And it just keeps getting worse.

Amazon Alexa showing just how much they have embraced enshittification
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[–] 3 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I've been playing around with it, it's ok for home stuff, but no on-device functions.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago* (5 children)

    It does all the basics. Can play music via jellyfin, spotify or any of the supported Music Assistant sources (preferably plug in better speakers). Can set timers. I have it announce various reminders (put the recycling/rubbish bin out, etc).

    One thing it can do that I don't think other smart speakers can is proactive things. When the room gets cold, I have it say "It's getting cold in here, would you like to turn on the heating?", then it listens for a response and you can reply yes/no.

    I've also been playing with connecting it with frigate events, such as "I can see Grandma on the doorbell camera", or "I can see your Ariya on the driveway camera". That needs some infrastructure though 😅

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Thats cool. Maybe my experience has been tainted by the fact that I run piper/whisper on the server's cpu, and by consequence, it's slow as fuck.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Oh I'm using Home Assistant Cloud as I worked out day 1 there's no chance of it recognising my voice. I would like to switch to local processing when it gets good enough though.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Maybe I should do it too. I mean, it's 10€ a month, right? What other goodies does it offer?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    There isn't much from memory. It's a great way to support them, but in terms what you get from it I think it's basically just automatic cloud backups, access to cloud speech to text and text to speech, and if you need it, a URL to access your Home Assistant when you're away from home.

    It's how the HA work is funded though, so I figure it's worth it for that.

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