Voice Controlled Lighting

[henny]

Voice Controlled Lighting gimmick or worth 33euros

 

see http://www.enttec.com/vocus.php

 

General Description: Enttec Vocus is an amazing new way to focus your lights. By using any microphone (wireless or wired) plugged into your pc you can set channel levels remotely. Great for quick focusing of lights, this inexpensive tool will quickly become invaluable after the first few uses.

 

Once voice trained vocus will recognize simple commands such as:

channel 7 at full

channel 4 thru 46 fade to 50

channel 187 at zero

 

what do we think

 

if you allready have a laptop or pc and a radio mic could be verry usefull?

 

henny

[mac.calder]

I think it would be damn nice, although I already use a voice controlled system called Tim. ("Hey Tim! 12@ full!")

 

I suppose it depends on how well the voice recognition worked. If you worked mainly with generics, it would be a great alternative to a focus remote whilst working at height, esp. if you had a lapel mic or head worn. I have always been loath to have a focus remote up on a work platform, mainly because of the risk of injury if they fall and someone has forgotten their helmet, and also because of the cost of replacement if they fall.

 

There are some things I would like to see added - multiuniverse support, either through an addition to the syntax (Universe 1 channel 1) or through a separate command (default universe 2) which allows dropping of the universe prefix, basic movers support and by extension 'fixtures' support (fixture 1 home, fixture 1 at full etc) and also a text-2-speach interface to provide the reverse, so that you could have voice commands like "say levels" or something which would tell you the current channel levels that are >0.

 

The main advantages I think would be venues rather than the traveling LD. Venues that already have some PC control of lighting (I know a lot have either a PC running backup, or that is in control of the houselights) would get the most benefit from the system.

 

As a traveling LD, I would not bother though. Tim is quite efficient (I upgraded from a paul who was hopeless) and his voice recognition is unsurpassed - he even understands abstract syntax like "Timmy, bang em all up to the roof"

[bruce]

I've got some voice control for my PDA. It's a bit of a gimmick, I've never used it in anger...

 

In theory, it lets you "read" your email while driving, or whatever - you give it voice commands like "read", "next" "save", "delete", etc, and it reads out the text of the email.

 

In practice, it only works if you use a fake californian accent. That is not a joke. We have tried it with lots of different people. Only californian works. Even my colleagues from New York and Boston have to fake an accent before it will respond to them!

 

There is a (probably apocryphal) tale of an early attempt at voice recognition on a PC. It was years ago, and the machine was running DOS.

 

The inventor was giving a lecture and demo - he turned on the pc mic to demonstrate, but before he could do anything, some guy in the audience stood up and shouted "format c: return yes" :P ;)

 

Bruce.