Apple Homepod mini
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After having optimized my video processing integration of 8 cameras into my openLuup based automation, I have been wondering what I could possibly improve on my setup. Instead of pestering @akbooer with petty localized console optimizations I am looking at these Apple Homepod minis as a potential improvement from my alexa based voice command system. openLuup is presently already bridged to both platforms using habridge and homekitbridge.
I am seeing two issues with Alexa:
- Speed. The cloud processing of the voice commands takes ~1s (I don't use anything cloud to cloud) and I would really prefer it to be local.
- These devices can go a bit crazy when they lose DNS connections and sometimes do random things.
- Privacy because all the recordings go to the amazon cloud all the time.
I have been exploring open source solutions for this but I would lose the benefit of optionally being able to go to the cloud for search information.
The downside of the homepods are that siri is not nearly as good in terms of helpfulness as alexa at this point. They also don't have a version with a screen which I found to be very useful at a couple of locations on the other hand, the sound quality of the homepod minis seem to be better than the echos...
What do you guys think?
This thread from longtime vera user @dJOS inspired me
Hubitat + HomeKit + HomeBridge + HomePod Mini = WOW
Howdy all, I got a HomePod Mini very recently for my study (the audio quality is great and hand-off is magical) and to replace my iPad as the main HomeKit controller for my house (we use HomeKit mainly for Presence detection which is IMO best in class). We also have a dozen Amazon Echo's of...
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
Instead of pestering @akbooer with petty localized console optimizations
Appreciate that! Nonetheless, if there’s something generally useful, then let me know. You’ll have seen that Shelly integration is proceeding, along with the MQTT server, which seems quite robust now. I’m rapidly divesting of almost all of my ZWave lighting.
I’m not into voice commands or TTS, myself, and don’t have any of those things which record speech and send it to Amazon/Google, so can’t suggest anything for you there.
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, I am trying the best I can to make everything work offline. Even though I admittedly don't use ALTUI and the console for anything than configuration/scene changes, I have been gradually removing web dependencies.
I have also long used localized TTS with near 0 latency and no internet dependency. I am just exploring how to do the same with voice commands. -
Alright I am pulling the trigger and will be testing this out. I am finding that the last frontier of reliability/latency I have is the amazon cloud.
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
These devices can go a bit crazy when they lose DNS connections and sometimes do random things.
I've not had that with mine, ever...
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It seems to be specific to my set of gen2 echo dots.
My wife got really upset the other day because I tried to open my garage door 3 times with it and instead it each time actuated some blinds and some other lights which made her freak out. I have seen this occasionally after I run a router upgrade for example whereby the echo lost connection to the amazon cloud and goes crazy switching wifi networks to see if it can reach a DNS back into its server again. I already had a bias against anything cloud dependent but this behavior of disconnecting its wifi in search of cloud server (It has multiple wifi APs on the same SSID to pick from) is just not good and the resulting craziness even worse. These will be the first ones to go. -
Wow. Demon Seed experience
Yeah, I get the cloud issue. But voice recognition just ain't that simple (used to be my metier) When we do lose connectivity, we struggle to remember how to do stuff by Homewave or AltUI
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Ha yeah indeed. Not everything can be automated so some human intervention is still required. The HomePod though seem to be doing most processing locally and only fail back to the cloud when its local voice processing can't resolve the command. That's why it is so much faster. I will be testing it and if it works out, I may consider taking out all the echos which seem to still be much too cloud dependent for my liking. The voice processing is also by far the slowest part of my system taking more than 1s to do anything.
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
Ha yeah indeed. Not everything can be automated so some human intervention is still required. The HomePod though seem to be doing most processing locally and only fail back to the cloud when its local voice processing can't resolve the command. That's why it is so much faster. I will be testing it and if it works out, I may consider taking out all the echos.
I'm going to check a little closer but while we don't have a 100% hit rate with Alexa (sometimes the internet connection fails. More often she just gets the command wrong, and she gets confused by status not being where she is) but gut feel is response time is a lot under 1s. Granted it's not instant, but I would say sub 0.5 and by a chunk.
Will try and quantify a bit more (I guess I just found it so much quicker than Vera which was several seconds, if at all, it never worried me!)C
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Yes of course it's all relative. When you come from the vera even the ezlo feels fast of course and the speed of the echo was never a deal breaker as it is actually quite reasonable. But if it can be done locally and faster and with better privacy... I gotta try it.
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
Yes of course it's all relative. When you come from the vera even the ezlo feels fast of course and the speed of the echo was never a deal breaker as it is actually quite reasonable. But if it can be done locally and faster and with better privacy... I gotta try it.
