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[dbemowsk]

OK, I am working on my BVC setup and have given him a name.  HARLIE, which stands for Home Automation Responsive Linguistic Intelligent Entity.  Now if anyone asks if I own a Harley, I can say "why yes, yes I do..."

Anyways, I have a homebuilt microphone that I have connected to my HA PC through my new (well, new used) Shure SCM-810 mixer.  I have it set up in my testing room/bar area/mancave.  The mic seems to pick up room sound pretty well from wherever I am in the room.  I have Harlie's voice (HA PC sound) pumped through my basement stereo and it comes across good.  A problem I have with the whole setup though is that if I ask him to tell me the current weather forecast, which is an exported audio file from Weather Aloud, the microphone is picking up the sound of the forecast as it is being read and occasionally mistakes some of the words for his name and he responds.  So you'll hear in the background of the forecast being read, "How can I help you", or "how may I be of service".  The system will get a few of these false recognitions throughout the reading of the forecast.  I am wondering if any of the BVC users out there have experienced this and what has been done to remedy this.  One thought I had was to build something that would disconnect the microphone from the system if any sound was being played.  I am curious to hear others thoughts on this though.

[Tuicemen]

Are you using Win 7 or vista?
This is a common problem with those OS.
Bill is working on that issue and requires coding so recognition isn't shared.
 

[dbemowsk]

It is actually XP.

[dbemowsk]

On a side note... another issue I have is that when I tell Harlie to mute audio output, it shows as muted in BVC, but I still get sound.  I don't see it muted at all in the windows volume control.

[HA Dave]

...... I don't see it muted at all in the windows volume control.

The mute/muting issue is confusing. In the Windows (volume/audio) Setup... you do want the "mute" to be checked. But all that means (in that area) is windows won't hear its own sounds.... which means BVC will stop hearing the weather forecast once the mute is checked.

The other mute... or stop listening... causes the software to pretend to not hear microphone input. Even though the system really does hear... that's how you can voice command it to listen. 

[-Bill- (of wgjohns.com)]

Mia culpa!   

The mute audio output function in BVC probably isn't working correctly anymore.

When all BVC could handle was .wav files, they were played through the voice engine and that is what is being muted.

Now, even the .wav files are being played by an instance of Windows Media Player, and the mute has no effect on that.

Something else I need to fix.   
 

[dbemowsk]

So if I understand this right, according to Bill, the "mute audio output" that shows "Mute" in yellow across the master output volume, is not working right now but should (when working) silence any sound output from BVC.  You talk about .wav files now being played through an instance of Windows Media Player.  Does that include sound from the SAPI 5 voice?  As of now I do not have any .wav files playing through the system.  I am only using the SAPI 5 voice.

Dave, I do have a clear understanding of how the controls work for the windows volume control.  The mute button in the playback properties simply mutes the particular input from being directly fed to the output.  If that mute box is not checked, the entire room will feed back almost instantly.  With that box checked though, it means that from the windows side of things, the microphone will not pick up any sound DIRECTLY from the speaker.  On the BVC side of things, even if the microphone is muted under the playback controls in the volume control settings, BVC will still hear what is said. 

These are both different than the "Stop listening" command, which from what Dave is saying  stops any sound from being heard by the microphone, but only in BVC.  If this is correct, then it sounds like BVC needs to be programmed to "Stop Listening" whenever audio is being played.

[aussie mate]

Are you using phantom powered mic's in your setup?

Also you may find that by changing the placement of your speakers in reference to your microphone location and direction, may help reduce the issue.

ie - in my setup I have ceiling mounted speakers and ceiling mounted microphones. they each face downwards and so they dont compete with each other.

[dbemowsk]

Aussie,  I am using phantom power for the mics.  Currently I only have one mic in my test setup though.  One nice thing about the SCM-810 mixer that I haven't explored yet is the DB25 connector on the back that allows for gating, muting and overriding each of the 8 channel inputs independently.  In the manual it explains how to connect the system for each of these functions.  Jim Lipsit also has some great documentation on his website on using this type of mixer for this purpose also.  I think I am going to explore these options since I have them available to me.  Going this route would let me put the speakers and mics wherever I want.

[HA Dave]

The gated mixer is the way to go. I think Knightrider may have some documentation posted around somewhere as well. But the placement of microphones around sound systems like TV's and stereos will likely remain important. The cheapie setup I use... is nothing compared to what your building. But I would guess you might still find it useful to get the microphone(s) in a corner and away from the direction of speakers.

The computer/BVC will process every sound it hears. Reducing amount of needless input will save processing power, errors, and even electric.

[dbemowsk]

Just a quick update on this.  I have been working on building some microphones from the parts box to avoid having to pay $80-$150 for good mics like the Crown PZM series.  I have built 2 of them now using electret mic elements and some simple transistor preamps that will run off of the phantom power supplied by the SCM-810.  The two that I have tried seem to work well, but I need to find me some reasonably priced microphone cable to do a real test.  The tests that I have done were with a piece of strung out cat5e cable that I had laying around which is NO WHERE Ideal for microphones.  It seems that the cable is picking up excess noise from AC lines near where I have it strung, but even with the little bit of excess noise, it did a fair job.  I think it will do better with a shielded balanced mic cable.  One of the mics I made had a pretty high gain, so when you were closer to it it was pretty well distorting the sound going into the HA PC.  I hope to try that one with a small compressor circuit if I can find an easy one to build.

I'll post more on this at a later date.

[aussie mate]

You are correct - you need to use shielded balanced microphone cables. this will prevent noise entering the cable and distorting the signal.

For my setup I am using Beyerdynamic MPC23 microphones mounted in the ceiling.
They feed into a voice activated mixer. (16 gated inputs)
The mixer acts like a preamp and has a built in equalizer.
The output from the mixer then goes in as a line level signal to a external USB sound card in my HA computer.

Also note that even with gating - the position of the microphone and speakers is important (as are the levels).
I also notice that as there is a delay in the gating (0.2 - 0.5 sec) - it often misses the 1st part of the 1st word.

[Knightrider]

Aussie,

There's no adjustment on the attack of the gate?  Maybe says "soft knee/hard knee".

[HA Dave]

I also notice that as there is a delay in the gating (0.2 - 0.5 sec) - it often misses the 1st part of the 1st word.

So would be be beneficial to rename the computer... puter. So when the command line/name is said [com-puter]... because of the gate BVC would here the "puter" and respond normally.

[dbemowsk]

Aussie,

What model of mixer are you using?  I have a Shure SCM-810 and it doesn't seem to chop off the first parts of commands.  I can say "computer" and it picks it up fine.