The story and idea of my voice controlled apartment
So, i have this idea of my house being driven by voice control. Something that currently probably is only available to the do it yourself hacker and the more i research this, the more i understand not to expect too much from it.
Even though I should not expect too much, I am willing to take the journey and start figuring it out step by step. Making it more advanced along the way. It will be my hobby project from now on and i’ll be sharing my thoughts, experience and learnings right here on medium.
Disclaimer: I am a lazy programmer
Just so you know, i have never worked with a Raspberry Pi before, just bought my first. Coding i can read, but don’t really know how to write myself. I can only do a bit of Pyhton, which should come in handy but i consider myself a “lazy programmer”. I like to copy paste and puzzle to make it work my way. I want to leverage this project to also become a better programmer.
Hi, i’m Naomi
I want my apartment to be alive, and she already has a name i like: “Naomi”. Just a nice name i like, which in Dutch does not happen to sound like a different word i can think of. Therefore i’ll be able to start any instruction or question simply by saying: “Naomi”.
In my dream i enter my house and i look into a camera. Naomi identifies who i am and asks me how my day was. She analyzes the words and sets the the tone by changing the lightning and turning on some good background music around the apartment. I ask her to change the music to something louder, instead of Halestorm i am more in the mood for Stone Sour.
While hanging my jacket in the hall I see relevant information on the screen that hangs there. Besides the calendar for this week i see whats on TV or if any of my friends are gaming on the PS4. I also get suggested what i can potentially cook today, how long it takes to cook that and my personal to do list. I ask Naomi to remind me at 20:00 that i need to call my grandparents.
At 20:00h
Naomi says “Michel, don’t forget to call your grandparents”. I ask her when i called them for the last time which was 3 weeks ago according to my phone logs that Naomi can read. Naomi makes notes and stores these for me so I ask her to read the last note about my grandparents. She reminds me that they left for a weekend to Brussels.
After talking to my grandparents I ask Naomi to note that they had a great time and they are starting dancing next week.
When walking into the kitchen i ask Naomi if she can prepare the house for a movie. She closes the curtains while the TV comes slowly from the wall in the perfect angle for my seat, while the lights go down slightly.
After the movie I say “Naomi, it’s time to go to bed”. The lights dim very, very slow so i have time to walk around, while knowing in 10 minutes it’s all dark and the TV is back at it’s place on the wall.
The following day
Naomi wakes me up at 07:00 when my alarm is set. I ask her to play some easy guitar music. She starts one of John Mayers’ older CD’s. Because it’s early and i’m waking up it’s on a very low volume when i ask Naomi to open up the curtains.
When i get up and look into the mirror i see a list of the buses and the weather prediction. Also i’m able to read the news headlines, and i ask Naomi to “pocket the second news item”, just to read for later.
Walking through the hall i stop at the screen and see a couple of possible public transport options to take to work. Also my work calendar is up for the day where I see that I have a first meeting at 9.30. I ask Naomi to remind me to leave to take buss at 7.45.
While making my lunch, i think about the death of Prince and i ask Naomi when Michael Jackson died again. On the screen in my kitchen she shows the photo i took of his house in Los Angeles where he died, then she answers that it was June 2009. Naomi is also very good at solving Match questions and giving me information on cities, countries, food information, etc..
Also i tell her what i’m cooking, making, eating. She keeps track of this for me.
The woman drinks water
Because of this bet i have at work (really i do), i need to learn the sentence “The woman drinks water” in 40 different languages before december 2016. Naomi tests me on this in French, Dutch, German, English and Spanish for today. Randomly she asks. If i’m mistaken, she corrects me and she keeps track of my score and mistakes so she learns which languages are more difficult to me.
Then she reminds me i have to leave to get to the buss. I tell her “i’m leaving”. She tilts the blinds in the house and turns of the music when saying “See you later, Michel”.
Is this all possible?
I believe we are currently at the cross point of making this a possibility. It’s perfectly possible to have a Sonos in every different room for audio, either connected or standalone.
The raspberry Pi is able to be a simple computer to handle voice control. See for example this post about the best : http://diyhacking.com/best-voice-recognition-software-for-raspberry-pi/ and with a camera like this https://www.sossolutions.nl/raspberry-spy-camera-module there are options to do face recognition. (how awesome if Naomi would recognize friends and family)
There is wolfram alpha to answer the most interesting questions. Or IBM’s Watson to analyse texts and perform machine learning based on what it knows about you.
Home automation is very well managable by any NAS, with the right setup in the house. For example Domoticz or https://www.pulse-station.com/. With RFXcom it’s even quite possible to control small robots that you build yourself.
Then there are tons of connections that can be made by IFTT or zappier that most likely can be used with for example making notes.
It’s all about how to combine this. Where to do the computing and how to get a decent response time.
Where to begin?
So the idea is here. Now i need to start executing. Where to begin? I want to do all of this at the same time, but of course that is impossible. Because of my knowledge gaps, money and time. But the good thing is that i found the following instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Wall-Mounted-Calender-and-Notificatio/ — and as it happens i just found an old laptop which i should be able to use :)
This will be my center in the hall. Later i’ll worry on how to connect all the screens in the house to one network. For now, i’ll just start with this awesome idea. Get something moving, and it looks quite handy! :)
Keep you posted!
And make sure to follow me if you like to see how my apartment matures :) Idea’s are welcome too!
