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I spent a truly obscene amount of time trying to just figure out how to make a DIY smart speaker discoverable to Alexa / Google Home / etc. The discoverability

I spent a truly obscene amount of time trying to just figure out how to make a DIY smart speaker discoverable to Alexa / Google Home / etc. The discoverability of the documentation was varying degrees of deplorable, mostly with a heavy slant towards funneling you into end user docs. In the end all I found was how to write little voice apps. I know these smart assistants have standard interfaces for many kinds of devices. I just don't know where the hell the docs are for those interfaces.

mschuster91 6y ago
Two things here: First... you're not the target group for integrating with Alexa, G Home, Siri and friends; the vendors want (and tbh, probably need) only the "big brands" such as car makers, Sonos, Sony, Samsung etc., especially as they likely pay a hefty chonk of money for the privilege of accessing official SDKs and documentation plus support - they'd feel ripped off if the vendors would give away all that stuff. Second: support itself. Assume that you're Google which is notoriously different to get support from a human being. What would you like more to support: a couple dozen highly skilled developers from huge companies or a bunch of thousand "hobbyists"? And who will the users blame if their 10 $ gadget doesn't work with Google Home one day, the gadget maker or Google? tl;dr: we'd all like more open access but as long as Google and friends don't allow us to pay money to talk to a human able to solve your problems (did I already mention Google is extremely nasty to get in contact with?) that won't happen.
- strbean 6y ago
  Totally agreed on point one, I think it is an incredibly sad state of affairs though. For point two, I'm pretty desensitized to the sad state of affairs that is big-player web service support. The phishing vector of "Hi, I'm calling from Microsoft and need your social security number" is mind boggling. I've had to tell older family members (including lifelong software developers and tenured CS professors) that no major tech company would ever let you speak to a real human to save your life... too many times. I don't see progress happening on that front for some time, but I don't think that should stop them from giving us devs the damn docs. And for who the user would blame, I see a few counterarguments there. First, if I get some weird no-name IOT device, I'm definitely blaming the maker first if there is a problem. I think most consumers place a fair amount of trust in the big tech companies, and would come to the same conclusion. Second, if they want to lock down their platforms, they could just use the Play Store approach, and require adding a developer key somewhere and enabling a dev mode on the smarthome device.

mschuster91 6y ago

Two things here: First... you're not the target group for integrating with Alexa, G Home, Siri and friends; the vendors want (and tbh, probably need) only the "big brands" such as car makers, Sonos, Sony, Samsung etc., especially as they likely pay a hefty chonk of money for the privilege of accessing official SDKs and documentation plus support - they'd feel ripped off if the vendors would give away all that stuff. Second: support itself. Assume that you're Google which is notoriously different to get support from a human being. What would you like more to support: a couple dozen highly skilled developers from huge companies or a bunch of thousand "hobbyists"? And who will the users blame if their 10 $ gadget doesn't work with Google Home one day, the gadget maker or Google? tl;dr: we'd all like more open access but as long as Google and friends don't allow us to pay money to talk to a human able to solve your problems (did I already mention Google is extremely nasty to get in contact with?) that won't happen.

strbean 6y ago
Totally agreed on point one, I think it is an incredibly sad state of affairs though. For point two, I'm pretty desensitized to the sad state of affairs that is big-player web service support. The phishing vector of "Hi, I'm calling from Microsoft and need your social security number" is mind boggling. I've had to tell older family members (including lifelong software developers and tenured CS professors) that no major tech company would ever let you speak to a real human to save your life... too many times. I don't see progress happening on that front for some time, but I don't think that should stop them from giving us devs the damn docs. And for who the user would blame, I see a few counterarguments there. First, if I get some weird no-name IOT device, I'm definitely blaming the maker first if there is a problem. I think most consumers place a fair amount of trust in the big tech companies, and would come to the same conclusion. Second, if they want to lock down their platforms, they could just use the Play Store approach, and require adding a developer key somewhere and enabling a dev mode on the smarthome device.