Welcome! 
interesting questions, and it sounds like you’ve done a lot of initial research, which is good
In the future, I’d suggest creating multiple threads, one for each question, as quite a few of your questions don’t really have much to do with the others and it makes it easier for people using the forum in the future, and just for those trying to follow any one topic discussion. In particular, your fourth question is an entirely separate topic, and while there’s been quite a bit done on that already, it ends up not really belonging in this thread. So you might want to start a new thread at least for that.
Webcore has their own forum where most of the experts hang out, so you might try asking questions there as well.
As far as whether a piston can be activated by voice, see the following community FAQ: