Can Siri be trained ?

Posted on
Tue Sep 26, 2017 8:47 am
PeteVis offline
Posts: 180
Joined: Jun 19, 2015

Can Siri be trained ?

First of all, I'm having a ball with Homebridge Buddy, thanks for this wonderfull plugin.

I've never used Siri before, but suddenly I'm thinking about buying an Apple Watch just to talk to Siri...

That said, I'm also having a bit of a discussion with her, as she tends to misunderstand what I mean.

Every time when I ask her to "turn on the alarm", I mean the house alarm ofcourse... but Siri insists that she wants to change the bed-alarm inside my iPhone.
I've tried renaming my device to housealarm, but still Siri is persistent... I think "Alarm" may be a reserved word ?

How do you tell Siri to enable the (house)alarm ?

I'm also confused as to how exactly to control the lights in different rooms. Do I need to create Rooms inside the Home app, and will Siri than know which room I mean ? Or is it better to just name the devices inside Indigo as I pronounce them to Siri ?

Posted on
Tue Sep 26, 2017 9:03 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
User avatar
Posts: 2794
Joined: Jul 20, 2009
Location: Colorado

Re: Can Siri be trained ?

LOL, thanks. I was the same, I started using Siri a lot more with HomeKit and now I talk to her constantly and it's part (but only about 25%) of the reason I got the watch - the rest is that I'm a fitness nut.

You cannot train Siri really. Alarm is a keyword, so you might want to change your device (or use HBB alias, it was created for this very type of reason) and call it House Alarm or Security System or something.

The idea behind why I created aliases is because you may want to call something in Indigo "Greatroom Lamp" since you have lamps all over the house, but you may want to tell Siri it's the "Couch Lamp". For me, I use aliases to give common sense names to the most used items, like the Couch lights are all grouped into "Couch" and the kitchen ceiling is "Kitchen", the kitchen countertops are "Countertops" etc. When I have a dupe, like the basement couch, I call it the "Sitting Area". Just get creative with names, but not so much that you forget what they are called.

My Modest Contributions to Indigo:

HomeKit Bridge | Device Extensions | Security Manager | LCD Creator | Room-O-Matic | Smart Dimmer | Scene Toggle | Powermiser | Homebridge Buddy

Check Them Out Here

Posted on
Tue Sep 26, 2017 10:51 am
Different Computers offline
User avatar
Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: Can Siri be trained ?

Things I had to change the name for to get Siri to use them:

iTunes or Apple Music became "Turn on House Audio." (But usually it's just automated anyway.)
Skip this song became "Turn on Another Song"

I also have a bunch of action groups that switch to playlists on the whole house iTunes, so I can tell Siri to "Turn on Mellow" or "Turn on Recently Added" and that works.

"Play", "Skip", "Next" and similar all seem to be reserved words.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

Posted on
Tue Sep 26, 2017 11:04 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
User avatar
Posts: 2794
Joined: Jul 20, 2009
Location: Colorado

Re: Can Siri be trained ?

Different Computers wrote:
"Play", "Skip", "Next" and similar all seem to be reserved words.


They are. Consider all the things Siri does OTHER than home automation and those things take priority and will be reserved - especially anything to do with controlling music.

My Modest Contributions to Indigo:

HomeKit Bridge | Device Extensions | Security Manager | LCD Creator | Room-O-Matic | Smart Dimmer | Scene Toggle | Powermiser | Homebridge Buddy

Check Them Out Here

Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest