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I bought an Echo speaker when they first came out. The sound quality is impressive (to my untrained ear), but the development experience is not. The first thin

I bought an Echo speaker when they first came out. The sound quality is impressive (to my untrained ear), but the development experience is not. The first thing I wanted to do was to add a feature so I could add a task to my to-do list software which is not supported by Alexa. It turns out that you cannot construct a sentence along the lines of "Tell Asana to add a task: <task>". You can't actually have a 'slot' which contains a freeform piece of text, even if it is the last piece of text in the sentence. The Alexa API differs between regions, so the North America version of the API supports this but the EU version doesn't. It was removed from the NA version for a while but placed back after a bit of an uproar. I think you could develop some more useful stuff using Alexa if only this feature was consistently available. I cannot think of a good reason why it isn't. I now just mainly have it as a Spotify speaker, and occasionally I use it as an expensive egg timer. I normally have it on mute because I find it activates and starts recording private conversations. I don't see it getting better.

dev_north_east 8y ago
> I normally have it on mute because I find it activates and starts recording private conversations. What?!
- kevinmchugh 8y ago
  It can mistrigger on phrases like "take a left on" or "they got a Lexus". My parents have one and get a kick out of the misactivations.
  - dev_north_east 8y ago
    Wow. I was under the mistaken impression that the devices were more robust than that. I'm very anti these devices, now I'm even moreso!
    - aedron 8y ago
      For what it's worth, in two years our Google Home has only 'misfired' once, and that was when someone on TV said 'Hey Google'. It is in the living room and sees heavy use by a family of five.
      - Spare_account 8y ago
        > our Google Home has only 'misfired' once ... when someone on TV said 'Hey Google' Is that a misfire? It reacted to the trigger phrase. Have you trained it to only react to your voice (I know that's an option for Google assistant, but I didn't do it for mine).
        sp332 8y ago
        Amazon added a real-time sanity check, so if too many Echo devices are triggered with similar sounds within a few hundred milliseconds, it will ignore them. This was after some TV ads or shows had intentionally abused it.
        justusthane 8y ago
        Wow! That feels kind of insane, but makes so much sense.
        eecks 8y ago
        Is this true? Triggering is done locally in the device.
        detaro 8y ago
        But they can ignore/cancel the request server-side, so technically the detection triggers, but no command does.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    I can't imagine how frustrating it is for folks named Siri. You can at least change Alexa's wake word to a couple other options ("Echo" or "Computer").
    - jbattle 8y ago
      One of my coworkers has a friend named Siri. When Apple's siri first came out somehow she kept getting texts from friends "remind me tuesday to call the doctor". She didn't realize what was happening so she kept track of those reminders and texted her friends back until everyone sorted their technology out.
      - walterbell 8y ago
        Great story!
  - saghm 8y ago
    My roommate and I have a Google Home Mini in the living room, and to make the accidental activations more noticeable, my roommate set the accessibility "ding" sound for when it (thinks it) heard the trigger phrase. It gets activated a lot by television (maybe once every few hours of TV), and we generally have no idea what phrase accidentally triggered it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
k__ 8y ago
"You can't actually have a 'slot' which contains a freeform piece of text" What about AMAZON.SearchQuery?
- nostrebored 8y ago
  This is the correct solution. The Alexa Skills Kit contains the Amazon.SearchQuery slot which meets your needs, but Lex doesn't. This is one of the two missing slots from Alexa in Lex. If you read articles regarding Lex slots you might get inaccurate info as they are slightly differing products.
  - gtsteve 8y ago
    Thanks, I just did some searching and found that this was added in February 2018 - I think I gave up on my project in 2017 so it now looks like I could program something like what I wanted. I still have the source code so that's nice. However I'm just thinking of getting rid of my Alexa devices anyway - I was discussing political events with my partner last night, spotted the Alexa device light up (I think I said "a letter") and noticed shortly after that I was moderating my speech and not referencing controversial topics. I later just set it on mute.
    - walterbell 8y ago
      For research: have another device perform "audio fuzzing" of Alexa, trying random phrases. Use a camera to look for Alexa turning on. Bonus points, check the list of Alexa recordings (via web interface) to confirm 1:1 relationship between device activation and recorded file. Publish the inadvertent "watchlist" of phrases, monitor over time.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  That's a relatively new slot type.
  - k__ 8y ago
    Ah okay, I had the impression it was the replacement for LITERAL
Bartweiss 8y ago
This issue has killed my interest in basically all smart-home products I can find on the market, even ignoring their massive privacy issues. The most useful 'basic' behavior I could think of for a smart home device was to check the weather and trigger my alarm earlier in bad weather or heavy traffic. I knew IFTTT was capable of running scripts then a trigger happened, checking the weather and traffic, and setting off an alarm, so it seemed obvious. I literally wanted "if this (or this), then that"! No such luck. The basic IFTTT setup couldn't do it at all, no existing app could do it, and the developer program was invite-only. I got in after quite a long time, and even then it wasn't obvious. IFTTT wanted to treat 'check weather' as a script output exclusively, which I couldn't feed into any other system. The best I could do was be told the weather when I woke up. So, I stuck with the phone that could already do that. That specific situation might have improved, but the general ecosystem doesn't seem much better. The only smart-home features I see available that I would use are list-making, music/media playing, and quick reference. But the features I would actually value are dense integration between apps, floating scripts like the one you describe, and non-user-triggered events to turn active tasks into passive ones. Those seem to be the features which are least available, even when they would be easy to implement.

dev_north_east 8y ago

> I normally have it on mute because I find it activates and starts recording private conversations. What?!

kevinmchugh 8y ago
It can mistrigger on phrases like "take a left on" or "they got a Lexus". My parents have one and get a kick out of the misactivations.
- dev_north_east 8y ago
  Wow. I was under the mistaken impression that the devices were more robust than that. I'm very anti these devices, now I'm even moreso!
  - aedron 8y ago
    For what it's worth, in two years our Google Home has only 'misfired' once, and that was when someone on TV said 'Hey Google'. It is in the living room and sees heavy use by a family of five.
    - Spare_account 8y ago
      > our Google Home has only 'misfired' once ... when someone on TV said 'Hey Google' Is that a misfire? It reacted to the trigger phrase. Have you trained it to only react to your voice (I know that's an option for Google assistant, but I didn't do it for mine).
      - sp332 8y ago
        Amazon added a real-time sanity check, so if too many Echo devices are triggered with similar sounds within a few hundred milliseconds, it will ignore them. This was after some TV ads or shows had intentionally abused it.
        justusthane 8y ago
        Wow! That feels kind of insane, but makes so much sense.
        eecks 8y ago
        Is this true? Triggering is done locally in the device.
        detaro 8y ago
        But they can ignore/cancel the request server-side, so technically the detection triggers, but no command does.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  I can't imagine how frustrating it is for folks named Siri. You can at least change Alexa's wake word to a couple other options ("Echo" or "Computer").
  - jbattle 8y ago
    One of my coworkers has a friend named Siri. When Apple's siri first came out somehow she kept getting texts from friends "remind me tuesday to call the doctor". She didn't realize what was happening so she kept track of those reminders and texted her friends back until everyone sorted their technology out.
    - walterbell 8y ago
      Great story!
- saghm 8y ago
  My roommate and I have a Google Home Mini in the living room, and to make the accidental activations more noticeable, my roommate set the accessibility "ding" sound for when it (thinks it) heard the trigger phrase. It gets activated a lot by television (maybe once every few hours of TV), and we generally have no idea what phrase accidentally triggered it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

k__ 8y ago

"You can't actually have a 'slot' which contains a freeform piece of text" What about AMAZON.SearchQuery?

nostrebored 8y ago
This is the correct solution. The Alexa Skills Kit contains the Amazon.SearchQuery slot which meets your needs, but Lex doesn't. This is one of the two missing slots from Alexa in Lex. If you read articles regarding Lex slots you might get inaccurate info as they are slightly differing products.
- gtsteve 8y ago
  Thanks, I just did some searching and found that this was added in February 2018 - I think I gave up on my project in 2017 so it now looks like I could program something like what I wanted. I still have the source code so that's nice. However I'm just thinking of getting rid of my Alexa devices anyway - I was discussing political events with my partner last night, spotted the Alexa device light up (I think I said "a letter") and noticed shortly after that I was moderating my speech and not referencing controversial topics. I later just set it on mute.
  - walterbell 8y ago
    For research: have another device perform "audio fuzzing" of Alexa, trying random phrases. Use a camera to look for Alexa turning on. Bonus points, check the list of Alexa recordings (via web interface) to confirm 1:1 relationship between device activation and recorded file. Publish the inadvertent "watchlist" of phrases, monitor over time.
ravenstine 8y ago
That's a relatively new slot type.
- k__ 8y ago
  Ah okay, I had the impression it was the replacement for LITERAL

Bartweiss 8y ago

This issue has killed my interest in basically all smart-home products I can find on the market, even ignoring their massive privacy issues. The most useful 'basic' behavior I could think of for a smart home device was to check the weather and trigger my alarm earlier in bad weather or heavy traffic. I knew IFTTT was capable of running scripts then a trigger happened, checking the weather and traffic, and setting off an alarm, so it seemed obvious. I literally wanted "if this (or this), then that"! No such luck. The basic IFTTT setup couldn't do it at all, no existing app could do it, and the developer program was invite-only. I got in after quite a long time, and even then it wasn't obvious. IFTTT wanted to treat 'check weather' as a script output exclusively, which I couldn't feed into any other system. The best I could do was be told the weather when I woke up. So, I stuck with the phone that could already do that. That specific situation might have improved, but the general ecosystem doesn't seem much better. The only smart-home features I see available that I would use are list-making, music/media playing, and quick reference. But the features I would actually value are dense integration between apps, floating scripts like the one you describe, and non-user-triggered events to turn active tasks into passive ones. Those seem to be the features which are least available, even when they would be easy to implement.