Amazon echo replacement ? ivee

[Macedon]

ivee: Talking to Your Home is No Longer Sci-Fi

ivee looks very interesting - even emergency link

[JDRoberts]

Everything looks interesting on indigo go. Until you can order it for two day delivery from Amazon it’s just marketing. Most things arrive six months to a year late without all of the original features promised. Just sayin’…

The original version of ivee wasn’t very good–just didn’t have the accuracy. If this one turns out better, that will be excellent, but I’ll wait until Amazon is carrying it to evaluate.

Meanwhile, the Echo is available now and works great, so I’m happy.

We have a topic where most of the voice control options are covered if you’re looking for something less expensive:

Voice Command Solution - Discussion

Hey everyone, I am sure many of you have heard of Ivee (helloivee.com). I personally don’t own one, but it did make me do some thinking. For them to achieve integration with SmartThings, it would appear they have to communicate with the SmartThings cloud. Is this correct? Have we heard of any way to do this officially as of yet? Here is where I am going with this…: My dream would be to put 5+ Raspberry Pi’s in my house, with a good bi-directional mic, and a wifi dongle. Toss on a simple “always listening app” and basically build a voice recognition app using one of the many cloud-based voice recognition api’s. I look at the products like Ivee, and in some ways I feel that they are too ambitious with trying to integrate into 100 solutions, they are trying to do too much with having a pr…

[Macedon]

agree 100% with you, i just ordered the amazon echo from Bed Bath & Beyond of all places for 119 - they had 20% off coupon online

[sidjohn1]

From Siri/HomeKit via home bridge to OK Google, with sharptools… If your not a fan of Amazons solution there are several voice HA control solutions that already work well with little to no addition hardware required that you can get going tonight.

[Macedon]

can you let me know which ones don’t require hardware investment?

thanks in advance.

[sidjohn1]

Nope, sure can’t/won’t… It depends on your setup and what you have. I’d reccemend to using the search feature to see what is required for each and let common sense guide you. I.e. If you already have an android phone, look into ok google and sharptools. If you have a iOS device look into homebridge and if you have neither then get a real smartphone… J/K … Kinda but you will need some hardware.

Both solutions are throughly discussed, search and you will find the threads and all the requirements to get either or both setup.

I personally set them both up and settled with homebridge and Siri, but it doesn’t mean homebridge is better than sharptools, it just worked better for me and my requirements are not your requirements. So do your homework and find the best solution for you.

[Macedon]

thanks will look into this. i dont have real smartphone lol

[btk (The fish is still dead.)]

I’ve got an Ivee sitting here. It wouldn’t work for the first week I had it due to “server problems”. Then it sort of worked for a while, but only if you were sitting near it, muted the TV, and spoke slowly and clearly.

Now it’s just a pretty alarm clock. The company’s support is hands down the worst I’ve ever dealt with - I’m still waiting on answers to literally ALL of my tickets. The voice recognition was nowhere near as good as Echo and the servers were down almost as much as they were up.

[mbfrenc0586 (Mike French)]

I have both an Ivee alarm clock and an Amazon Echo. The Echo is really great. the voice control works very well and lights respond quickly. The ivee on the other hand is extremely slow most of the time and the options for voice are very limited. The ivee also detects a LOT of false triggers and will randomly tell me the time or weather somewhere random in the world.

I would pass on the ivee until the new one actually is released and reviews come in.

[RLDreams (Really Living the Dream)]

@Macedon

can you let me know which ones don’t require hardware investment?

thanks in advance.

I’m pretty sure the only HA solution that does not require any hardware is to have kids . I was the home automation 40 years ago " Shut off those lights when you leave the room" , " Lock the door when you leave" ," Turn off the television" etc etc etc

[sidjohn1]

@RLDreams

I’m pretty sure the only HA solution that does not require any hardware is to have kids .

I’m not sure how you make kids, but last time I checked it took hardware, software, wetware and lots of sleepless nights to get that solution going. Besides I don’t want my HA solution to hate me for 4 years before it moves out.
“Open the pod bay doors!”… “Like whatever dad I’m going to my room!”

[btk (The fish is still dead.)]

Hrm. I’m pretty sure Alexa’s plug only has two prongs so you can’t… GROUND her.

…I’ll show myself out.

[RLDreams (Really Living the Dream)]

@sidjohn1

@RLDreams

I’m pretty sure the only HA solution that does not require any hardware is to have kids .

I’m not sure how you make kids, but last time I checked it took hardware, software, wetware and lots of sleepless nights to get that solution going. Besides I don’t want my HA solution to hate me for 4 years before it moves out.
“Open the pod bay doors!”… “Like whatever dad I’m going to my room!”

I was making the assumption anybody using the kid solution already has them and not actually going to make new ones and wait the 3-5 years minimum for the system to mature enough to respond to commands .
At that point you should get at least 5 years of semi reliable us before the system develops a mind of its own and completely rebels against the parent system.

[macstainless (Aaron)]

The Ivee was horrible. I backed it on Kickstarter and was a miserable failure. The voice recognition sucked and it had tons of false triggers. It would take four or five tries for it to work if it ever did. The Echo is light years ahead of Ivee. Only by trying both can you appreciate what Amazon has delivered. Plus they update it weekly.