'commands processed locally' and 'audio is never sent to the cloud' just sounds like Amazon is getting you to pay (when you buy the device) for the compute to convert audio into text, which will no doubt save it many $$ in server compute costs. I'd also like some assurance that it's not (locally) transcribing everything which is said in your house into text and transmitting that text to its servers.😉
The whole point of local processing is not for converting audio to text. That already happens locally. The local processing is for the actual recognition AI that matches your speech to specific commands. There is some local processing of that which is already occurring (the wake word is just one example), but the bigger issue is being able to understand all commands locally. This is important for scenarios like controlling home automation devices when your internet connection is down.
They've come up with some really good ideas and I especially look forward to offline speech processing and room presence detection. Not sure I'd want talkie toaster following me around though trying to sell me Amazon products..."Would you like a new dog bowl for Fido, they're on sale?", "How about a new coat? You last bought one, 372 days ago?"
Hopefully you don't have pets, because for example cats can hear to 64KHz and dogs can hear to 45KHz. "Ultrasonics" are only ultrasonic to humans, that top out at 20KHz. Imaging hearing fingernails on a blackboard 24 hours a day, and how happy your pet will be in that environment.
Soon Astro has that ability ;-) Even worse it know who spilled the coffee because it has been follow you around the whole day. Before you know it it will send kill commands to the attack helicopter...
@@2Fast4Mellow You get 3 chances to spit out your coffee, after that, it can eradicate you so as the floors stay clean. Although now it has to deal with the blood. _you can bleed 2 more times..._
Wait… the Echo Dot uses echolocation?! 😳🤣 Seriously though. I’m currently on crutches, and the ability to have lights go on and off automatically will be game-changing for people living with disabilities. 😍
This is a nice idea, but we'll have to see how it works in practice. I have proximity sensors in several rooms and there are significant challenges when using them, mostly when people sit still. I remember a story from the 90's when Citibank converted all their office to proximity switches about people falling asleep in their offices (which came with convenient glass walls.. it was the fashion of the day). Proximity switches have not gotten much better since. If you're moving around, they seem fine. Perhaps the concept of simple echo profiles for a room might improve this, but you'd need to be able to rescan if you move the unit to a new room or if you rearrange the furniture.
Motion sensors are problematic when you sit in a room. They work when I’m passing through a space to get somewhere or if I’m constantly moving around (like a kitchen), but they’re less helpful when I’m sedentary - which is happening more while I’m on crutches.
Hey I put myself on the list for one of those Astros. Why?! If you look carefully, Amazon understands there's a big need for seniors to live at their homes, but the problem with it is monitoring those seniors. Until now you can do what I'm doing with my mother and 8+ cameras all over her home plus a monitoring system she wears around her neck. In fact when I signed up for Astro there was another sign up for some new senior services including monitoring systems that Amazon is going to be launching soon.
Maybe Dave's father is named Richard, or his grandfather, so there's no way he'd get stuck with Richard. Then again, it's doubtful there's a "long" line of Limps anyway 😉
“Customers *in the US* ”… fuck those guys. Why just the US?! Have they not seen John Oliver’s, “did you know that there are countries that aren’t the USA…” GAH! 😫🤯🤬😤
@@JamesMeikleAustralia How could any country be more inept than mine. But you have succeeded . We must stand up and stop the madness and then destroy all the robots..
Not having access to this functionality is a small price to pay to be able to say we’re not American. Sorry, but that talking Cheeto has forever tarnished that country.
lol I spit up my coffee at the disney part with limps face... yeah nothing Disney really appeals to me as an adult lol I would imagine its probably the same for most.
The best use for that robot is probably patrolling empty offices and closed shopping centres. Cut your security guards by one and you can have 20 of these things wandering around at night for the same cost.
If you think the Alexa services situation is bad in the UK, try living in Spain. An incredible number of the features you've had, and the Germans have had, for years are simply not available here...
@@paulhibbert I can see there are very real language related factors, but the US and the UK share a common language (at least in theory) so there's no possible valid excuse...
@@paulhibbert oh...he knows. He knows 100%. Why release so much stuff to America only...releasing it to the UK but with the functionality disabled, only to release better stuff in the meantime before releasing the functionality of the original, now outdated, tech? He's doing it on purpose now. He likes seeing your head explode. I bet he was extatic to see Mr Socky following suit now! He knows.
