Re: Microphone wiring

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:43:00 -0500, "Robert Green"
<ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<UoadnWT6E_nW137YnZ2dnUVZ_hKdnZ2d@xxxxxxx>:

>"Marc_F_Hult" <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>
><stuff snipped>
>
>> Lest I be misunderstood or misconstrued, note that by "audio noise" in the
>> paragraph above I meant "electronic noise" . Extraneous noises picked up
>by
>> mics are a severe problem even with the best of installations. In general,
>> folks seem to have much greater expectations of multi-mic VR than the
>physics
>> permit.
>>
>> http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/us_pro_ea_myth
>> http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/us_pro_ea_predicting
>>
>> One partial solution is to restrict the installation to phone-based
>equipment
>> with good fidelity.
>
>Yes!  That's a very important point.  One's lifestyle may have great
>influence on whether a VR system is going to be successful.  Having lots of
>people, lots of different voices and lots of background noises like TVs or
>radios will really degrade performance.
>
>Perhaps things have changed since I last played with VR in the late 90's,
>but it was pretty hilarious to set up a voice recognition program to simply
>type what it *thought* (word used anthropomorphically!) it heard out of
>over-amplified background noise.  The results were often far better than any
>TV sitcom.
>
>The problem is the imprecision of single spoken words.  Last night, I was
>channel surfing and heard and saw what I thought were two attractive women
>discussing UNIX.  Turns out after watching for a few seconds that they were
>talking about eunuchs.  Click!(-:
>
>The telephone idea is good.  If there were a tiny pendant cordless I could
>hang around my neck it would nearly solve the problem of not needing to
>actually find a phone to issue a command.  That's what I think most HA VR
>users are seeking.  The artifact-free command system that works almost by
>magic.
>
>Even two centuries from now, the Star Trek folks still needed that "brooch"
>communicator - and that's probably what cellphones will be reduced to in
>size someday.  One doesn't need anything but a channel back to the base
>since you should be able to command it entirely by voice so you don't even
>need a keypad.

There are multiple vendors of Voice Recognition for TREO now and I presume,
other phones. I had it on my TREO 650 (whose Bluetooth capabilities were
limited, but haven't installed it in my TREO 680 yet.

>With little need for other cordless phone features, it would
>be a great way to "run the house" by voice.  Add an RFID chip and locators
>in the house and you've got occupancy detection licked, too.


One such instantiation is  already here:  'mobile phone with Bluetooth'.  The
same TREO that can "call home" by voice command can also talk to HA software
with voice commands once connected.

A third-party software add-in is available for HomeSeer that alerts that HA
software that a Bluetooth transmitter (eg on TREO is in range, but I haven't
tried it yet. With Bluetooth version 2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), piconets
are being developed which could provide triangulated location using the
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) that was added to BT with v1.2. The
number becomes the person's ID.

These are a few more of what has changed since 1999.

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org