Full room speech recognition? need mic advice

[ddxfish]

Hey all,

new to the forums here, about time i found a forum for smarthomes. I have a smarthome, which is my home server (xp pro), with x10, IR control of my home theater, 2 usb security cameras (using webcamxp for them) with motion detection, a virtual linux machine running heyu to control my x10 pc link (cm11a), telephone control with smart answering machine, RF remotes, fingerprint reader for application quicklaunch, slideshow screensaver on my flatscreen, and of course my media server (fully encrypted drives, for 'legal' reasons). All of this is custom, I do not use an interface like homeseer, HAL, or activehome, but rather .bat files and a scripting program called girder.

Im looking to add speech recognition, and I have experience in the area but have never tried to use speech recognition from across the room on a regular mic until now. It sucks. I could really use another option than a single desktop mic.

My 'favorite position' is about 10-15 feet from my home server which is in a closet. The room i am in is about 15x20'. I have multiple computers running so they emit fan noise. I would probably be using microsoft sapi with a custom interface I made with girder, or dragon naturally speaking as a backup (last resort).

Does anyone have any advice on full room microphones that dont kill my wallet? I have come across a few, falling under the category of 'array microphones', like Voice Tracker, and cheaper versions. A similar topic is 'boundary microphones' which i am completely unfamiliar with their speech recognition abilities. So far my inclination is to just go all out and buy the voice tracker, an array microphone with 'tunneling' stereo mics, but at 270$ i figured I would ask advice first. I dont really care about how all of it is setup, whether its 1 big mic attached to usb, or multiple mics each attached to its own input on the PC, I can install anything that has wires.

Thanks in advance, and thank god I found an active smarthome forum!

 

[Rupp]

The problem is all full room mics are expensive if you want them to work reliably. Many HomeSeer users use this mic with success. It's not cheap but it works.
http://store.homeseer.com/store/Voice-C49.aspx

 

[electron]

I had the AM100, great mic, but it won't work once there is noise such as a TV, etc. I don't think we're there yet when it comes to full room voice recognition.

 

[intozwave]

The AM-100 is a great mic - I tested one in my living room which is 14 x 27 with 14 ft ceiling - multiple computers - big screen TV and audio system had mic in center of the room on the coffee table - worked great when it was quiet 90 to 95 percent reliable first request - the more noise that was added the less the reliable it became - with everything running normal - speech recognition got to between 60 to 65 percent reliable first request got tried of repeating myself multiple times for the software to recognize the commands - I agree the technology isn't quite there for full room voice recognition yet.

 

[macromark]

Like I tell most folks.... even Captain Picard wore his microphone on his uniform! Open air voice recognition in a typical room is always difficult to pull off because there are many issues to deal with. The quality of the mic is important but there are other considerations, equally important. Your distance from the mic, room acoustics and ambient room noise are all factors that affect the outcome. Generally speaking, we recommend voice recognition via telephone. Why? Telephones are designed to be sensitive to human speech, do a great job of rejecting background noise and may be installed in virtually any room.

 

[Overgrownasian]

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but what did you finally decide to do and what are your results? Right now I am running a little 4 channel splitter from radio shack with a couple of mics run near the places that I usually use voice commands (the computer, the couch, the door, etc). Also you said that you are controlling your ir with your system, I'm looking into a way to control a tv with voice commands, if you have had any luck in the past year, let me know.