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Does voice command feature work for anyone? particularly for maps?

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#22
Runt8 said:
Mine works great when it works at all...

About 50% of the time it works as expected, and is pretty much spot on for destination names (has some trouble with names when calling people in my address book, but is generally close enough that it calls the correct person or at least shows a list of potential contacts with the correct one in it).

The other 50% of the time it's almost like the microphone doesn't even turn on. The voice card pops up and appears to be listening but nothing I say is registered. Sometimes it will start to work again on its own after several tries, and sometimes I need to restart before it works again. I was assuming it was a software bug introduced in a recent release since it worked flawlessly when I first got the car but I've had two updates since it broke and the problem still appears. Probably time to schedule a SC appointment.
Click to expand...

That's the way it has "worked" for the past few months. I don't think they'll be able to fix it at the Service Center.
 
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#23
It has worked amazingly well for me even with my British English accent. I have been as impressed or more so with this than even using Google. It's kind of cool seeing it correct itself as it tries to make sense of what you are saying. For example when you ask to call a person in your phone list you can see it figuring out what you mean (presumably by cross referencing against your phone book). It gets even very complex and foreign names right. Same thing with music. For navigation I got used to just saying "take me to ..." seems more human than navigate to. or drive to.. So "take me home" after a long day is nice. Or "take me to work". or "take me to New York city"..
 
#24
Runt8 said:
The other 50% of the time it's almost like the microphone doesn't even turn on. The voice card pops up and appears to be listening but nothing I say is registered. Sometimes it will start to work again on its own after several tries, and sometimes I need to restart before it works again. I was assuming it was a software bug introduced in a recent release since it worked flawlessly when I first got the car but I've had two updates since it broke and the problem still appears. Probably time to schedule a SC appointment.
Click to expand...
Fyi, this is the exact thing that happens when you haven't connected to LTE yet.

Make sure it's connected, before doing a navigate command.
 
#26
Runt8 said:
Mine works great when it works at all...

About 50% of the time it works as expected, and is pretty much spot on for destination names (has some trouble with names when calling people in my address book, but is generally close enough that it calls the correct person or at least shows a list of potential contacts with the correct one in it).

The other 50% of the time it's almost like the microphone doesn't even turn on. The voice card pops up and appears to be listening but nothing I say is registered. Sometimes it will start to work again on its own after several tries, and sometimes I need to restart before it works again. I was assuming it was a software bug introduced in a recent release since it worked flawlessly when I first got the car but I've had two updates since it broke and the problem still appears. Probably time to schedule a SC appointment.
Click to expand...

This is my experience as well. A majority of the time when I press the right scroll button or the microphone button on the screen the voice command shows up on the screen but simply does not recognize anything I say. It doesn't matter if the car is stopped or moving and it can be completely silent. It just doesn't work. If I reboot the system it typically starts working, but that means I'd have to reboot the MCU over half the time I use my car.
 
#32
I'm looking forward to the time where it understands things like:

"Wipers on Auto"
"Increase (decrease) wiper speed"
"Wipers off"
"Increase (decrease) fan speed"
"Front defrosters On (Off)"
"Rear defroster On (Off)"
"Open charge port"
"Left (right) side mirror adjust" - enables scroll buttons for mirror adjust for 10 seconds
"Steering wheel adjust" - enables scroll buttons for steering wheel adjust for 10 seconds
"Navigation display North" (so north is up on nav display)
"Navigation display UP" (so the car arrow is facing upward on nav display)
"Autopilot on (off)"
"Navigate on Autopilot on (off)"

Seems like these would be easy to implement. Anybody else have any preferences?

By the way, I am amazed how well the existing voice commands work. 100%
 
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#33
TankoftheNorth said:
This is my experience as well. A majority of the time when I press the right scroll button or the microphone button on the screen the voice command shows up on the screen but simply does not recognize anything I say. It doesn't matter if the car is stopped or moving and it can be completely silent. It just doesn't work. If I reboot the system it typically starts working, but that means I'd have to reboot the MCU over half the time I use my car.
Click to expand...

I had problems like this early on - was hitting about 50% for the first few weeks with whether it would recognize anything and if it didn't, it probably wouldn't for the rest of that drive. For whatever reason (Updates? Learning my voice? Gremlins ejected?) it has gradually gotten better over time, and now only fails maybe 5% of the time - and when it does, I can try again in a minute or two and it works.

It has NEVER failed to correctly interpret a voice command, only failed to "hear" them. Very refreshing, since my last car (a 2014 Hyundai) was sitting on a lifetime 0% at getting commands right - yeah, I gave up after a couple of months.
 
#34
Lloyd said:
You can also say: "Where is ................"

Didn't we have a Wiki of accepted voice commands at one time??
Click to expand...

I remember looking them up before. I was actually surprised by how limited the commands are there. I was used to the voice commands in Lexus where you could say something like "I'm hungry" and it will show you all the restaurants around you. Or "I am too cold" and it will raise the temperature by a few degrees. One command I won't be using on the Tesla is "find a gas station" LOL.
 