Paul Hibbert sarcastically saying: "They're only $999, I'm going to buy 3" Jeff Bezos (in his evil Mr. Burns voice): "Excellent" also Bezos: "Get my peni...errr...ship ready for another trip, Hibbert's buying 3!"
Paul, that black and white house owning follow me thing i already have one; Mitzy the cat ! she owns the house walks around but unlike amacat can climb stairs, come through the cat flap downstairs go up stairs and straight out the window upstairs, sleep anywhere in the house like the sofa or book case or any amazon box that jeff sent. I will buy an Amacat if A it does not snore when its asleep, B if I look out of the Velux roof window its not wondering around my guttering, C it does not bring in mice and frogs at 3am, and D demand food love and cuddles coz and cat is so cute !!! P.S. The reason amazon send even the smallest thing out in a big box is for cats!! Love your channel xxLOLxx
Man I can't wait for the lawsuit when someone in the US buys one of those Astro robots and then either them or someone else in the house trips over it and injure themselves. Easy money!
Astro will be a waste of time for two reasons. 1 it can't go up stairs 2 women. Yes those same wonderful women that turn smart lights off at the wall instead of using their voice, they also have a strange hobby of going round the house closing doors for no good reason. So unless astro can open doors, which it can't it will be stuck in the same room all day confused as to why the rest of the house has disappeared. Also how stable is it cos cats will fight it and dogs will try to make sweet sweet love to it. (I did my best to keep that as polite as possible)
I’m going to buy the 15” echo as I have a tablet on the wall already for home assistant so being able to have a bigger screen and alexa in one makes sense to me. I have no interest in anything else they are selling.
The big question is whether you will be able to use the widgets on the Echo show to trigger Home Assistant. I reckon you'll find it's a big step down in customisation too.
@@paulhibbert I’m sure it will be but I know it works well with things like Bring shopping list and for basics like turning stuff off and on so that will do, most stuff we have automated anyway.
So it's not really an echo show, it's a fire tablet because the echo show has next to no functionality at the moment, it can play stuff and that's about it. Getting to actually display a control panel in a nightmare although it does get things right when I do ask it to do something, we'll most of the time. Google does the opposite. Switch the hot plate off = switching 5 lights off.
Echoes showing different screens to different faces feels kind of gross. Just add ads and it feels a step closer to minority report, showing people personalised adverts based on their retinal scans! Imagine going to a friend's house and being terrified of their echo show in case it starts screaming about how you should upgrade from your asspounder 9000
The BBC realised that being too 'London-sentric' was getting negative reactions from those in the rest of the UK, so you'd think some Amazon advisor would realise the negative PR globally by them being sooo blatantly and continuously 'US-centric' making customers in the rest of the world feel unimportant and meaningless! It makes me think twice about investing in Amazon products!!
That would imply that they care. BBC are funded by all of the UK and thus have a charter to make content relevant to all of the UK. American companies give zero fucks. They have zero fucks prior to 2016, now they wear giving zero fucks like a badge of honour. I feel bad for Canadians. They have to live next to them, and still get screwed.
I agree completely with your opinion on the real future of home automation that you describe near the end of the video. I especially want electric windows! What would be really useful would be to have the ability to turn on strict voice/identity recognition on Echo (and like) devices. A game changer for what you then might allow the devices to control. Side note; most homes already have robots, they are commonly referred to as 'customers'.
5:53 the new chip might have specific functions to enable power enough for face recognition, which the older chip might not have. example in the Synology NAS world: models with intel chips have build-in GPU that can do video transcoding, while newer (and more powerful) models with amd chipset can not. so it doesn't necesarily have to be a software issue, it might very well be related to the chip
Remember AIBO, Sony's version of the robotic dog? That only cost $2500 in the 1990's and it didn't do shit...a real bargain! Just proves that people will buy just about anything
Hey Paul, do you think the echo show 15 will substitute the need for a tablet to use as a dashboard/control panel? I was about to get one tablet for that purpose! Nice videos
Regardless of privacy concerns, once ASTRO can fetch a beer, they will sell out instantly. This is a problem with the educated class, product designers don't think like the working class.
Local processing is a huge leap for amazon's Bank accounts because they will offload a giant amount of network traffic and processing resources and instead pass it all onto their customers as "privacy" or "improved quality of service". Ignoring the fact that their fancy server side processing is still pretty arse
Yeah, it seems every announcement recently is about having the A-Z1 processor. Soon enough they'll say services will only work with the A-Z2 processor. It's a fun wallet emptying game that big business likes to play.
i wonder how long before someone "accidentally" gets a free prostate / cervix examination from astro's periscope camera? also will it get into a fight with the robovac?
Astro is how much?! Erm, thanks but I’ll pass 🤣😂 I genuinely don’t see the point of Astro or any other similar robot - apart from being able to check on people who need (ie agree!) to be monitored. But then there’s the whole privacy issue. I’m sure there are other - cheaper / more private ways to set up a 2 way video intercom for remote assistance / care / conversation etc. I’ve got quite a few echos in my house and they serve a great purpose. But this seems a bit of an expensive gimmick. And don’t get me started on releasing things to the US first (ie ONLY to the US!!)!! Grumble into the background….. 😅 Great content Mr Hibbert, as always! Keep up the epic work!! 🙌🙌😁👍
Was totally waiting for Goofy to smash through the wall - Kool Aid Guy style and shout "COME ON!" a-la Kingdom Hearts. Also - apparently Neesha works for Ring Virtual Security guard now.
amazon does not even roll out the echo in dutch. it is impossible to have it rocgnise a typical word as "rechts" (right)}:-(. ans a propos local commands and intelligence.... Atom homeyyyyyyyyyy :-).
It's not like you but I think you've completely missed the point on the Amazon Glow project that you praised so highly. Surely you realise that this is a device primarily designed to distract the family while your Astro Robot creeps around the house looking for materials that it can use to fashion crude weapons? "It can't form complex machines. Guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts. It doesn't work that way. But he can form solid metal shapes. ... Knives and stabbing weapons" - to be read in an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator(2) accent - not that Arnie has any accent other than his Terminator accent.
Hey Paul you're in the know will we ever get Alexa Guard in the UK? that's the one that makes me really mad, I love the room sensor, except it will again probably not be available here, because as consumers we don't matter. Where did you get the baby punching robot footage, great.
Try living in Australia.... No Amazon HD music, The bastard never understands me and it doesn't even support multi-user. Amazon is only good for lonely palmasexuals here in Australia..... God forbid you have children or a spouse...
Maybe if Astro wasn’t named after one my favourite childhood cartoons. And maybe if it was made to look like Fido, Aibo, or CHiP, or one of the other robot dogs on the market (Boston Dynamics really need to work on Spot’s image problem), maybe then I’d want one. As it is… it’s just creepy. I feel like it was designed by a guy that thinks following people around like this is OK. No it’s not. It was never OK. It’s not OK when a person does it, it’s not OK when a robot does it. Brrrrrr. 😳
Perhaps Ring's Dystopian attack helicopter could carry it. no wait, that can't go upstairs either 🙄 Can't wait for Amazon to conquer stairs with their new A-Z3 chip!! 🤣🤣🤣
@@paulhibbert A-Z3 will only admit stairs exist, AZ-4 will include software for stair climbing ability, but AZ-5 will enable stair climbing, in USA only.
I'm an Apple user from one end to the other, but that "Tablet hanging on the wall" Echo Show? Actually caught my interest. I currently have a Samsung Frame TV in my great room that cycles through my artwork, but the Frame is obviously a landscape device and thus doesn't suite displaying vertical art. The look of this thing with its faux picture frame appearance makes me wonder if I could put a couple up on the wall by the Frame to display vertical art pieces. I would need to be 100% certain that I can disable the camera/mic or at least KNOW the feeds aren't leaving my house though and I'm not sure I can do that.