This way progress lies
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I just tested a few commands from my mac mini which also provides the TTS service to my SONOS/openLuup and if the homepod is this fast, it will be a stunning difference... It is indeed processing locally first on macos for the homekit commands. There is no delay whatsoever that I can observe.
Edit:
An interesting read on local voice processing of the new echos:
Amazon’s AZ1 Neural Edge processor will make Alexa voice commands even faster
Saving you hundreds of milliseconds per query.
Edit 2:
After further testing today, I confirmed the findings from the hubitat forum thread and have pretty much decided to wind down my echo installation. I have a device in every room and this will take some time but clearly the dots are pretty poor devices in terms of speaker and microphones, the cloud dependency is excessive to the point where they behave erratically when they lose connection to their servers. In comparison my macOS, iOS devices are processing locally, faster and with much greater privacy from what I observed from my firewall. Of all the HK devices I tested, only the apple watch seem to act at the same slower speed as the echos. ciao Alexa.
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So given that we're mostly an all Mac house, can you point me at a tutorial, so I can try Siri etc?
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I'm not sure this is a viable long-term solution, because Apple isn't reaching a real customer base and they'll eventually disinvest, imho. In fact, they just stopped selling the HomePod and they'll only sell the mini.
Alexa has already won this battle and Google has won the personal assistant one. No space left for Apple, imho.
All that said, I'm with you on privacy and local only control.
I think we're still too early to have full local processing, even if something is moving (part of my job is about AI/ML, so I'm obviously extremely interested in these evolutions). I'll probably get a Fiat 500e later this year (since I'm more local for the medium-term future, all electric makes sens to me), and they started integrating Alexa natively - and it's really cool. https://www.media.stellantis.com/em-en/corporate-communications/press/amazon-s-alexa-voice-experience-now-available-on-fca-s-new-fiat-500 They'll eventually add it to all Stellantis cars (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Jeep and so on). even BMW has more integration with Alexa lately. even if I have CarPlay (and I'm loving it), Hey Siri is flakey and rarely her responses are OK the first time. I have to tell her every time who my mom is, she tells me that she's taken note, and the next time she's eventually ask again... Maybe things are better in english, but here in Italy Alexa and Google Home are hands down better in comprehension.
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rafale77replied to therealdb on Mar 13, 2021, 3:15 PM last edited by rafale77 Mar 13, 2021, 10:44 AM
You might be right, though they stuck with the homepod for 4 years now and IMHO now really have a product entry for in this market with the mini. The original homepod was just too much of a speaker and not enough of a home assistant.
One thing to think about and which actually made me decide this is the native integration of the functionality in the macOS and iOS devices. When I surveyed my home, I realized I could replace 12 echo devices with only 4 homepod minis... why? Offices already have a macos computer, some rooms have an ipad. For the rarely used rooms, I will have my phone or my watch. For the purpose of home control and basic vocal assistance, this got a much higher WAF for me. It was there all along and I only have a small number of locations where the addition of a device will be valuable. The echo shows will be replaced with much more capable and versatile ipads for example for similar prices.($250 vs $299). There is no question about Alexa's dominance but... for my use case, I had siri available all that time without realizing that it was superior. I haven't even received and tested the homepod yet... I just came to the realization that I could benefit from using siri a lot more and alexa a lot less... and in the interest of WAF, a fewer number of higher quality devices is better than a large number of cheap ones.
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
a fewer number of higher quality devices is better than a large number of cheap ones.
Where have I heard you say that before...?
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Hah, it's a bit like French food... I will take quality over quantity any day.
It's a very similar design philosophy difference. Alexa and all its skills (and even more so Google Home) are cloud centric just like SmartThings. Moving to HomeKit for voice control is analogous to moving from SmartThings to HomeAssistant or Hubitat. It is not cloud free. It is just not cloud dependent or even centered.
This is coming full circle for me actually since my first attempt at voice control was actually to use an iPad mini and the vera 6 years ago... The homekitbridge I am using for openLuup today is that old... -
So, to do this all I would need is Homebridge somewhere, say running in a Docker?
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rafale77replied to akbooer on Mar 13, 2021, 5:48 PM last edited by rafale77 Mar 13, 2021, 12:57 PM
I didn't even go as far as running homebridge. I installed this 6 years ago and never touched it since. This was a very large thread in the old forum.
I start the bridge server with a dependency on openLuup with a 3s delay. It starts and stops with openLuup running on the same machine.
Note that there is a 150 device per bridge limit so my fork is preventing scenes from being bridged as I have over 150 scenes alone. I am also not bridging sensors for the same reason... but if you don't have that many devices, nothing prevents you from doing it. Note also that I am running on nodeJS10 without any problems. No need to go find nodeJS5. I should probably update the readme. -
Looks very simple
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