I talked to VoiceBox technologies. They're interested only if we can guarantee them a good number of paying customers. We don't have a lot of open source users yet, and we haven't released it for commercial sales yet, so at the moment, we can't guarantee them the volume they need.
I heard Sphynx (free, open source) has made major improvements too, but we've all been pretty swamped and haven't had time to look into it. What does homeseer use for VR? Does it work well?
I'd steer away from the commercial VR products because it impedes adoption of an already difficult-to-implement technology set. It can cost thousands to implement a decent VR system (less if you steer away from open-air mics)!
HS uses SAPI 5 to access Microsoft's own VR engine (L&H-based, I believe), which is speaker independent (but can be made more accurate with trained profiles) and, all things considered, very good. A couple of HS users whom I trust are boasting 90% or better accuracy with their open-air mic systems after a great deal of testing and tinkering (VR has to come with a big dose of acceptance as to its limitations before you can use it without frustration). It integrates with the AT&T Natural Voices (or NeoVoices) for truly ear-boggling continuous speech synthesis (really, really, really good).
The new version, HomeSeer 2, also uses a remoting application (.Net) called "Speaker" to push and receive voice and sound. By speaking into the mic on one machine, you can send the voice (and a tag indicating its location) to the server, where it is recognized, processed, and the response directed back (or wherever the script says to send it). That's nice in that it can eliminate a number of wiring considerations -- for example, those who want to set up VR using ONLY the computers in their rooms won't need to worry about open-air mics, mixers, and the like. That said, it produces some weirdness because for those of us with more complex demands, we start wondering how to put 7 sound cards in a single box to keep the cost of multi-room VR down!
Ideally, you'd like to see Pluto allowing voice tags to be associated with devices, events, and external applications. You'd want to be able to define a grammar (or ship with a predefined, extendable one like HS) so you can easily say "Turn on the living room lights" -- or better yet, since it knows you are IN the living room based on the BT dongle or other ID mechanism -- "turn on the lights" and have it work seamlessly.
You'd also want to ensure that you can also use the microphones to talk to 1 or more other locations, thus enabling intercoms and room monitors and the like.
Thoughts?
Dantelope
