I was on a business trip the other day and the office space of that company was very very nice. So nice that they had all sorts of automation going on to help the people.

For example when you would run into a room where there’s no light the system would light up the room for you when it senses your presence. Very nice!

There was some lag between me entering the room, being detected and the light powering up. So while running into a dark room, knowing I would be detected and soon there would be light, I shouted “Computer! Light!” while running in.

That StarTrek reference brought an old idea back that it would be so nice to be able to control things through omnipresent speech recognition.

I am aware that there’s Siri, Cortana, Google Now. But those things are creepy because they involve external companies. If there are things listening to me all day every day, I want them to be within the premise of the house. I want to know exactly down to the data flow what is going on and sent where. I do not want to have this stuff leave the house at any times. Apart from that those services are working okayish but well…

Let alone the hardware. Usually the existing assistants are carried around in smart phones and such. Very nice if you want to touch things prior to talking to them. I don’t want to. And no, “Hey Siri!” or “OK Google” is not really what I mean. Those things are not sophisticated enough yet. I was using “Hey Siri!” for less than 24 hours. Because in the first night it seemed to have picked up something going on while I was sleeping which made it go full volume “How can I help!” on me. Yes, there’s no “don’t listen when I am sleeping” thing. Oh it does not know when I am sleeping. Well, you see: Why not?

Anyway. What I wish there was:

• cheap hardware – a microphone(-array) possibly to put into every room. It either needs to have WiFi or LAN. Something that connects it to the network. A device that is carried around is not enough.
• open source speech recognition – everything that is collected by the microphone is processed through an open source speech recognition tool. Full text dictation is a bonus, more importantly heavy-duty command recognition and simple interactions.
• open source text to speech – to answer back, if wanted

And all that should be working on a basic level without internet access. Just like that.

So? Any volunteers?