Hi Paul. I’m newish to smart homes. Love your videos. We have grandparents who are 90 years old and we live 5 hours away. Wondering if you could do a video on how we can control our grandparents tv, fire stick over internet or Alexa. They have two echo dots & fire sticks. But fire stick keeps loosing connection and we spend hours on Skype trying to talk them through reconnecting. They use echo dots to announce each other if one of them has a fall. We want to get them smart bulbs so they can turn lights on & off via Alexa but not sure which bulbs are the best. As they’ll need to stay connected to the internet and very simple to use. No one seems to be doing video on how to smart home grandparents homes. I’m sure millions of grandchildren are in the same position. Any help, advice or video would be amazing. Thank you very much James
"A cupboard that cleans your dishes.." We already have those. Two dishwashers, a bit of restraint in how much stuff you own. Remove clean stuff from one dishwasher as needed. Place dirty stuff in the other one until everything has been used. Wash, repeat. If the Wife Acceptance Factor was just a tad bit higher... *Sigh* One can only dream
I've had an Echo show for awhile now, and it's not anymore reliable than the other Echo we have. It's actually just a glorified tablet that has no battery. I could have spent $200 less and just bought an android tablet and been just as well off (and $200 richer)
The glow isn’t that new, mate. McDonalds have had something called Smart Tables for years in some of their, ahem, restaurants, which do the exact same thing. As in keeping your kids in check while you cram your pie hole with a weeks’ worth of salt and saturated fat. As for Astro, I don’t need something that’s going to follow me about the house, getting under my feet and generally winding me up to the point where I yell at it to bugger off. I’ve already got something that does this, it’s called a dog. Although I can at least escape Astro by going upstairs, I guess…
Haven't figured out what good the robot is - does it have alexa on board? That would be good - just have alexa follow you from room to room so instead of 1$ 50 alexa per room, you could get 1 $1000 robot per floor... Well, maybe not
glad to hear I'm not the only one pissed off that Europe was left behind updates wise. The Echo show 10 that's suppost to trigger some routine via its motion sensor doesn't work til now. and i can't call my devices "Ziggy" yet 😅
mounting a switch bot on Astro's periscope opens some possibilities for when your S.O. flips your switches off. Also a leash attachment and boat anchor level weight so it can walk my german shepherds would be nice :)
On AZ2 doing facial recognition: it's probably got a snazzy Machine Learning processor in it like the Coral coprocessor, so it's may actually not be possible on the old one. 🙁
Why is this channel nearly the only one that dares point out items that might have a downside? Nearly every other home automation channel has done nothing but praise all the items from the Amazon announcement. As far as Astro goes, a couple of smacks to the extended telescoping camera will kill that functionality very quickly, if not stop the entire device dead in its tracks. I know Amazon says they have fixed the telescoping camera issues from the beta phase, but physics doesn't lie, that entire mechanism is just asking to be broken.
lol, those robots are the future of humanity. I've seen the original star wars trilogy. Those things were running around all over the place. Next step is a functional R2D2.
We need to see your Amazon security drone flying past you in the background during videos Paul "Just checking you're not calling our great leaders". ;)
I think if Astro was also a hoover, probably would buy it. 😂 Or if its head was on a periscope rather than just a camera, then you could have video calls without straining your neck.
you are good. i like. i don't want to comment but i'm unwilling to give you cash so i'm just going to write some bollox here that hopefully marginally increases your algo-rankings....
Good video thank you. Have you noticed how all these keynote speakers quieten their voices from time to time, using the back of their throats to show they can’t quite believe how wonderful their new products are?
my tinfoil hat says NOPE... never going to let them have a camera in my house. The ring door ball that takes 2min's to load is as close to the inside of my house as they get. and YES! I have tape over my webcam on my laptop.
What they do now is send an Ai analysed transcript of your audio... reason? MONEY!! Its cheaper to do it locally and send a tiny text file over sending the audio. So tin foil hats should stay on 😋
Yep Grandma is not going to look down at a stupid robo dog thing for video calls. Even if it does pop a silly camera out of it's top to be eye level. It's not going to be a good experience. My parents are usually on video calls but reclined back in a chair with their phone in hands. At least they don't look like they are asleep with a broken neck by looking at some overgrown tricycle without a third wheel.
The guy proposed on his doorstep really a lazy bum He didn’t want to go far from his snacks & didn’t want to ask someone to hold the camera so he used his ring 🤣
You can call the astro science fiction. and maybe it is at the moment. But looking at 10 - 20 year old movies that then were called sciencefiction are now common good in the world. I personally would like a robot like that in the house. I dont think i would buy this one, but in the near future when this gets more perfected and gets arms like you said, it might just be the next step in home automation that can do stuff that no other smart device can. Say putting dishes in the dish washer or getting drinks out of the fridge. Maybe at this point everyone thinks its not possible or wont happen. But thats something i heard allot in the last 20 years and if there is something that i have learned its the fact that nothing is impossible.
We currently have a two year old American pit bull stalker following us around the house. I guarantee that if the Astro doesn't have teeth or carry a club it will not last five minutes with us.
