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User Guide – Snips

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Snips provides Private-By-Design, Decentralised Voice Assistant Technology, and Solutions.

The voice recognition runs directly on the realKNX device. Nothing is recording nor stored. This means that no one will ever hear your voice but you. This page shows some background and how you can use the realKNX Snips voice control system.

Introduction: How to use Snips voice control with realKNX

Example, say Hey Snips, turn on the lights! or Hey Snips, what is the temperature of the bedroom?

  • ‘Hey Snips’ is the Hotword (or wakeword).
  • ‘turn on the lights!’ is a Command.
  • and ‘what is the temperature of the Bedroom?’ is a Query.

For best result, use short delay (~1s) between the Hotword and Command/Query

Commands

The command ‘turn on the lights!’ will try to turn on the lights in the room where the speaker microphone (a.k.a satellite) is situated. For a better experience, each satellite should be attributed to one room. If a satellite is attributed to the bedroom and the command ‘turn on the lights!’ is given, the lights in the bedroom will be lit.

If you want to turn on the kitchen lights, from the living room, you need to add the room to the command. Saying ‘turn on the kitchen lights!’ will turn on the kitchen lights from any satellite.

Natural Language Understanding

There are thousands of different possibilities enabled to ask realKNX to control your KNX installation. This is possible thanks to Natural Language Understanding. The NLU is based on deep machine learning technology and thousands of training examples. Together with clever handling of the commands, you are not limited to simple ‘turn on/off’-commands. As a result, you can use natural language.

Here are some examples of alternatives to control your installation:

CommandsAction
What are the settings of the [lights](light_device)The speaker will answer you whether they are on or off
Give me the status of the [bedroom](room) [windows](window_device)The speaker will tell you if the window is open or not in the bedroom
Let a bit more sunlight in, in the [bedroom](room)Will open the shutters in the bedroom
Pull the [blinds](window_device) by [twenty](value) percent.Will shift up the window by 20%
Close the [window](window_device) in the [entrance](room) to [fifty](value)Will close half the shutters in the entrance
I want the [bedroom](room) [curtains](window_device) to be a bit more closedWill close the curtains in the bedroom by 20%
Switch off [bedroom](room) [ceiling](light_device)Turn off the light called ceiling in the bedroom
Make it darkTurn off all the lights in the room you are speaking
Make sure the [living room](room) lights are turned onTurn on the lights in the living room if there are off
I need lighting [here](room)Turn on light in the room you are currently in
Reduce the brightness in my [bedroom](room) as I am going to sleep to [ten](value) percent now, pleaseWill reduce the brightness of lights to 10% in the bedroom
It's too dark in [here](room)Will raise the brightness of 20% in the room you are currently in
Less brightness in the [attic](room)Will decrease the brightness by 20% in the room
It's too [hot](up_down) in [here](room) turn it [down](up_down)Will reduce the temperature by 2 degrees in the room
Bring the [entire appartment](room) to a temperature of [nineteen degrees](temperature)Will set the thermostat to 19 degrees in the entire house
I would like to [party](scene_device) in the [living room](room)Will activate the party mode (you preconfigured it) in the living room

For a more complete list download this file: English commands

Privacy note regarding Text-To-Speech

realKNX does not collect any data, nor does it transfer any data to cloud services. However, the spoken feedback (example: “The temperature is set to 25 degrees”) can optionally be handled by an online cloud service. This is know as Text-To-Speech (TTS). Since the quality and richness of the online TTS service is superior and the infringement of the users privacy is limited, the realKNX devices are delivered with pre-configured online TTS.

To disable online TTS do this:

  • open realKNX user interface and select the Snips settings page
  • navigate to the bottom of the page
  • uncheck ‘Voice: Use online service’