Voco

Privacy friendly voice control for the Mozilla WebThings Gateway

Installation

Visit the add-ons page in your WebThings Gateway, and add the 'Voco' add-on.

Abilities

These are all examples. You don't have to say things exactly like this. Any command should always be preceded by saying "Hey Snips".

Turn things on and off

Toggle devices

• "Turn on the table lamp"
• "Lock the back door"
• "Set the color of the living room light to green"
• "Set the brightness of the kitchen light to 70 percent"

Toggle devices at a certain time

• "Turn on the blender in 3 minutes"
• "Close the garage door at 23 minutes past 4"

Toggle devices for a time period

• "Turn on the bedroom heater for 20 minutes"
• "Turn on the bubble blowing machine between 3 and 4 o'clock"
• "Unlock the front door until 3 pm"
• "Turn on the air filter tomorrow afternoon"
• "Lock the front door at lunchtime" (11-13 o'clock)

Ask questions

Query a specific device

• "Is the front door locked?"
• "Is the bedroom heater on or off?"
• "What is the humidity level of the weather station?"

More general queries

• What are the levels of the plant sensor?" -> Will give you all sensor values of the plant sensor

Queries accros multiple devices

• "How warm is it?" -> Will get you all temperature values in the home

Timers

Set timers

• "Set a timer for 5 minutes"
• "Set an alarm for a quarter past 9"
• "Wake me up at 7 am"
• "Set a countdown to midnight"

Set reminders

• "At 5 o'clock remind me to wash the car"
• "Remind me to go to the dentist in 40 minutes"

Query timers

• "How many alarms have been set?"
• "How many timers are there?"

Query timer details

• "Tell me about all my reminders"
• "Can you give me a list of all the timers"

Remove timers

• "Remove the last timer"
• "Delete the last 3 alarms"
• "Disable the countdown"
• "Cancel all timers"

Other

• "What time is it?"
• "Set the volume of snips to 95"

Features

• Strong focus on privacy. Once installed, there is no internet connection required or used. Listening can be toggled on and off.
• Extendable. Override the built-in assistant with one you created yourself at snips.ai. To keep the above mentioned abilities, make sure you add the 'Candle' app to your assistant.

Recommended hardware

The Playstation Eye is a 4-microphone array that can be plugged into your Raspberry Pi via USB. It can be bought new for about $12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Eye

Technology

Voco is built on Snips https://snips.ai/

Thanks to

Voco is inspired by the original Voice Addon made by Andre Natal. https://github.com/andrenatal/voice-addon/

Work on Voco was supported by the SHERPA project, a H2020 research project into AI issues by the European Union. https://project-sherpa.eu

You can learn mote about the Candle privacy friendly smart home project at: https://www.candlesmarthome.com and http://www.sherpapieces.eu/overview/candle

Work on Voco was also supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL https://stimuleringsfonds.nl/en

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under grant agreement No 786641.