I asked due it working near flawless for us for years, but increasingly, it's a pain.
Examples:
I have rooms with "Low", "Medium", "High" for scenes. Used to, we could say something like "Alexa, turn on Office Medium" and it would properly turn on the "Office - Medium" scene. Now it responds with "Several things share the name 'Office'" -- as if it doesn't hear the 2nd word, no matter how slow, fast, annunciated I say it.
Our Kitchen Alexa Show used to hear us perfectly. Now, we can be right next to it and it not hear us -- or an Alexa completely in another room, not in direct ear-shot responds.
Then, when Alexa does respond, she wasn't to carry on a conversation. e.g. "Alexa, what's the weather?" She responds, then adds something like here's your local weather forecast and a video of a local station starts playing.
With my wife, Alexa simply ignores her 75% of the time. She can say something and nothing. I can say the same thing, in the same voice, and she responds.
I am just about ready to pull the plug on Alexa and move to something else.
Thanks for any advice on alternatives that provide a better experience.
That would certainly be easier; however, the Alexa integration is far-and-away what we use most. 90% of what we do is via voice commands. The living area of our house has multiple lamps, recessed lights, etc., with various dimmers. Just to "turn on the lights" as we like it for most activities would be walking to 8 switches. Unforutnately, we've come dependent on Alexa -- and she's gotten progressively worse. I wish it would quit getting "improved" and just work like it did 5-6 years ago.
I'll order a Apple pod to play around and test... We're otherwise 100% Apple and wouldn't miss getting rid of Alexa, if it's at all possible.
While I'm an Android shop, with no other dependents... I am not likely to purchase an Apple device... But based on recent uses I have seen for the pods, I could see an advantage to getting one if you are into that ecosystem, not just for voice control.
Yeah I've been happy for the most part. The only thing I prefer on Echo/Alexa is the intercom (Alexa's drop in) is far superior to apple's intercom (which basically records then sends to which ever homepod(S)
Is there a quality integration like Alexa Speaks for Homepods? We have several audible alerts that I would like to keep. e.g. "Audrey [our dog] can get out" when the side gate is left open by the groundskeepers.
In addition to the Hubitat HomeKit integration, Hubitat recently added Apple Airplay functionality. This new built-in app can be installed, and will discover HomePods on your home network. Once they are added to your HE hub, they can be used as TTS devices.
And it works perfectly. I too am an Alexa house but I purchased one HomePod mini for the HomeKit integration. I also find that the HomePod mini sounds as good as a full size echo 3rd gen. The 4th may be better, I don’t have any.
I have three Sonos speakers - one on each floor - that I use for most of my Hubitat announcements but I still have echo speaks installed for a few RMs that I want to speak in specific rooms.
I would toss all the echos and buy HomePod minis if they were not $129 CDN each. Well we would also miss the 8” show we have in the kitchen and my wife like her 5” in her office.
I, too, have experienced a significant degradation in Alexa voice recognition and efficacy--it ignores my wife regularly now... but I get that. However, within some hopefully-soon (in single-digit months) timeframe, Amazon is supposedly replacing the backend with generative AI so I'm gonna holdout for that--I'm 13 Echoes deep and the HE+Alexa integration is tightly coupled and I'm not keen on refactoring all of that so I'm also motivated to not change.
Net net: I'm gonna go with optimism that Amazon don't eff it up (until my patience runs out that is).
Thank you for the response. Your post makes me feel better than it's not all in my head or that I am missing some setting that makes it all right, as I am prone to do.
The revamped backend sounds good. I hope it indeed improves from a user's perspective. I can not help but think of Intuit. Quicken and Quickbooks used to be solid products -- then they started getting improved. As such, I threw in the towel on Quicken a long time back and still run Quickbooks 2016 (I should have stopped about 2010). Hopefully, AMZN doesn't "improve" in the same way.
As for now, I am going to play both sides of the fence and have 3 Apple Mini Pods showing up today. Alexa is maybe 1/3rd of the utility to us that it once was. With it now not recognizing the second word in phrases such as "Alexa, turn on Main Area medium," it's hard to hold out.
I won't get rid of the Alexas as they are practically worthless, but will definitely give Apple a try. Hopefully the competitions makes both better.
I use exclusively Apple Home for voice, and it works great. Just make sure to upgrade your AppleTV or HomePods to the latest software. Their presence detection based on the iPhone is also far more reliable than Hubitat’s geofencing, so I use the HomePod to flip a “present” virtual switch.
I trust Apple far more than Amazon when it comes to having a mic in my house. Apple’s business model is to sell you expensive devices. Amazon’s business model is to use and sell your information.
I'm assuming that the Apple pods respond to "Hey, Siri" like phones, iPads do. In a home with 5 iPads, a couple iPhones, and (if I were to go that route) a dozen Apple Pods, how do I get the right device to respond? Or doesn't it matter?
What does “the right device” means ? Do you mean if it talks back ? I don’t use that much, but I think it will talk back to the one you talked to. I only have one HomePod, but if I talk to my phone quietly so that the HomePod doesn’t hear, it will answer on my phone. If I talk loud enough for the HomePod to hear, it will answer on the HomePod. I assume when you have multiple HomePods throughout the house, the one which heard you will answer.
If you mean which one you talk to actions, it really doesn’t matter, it will take action on your devices as requested.
