Whole house audio as an intercom?

D

DotNetDog

Active Member
Greetings all! New member here...
It looks like I will be building a new house...and do I have questions. I've been reading this forum for a few weeks and have learned a lot.

Here is a high level overview of my goals.

- I am a Windows developer so I plan to do a bit of tinkering on the software side
- I'm building so I plan to do the structured wiring during construction
- I want whole house audio
- I want to include voice recognition
- Will use (probably) z-wave
- Will integrate thermostats
- Will (eventually) integrate with Windows 7 Media Center

I try to research before asking questions...of course, searches are only as good as the search keywords.

OK, first question... I plan to include whole house audio along with voice recognition. I would like intercom functionality as well. Is there a way to get whole house audio w/mics to function as an intercom? Of course, you may be saying "Gee Doug, why don't you just use an intercom system for you whole house audio?". I would prefer "open air" mics rather than te push-to-talk of an intercom (for VR). Thoughts?

Thanks.
 
Welcome, Dog. Pretty tall order, for voice recognition. I'm also very interested in the responses.
 
For the most part, open air mics and voice recognition is a recipe for disaster. The VR software simply isn't good enough to distinguish normal speaking with VR commands. Even using "Command Words" isn't reliable. Buying expensive mics can help, but even then systems are generally unreliable. Buying inexpensive mics (even those that cost several hundred dollars each) simlpy won't work at all.

Those people that have success with VR generally have dedicated mics with a "talk" button. That way the system only picks up on the desired commands and doesn't have to distinguish between normal voice and background noise.
 
DotNetDog said:
... I plan to include whole house audio along with voice recognition. I would like intercom functionality as well. Is there a way to get whole house audio w/mics to function as an intercom? Of course, you may be saying "Gee Doug, why don't you just use an intercom system for you whole house audio?". I would prefer "open air" mics rather than te push-to-talk of an intercom (for VR). Thoughts?
Click to expand...
I have to agree with sic0048 when he says:
"Those people that have success with VR generally have dedicated mics with a "talk" button. That way the system only picks up on the desired commands and doesn't have to distinguish between normal voice and background noise."

Although I do think there is room for more of a hybrid system. I use a baby monitor (hidden) setup for VR Control and it works well. I believe intercoms have the most reliability. Although I don't have problems with TV or Radio as background noise/sound.. people talking and kids [in general] can be a problem. I use my TV's remote to switch the microphone(s) off/on.
 
Ranger Digital said:
If you are starting from scratch, ditch x10 and start with something more reliable as I understand it.
Click to expand...

Ranger,

I wasn't considering X-10 / Insteon at all. I only mentioned that I've followed X-10..but I realize that it has too many reliability issues. I looked into hard-wired light switches but I want more than just light switches. Z-Wave looks pretty good to me so far. Any thoughts on Z-Wave?
 
sic0048 said:
For the most part, open air mics and voice recognition is a recipe for disaster. The VR software simply isn't good enough to distinguish normal speaking with VR commands. Even using "Command Words" isn't reliable. Buying expensive mics can help, but even then systems are generally unreliable. Buying inexpensive mics (even those that cost several hundred dollars each) simlpy won't work at all.

Those people that have success with VR generally have dedicated mics with a "talk" button. That way the system only picks up on the desired commands and doesn't have to distinguish between normal voice and background noise.
Click to expand...


Yeah, I keep reading that open air mics are problematic (at best). My biggest concern using an intercom for VR is what happens if/when someone turns the volume off at a station? Is there an intercom system that is centrally controlled so that HomeSeer (or other) can adjust the volume?
 
OK, so I just looked (onkline) at Russound's Compoint intercom. Hmmmm....looks good. I'll research that option for VR.

Edit: Well, a quick search suggests that Compoint is a closed system so I don't think I can use its mics for VR. Bummer!
 
I'm looking a tthe same thing russound is pretty good they do the whole house audio and intercom and it is all one system. For lighting look at upb in fact look at HAI and crestreon depending on your buget and how much time you want to invest setting it up. The voice command is hard I know HAL 2000 and some other systems have tried it.
 
My thought has always been, that if I need to walk up and push a button, I might as well have some sort of control, like a touchscreen.

The "quality" of the mic may not be the biggest factor. It's about sensitivity and coverage patterns. But, I can tell you that the biggest thing is noise gating. The mic's input will not pass signal below a defined threshold. So you can set it so that general conversation doesn't trigger it, but your slightly elevated voice and a control word, will.

It's tricky. Get 4 or 5 people talking and the levels will increase beyond your threshold. Set it high enough to avoid that and you'll have to yell when there's only you.

You get the picture ;)

It can be done, but it will most likely be a bit unpredictable.
 
samgreco said:
The "quality" of the mic may not be the biggest factor. It's about sensitivity and coverage patterns. But, I can tell you that the biggest thing is noise gating. The mic's input will not pass signal below a defined threshold. So you can set it so that general conversation doesn't trigger it, but your slightly elevated voice and a control word, will.

It's tricky. Get 4 or 5 people talking and the levels will increase beyond your threshold. Set it high enough to avoid that and you'll have to yell when there's only you.
Click to expand...

My expirences has been the same as samgreco's. My baby monitor (microphone) setup gives me full room (even more) coverage. But it is not for crowds. The microphone doesn't need to be high quality.. after all speech recon is 8 bit (phone quality).

I think a few itouch players configured [with the app] for automation would be a great touch-screen solution.... for HA and MORE.

But the best part about the Voice Control is hearing the computer voice! I get voice notices and warning that can NOT be matched with chimes and buzzers. Including weather reports.
 
I took on the open air mic challenge for VR several years ago and pioneered the use of commercial audio conferencing equipment which made it feasable.

The audio conferecing gear has DSP which is what allows for the echo cancellation and some other features that are neede to make it work well.

While the equipment has some audio matrix capability that could probably be used to accomplish intercom functionality, I'm not really sure how you'd create a workable interface to use it effectively.

I think my advice would be to look at an available intercom system like Russound compoint for the intercom and keep the VR mics seperate (that's what I do). Using ComPoint, you can at least share the same speakers between intercom and whole house audio and many distributed audio systems also include a paging type input which allows you to direct TTS announcements through the whole-house speakers as well.

I've shared a lot information about my VR setup over at the Homeseer forums. If you search for my username "pkoslow" with keywords like "gentner", "crown", etc. you should find lots of information to get you thinking.

I haven't participated much at the HomeSeer forum for a couple years now, but I think there are a group of guys that took my lead using the conferencing gear and might still be sharing some new information and tips.

Here's a link to get you started... it has a couple recordings I created to demonstrate the echo cancellation which is important for open air mics and let you issue reliable voice commands even with loud music playing:

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=109542

EDIT: Here's another link with some additional information: http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=104151

Cheers,
Paul
 
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