Re: Voice Control integration with Tasker finally available!

[hollywoodfrodo]

Except it's been available for a long time via EVA or AVX which is what I use to trigger tasks via voice as well as pass variables into Tasker if wanted. But your app is a lot cheaper if it works as well.  :-)

On Sunday, August 26, 2012 8:11:53 AM UTC-7, Luka Kama wrote:

Hi,

with Pent authorization to spam this group (thanks again Pent), I'm proud to announce that on Play Store is available the Voice Control version with a working voice command that allows to execute Tasker's tasks, saying something like "Activate task <Task name>" (and, if you don't like default activation phrases, you can also fully customize them for the Tasker command from Voice Control options).

If you would like to try it out, you can install the free Test version of Voice Control (with a free week trial license) from the Play Store at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lukasoft.android.voicecontroltest .

You can contact me for any suggestion and improvement request.

Regards,

Luca.

[Luka Kama]

Ok, I'm in late than :) and also Voice Control misses the ability to pass variables to tasks... 

I don't know how EVA works, but currently I can add such feature modifying the Tasker Action in order to accept an additional (and optional) parameter in form of a free text, that would be passed as is as a local variable called something like "%voice_control_text".

The end result would be something like:

- Activate task "My Task" with "the value to pass"

However, this way, the variable type matching and selection of Voice Control cannot be used (for example, to pass a contact name to start a call from Tasker, it would need to handle incorrectly recognized names manually in the task itself).

A better approach would be to tell, from the executed task, if Voice Control should asks for additional variable and with which expected type and name. However I don't know if it is currently possible with Tasker: as far that I can see from Tasker documentations, currently external applications can only know if a task has been successfully executed or not, but they can't receive any data back from the executed task.

A less generic solution, but a lot more powerful, could be some sort of "action builder" feature inside Voice Control, that would allows to create completely new voice actions linked to a specific tasks, where it would be possible to tell the expected local variables names among with their types, specifying for new actions a dedicated list of specific "phrase patterns" to use to activate the task (in the same way as the current action activation phrases customization works). However it would require quite some time to be added, but I could try to add it in the next major version (Voice Control 2.3.0).

[Cptnodegard]

Been looking for an app just like this all day, and didn't find this one until I read this post. Been trying it out and it seems to work for the most part, and most importantly I can create a custom command that just requires task name, no "activate" this and that. 

I did have to uninstall and reinstall it after I deleted all the non-tasker commands, as it just kept "encountering an unexpected error" when I tried to use it after that. 

I'm also not a big fan of how long it takes it to actually run a task due to it feeling a need to inform me of what it's doing first. Maybe this is just a setting I haven't found yet, but I'd prefer it to just go "okay" or something like that. If I actually could delete all the (to me useless) non-tasker commands without it going berzerk over it, I wouldn't really need anything more descriptive than that. 

Great app though, tried many today, including that....that....that....thing...that is EVA. 

[Cptnodegard]

Btw, it would be really useful to be able to direct the spoken messages through the phone even if it's using a BT headset as the mic

[Andrea Z.]

and what's the difference with "get voice" and a profile that reads %VOICE variable and launch tasks?
I already implemented many voice commands with tasker, if i say "read sms" it reads last sms and asks me if i want to call or dictate the reply (via sms)... if I say "read time" it reads time and date and so on... the only thing i'm still not able to do is "call XYZ" and it calls... it works with numbers but not with names (it seems tasker lacks a variable for contact names)

[Cptnodegard]

Bluetooth support. Get Voice has no way of using the BT microphone, and no way of being triggered by button presses on a BT headset

[Luka Kama]

I did have to uninstall and reinstall it after I deleted all the non-tasker commands, as it just kept "encountering an unexpected error" when I tried to use it after that.  

I will check this out, as it should works well with only the tasker command enabled.

I'm also not a big fan of how long it takes it to actually run a task due to it feeling a need to inform me of what it's doing first. Maybe this is just a setting I haven't found yet, but I'd prefer it to just go "okay" or something like that. If I actually could delete all the (to me useless) non-tasker commands without it going berzerk over it, I wouldn't really need anything more descriptive than that. 

I could add an option to remove the confirmation message for the tasker command.

Btw, it would be really useful to be able to direct the spoken messages through the phone even if it's using a BT headset as the mic

I could see if I can handle that in Voice Control, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't work well on every phone (Android has a lot of problems with bluetooth handling and with audio behaviors...).

Great app though, tried many today, including that....that....that....thing...that is EVA. 

Thanks :). 

2012/9/5 Cptnodegard <andreas...@gmail.com>

[Andrea Z.]

Il giorno giovedì 6 settembre 2012 13:07:31 UTC+2, Cptnodegard ha scritto:

Bluetooth support. Get Voice has no way of using the BT microphone

OUCH! that's bad! really bad!
can I ask why?
and if other apps can do, why tasker not?

[Cptnodegard]

Btw, it would be really useful to be able to direct the spoken messages through the phone even if it's using a BT headset as the mic

I could see if I can handle that in Voice Control, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't work well on every phone (Android has a lot of problems with bluetooth handling and with audio behaviors...)

Don't think you should have any trouble doing that, after all Tasker has settings for popping the audio out various system stream channels (media, notification etc) for actions like Say, so I assume that pumping it out the Media channel while a mono BT headset is connected shouldn't be an issue. Not a developer though, just assuming all over the place

[Cptnodegard]

No clue, but I haven't been able to make it do it on my device/ROM at least. Moreover, I haven't been able to make the Say action output in the BT headset either. Tried all the various stream channels, including Call, still pumps it out through phone. 

[Andrea Z.]

say works well in stream "call" when using wired and bluetooth headsets. At least here on my sgs2 with cm10

[Andrea Z.]

I have every "say" command doubled, if using headset goes to call, if without headset goes to media.
no problems so far

[Cptnodegard]

Must be OS specific then as my SGS2 with stock GB babbles out the phone call speaker when trying that :S

[Andrea Z.]

try cyanogen10, now is quite good :-)
you just have to forget usb mass storage and use mtp or samba or some other wifi transfer

[Luka Kama]

Must be OS specific then as my SGS2 with stock GB babbles out the phone call speaker when trying that :S 

That is what I was talking about regarding Bluetooth and audio behavior problems on Android :P . On some phone it works in a way, on other it works in another way, on other it simply doesn't work :(, and applications have near zero control over them.

2012/9/6 Andrea Z. <kro...@gmail.com>