notification that it is doing so. We have a weekend place so this is a common situation.

I should mention that the SO uses voice only for most things and doesn’t know which physical switches control which lights. She will use her phone for the thermostats because she doesn’t remember the correct phrasing to change the temperatures.

What I’ve described above is daily routine and we rarely use switches - we have a lot of 3 and 4 way switches in the house and after 15 years living here I still have trial and error with some of them. Voice is easier.