Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Catsandkites 2057 days ago
Question: Can I write my own assistant on mobile devices that is an actual assistant? As in, can listen for the key activation word in the background? Like the "official" assistants.

As far as I can tell, the assistant APIs seem to be like plugins? On Android for example, it appears custom assistants still run through Google assistant.

I want to be able to say "TriggerWord, do X and Y" and the OS activates my app, passes the voice sample and I take care of all the language processing from there. Which doesn't seem possible...
2 comments
canada_dry 2057 days ago
The custom home automation system I built relies on google's (very good) off-line voice recognition + automagic [i] + opencv face detection.

I did not want the home asst listening all the time - as it's highly likely to falsely trigger just listening to radio or tv it... so instead I use python+opencv to detect if the assistant (an old rooted samsung note) is being directly looked at - then it wakes up to listen for the trigger word and the command. Of course, I can also manually trigger it via any device in the house.

[i] http://automagic4android.com/

link
bserge 2057 days ago
https://snowboy.kitt.ai/ is about the only good third party hotword detection engine. You can hook it into Assistant with a bit of work, and with Tasker/Automate and a rooted phone, you can open apps, press buttons, pass voice commands, and more.

Imo, Assistant is limited because of privacy, see how it asks you to opt in for a more personalized experience and it still won't unlock your phone for you.

link