#35
Tesla's voice command system is light years behind the current state of the art. First of all it should have a wake word like "hey Siri". There is no technical reason for it to need a button to launch. Also, the vocabulary is pitifully small. Every variation of "navigate to..", "drive to...", "directions to..." should be bulletproof and other natural language things like "where is the nearest..." should be there also. And yes many system operations like wipers should be provided. Tesla does not need the depth of a connected voice assistant like Siri, but there is a lot of room for improvement on the local level. And the car -is- connected so something like Siri or Alexa could be added.

I'm not sure why Tesla's system is so embryonic. Hopefully they have someone working on this but I have a feeling that this part of the Tesla software is an ugly stepchild and is only tended to by guys who are not technically proficient in voice command.
 
#36
I have to give the voice command system the M3 a "D". It really needs a lot of work. It has a hard time recognizing words and really, really sucks at names. It's also miserably short on commands. You should be able to control nearly every function of the car with voice, but it's super limited right now. My Android phone with Google Assistant makes the M3 look like a ill trained cat as far as following voice commands.
 
#37
BenR said:
I had problems like this early on - was hitting about 50% for the first few weeks with whether it would recognize anything and if it didn't, it probably wouldn't for the rest of that drive. For whatever reason (Updates? Learning my voice? Gremlins ejected?) it has gradually gotten better over time, and now only fails maybe 5% of the time - and when it does, I can try again in a minute or two and it works.

It has NEVER failed to correctly interpret a voice command, only failed to "hear" them. Very refreshing, since my last car (a 2014 Hyundai) was sitting on a lifetime 0% at getting commands right - yeah, I gave up after a couple of months.
Click to expand...

Same experience. When it recognizes my voice it works perfectly. It knows what I'm saying every time. But when it's not working it's like it never turns on. Like the mic is off. It doesn't even try to determine what I'm saying. Obviously a software issue still going on.
 
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#38
lotusland said:
Tesla's voice command system is light years behind the current state of the art. First of all it should have a wake word like "hey Siri". There is no technical reason for it to need a button to launch. Also, the vocabulary is pitifully small. Every variation of "navigate to..", "drive to...", "directions to..." should be bulletproof and other natural language things like "where is the nearest..." should be there also. And yes many system operations like wipers should be provided. Tesla does not need the depth of a connected voice assistant like Siri, but there is a lot of room for improvement on the local level. And the car -is- connected so something like Siri or Alexa could be added.

I'm not sure why Tesla's system is so embryonic. Hopefully they have someone working on this but I have a feeling that this part of the Tesla software is an ugly stepchild and is only tended to by guys who are not technically proficient in voice command.
Click to expand...

I doubt we'll ever get a voice recognition system that doesn't require the driver to initiate the command by a button while the car still requires the driver to stay alert. This is more of a safety issue. Allowing others in the car to use the voice command without the driver initiating it could cause a distraction to the driver. If there was a wake command, like Google and Echos, a command could also accidentally be made that could cause a distraction. Etc etc. I know tech is getting better at recognizing who is making commands, but it's still not 100% there and wouldn't stop accidental commands from a driver. Therefore, I would take a guess they built the voice command how it is due to safety reasons.

With that said, I 100% the system should be expanded much more than it is. We should be able to hit the voice button and say "turn wipers on". Or "Speed wipers up". Or "Turn Auto Pilot On/Off". Or "Turn off regenerative breaking". Very annoying at the limited number of commands.
 
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#39
TankoftheNorth said:
I doubt we'll ever get a voice recognition system that doesn't require the driver to initiate the command by a button while the car still requires the driver to stay alert. This is more of a safety issue. Allowing others in the car to use the voice command without the driver initiating it could cause a distraction to the driver.
Click to expand...

I don't agree that safety would be an issue. After all there are many things that are as bad or worse in that regard. A passenger can grab the wheel or do pretty much whatever they want with the touch panel already. Being able to kick off voice reco is not even in the same category of "distraction". Either you have your passengers under control or you do not -- adding voice control won't change that.

If you wanted to control that issue though, Tesla can already tell which seats are occupied -- make the wake word active only when the driver is the only occupant. Or use the wake word only for non-mission-critical stuff -- audio control is the big one IMO. Or simply make the wake word able to be disabled -- the driver would press the button and say "enable wake word" or something to make it work. It's so simple to add a wake word that it seems silly not to have it.

But I agree generally that the vocabulary is the main area voice control fails. It is embarrassingly poor IMO. Assuming that FSD will need a bulletproof voice interface I think Tesla has a lot of work to do.
 
#40
lotusland said:
I don't agree that safety would be an issue. After all there are many things that are as bad or worse in that regard. A passenger can grab the wheel or do pretty much whatever they want with the touch panel already. Being able to kick off voice reco is not even in the same category of "distraction". Either you have your passengers under control or you do not -- adding voice control won't change that.

If you wanted to control that issue though, Tesla can already tell which seats are occupied -- make the wake word active only when the driver is the only occupant. Or use the wake word only for non-mission-critical stuff -- audio control is the big one IMO. Or simply make the wake word able to be disabled -- the driver would press the button and say "enable wake word" or something to make it work. It's so simple to add a wake word that it seems silly not to have it.

But I agree generally that the vocabulary is the main area voice control fails. It is embarrassingly poor IMO. Assuming that FSD will need a bulletproof voice interface I think Tesla has a lot of work to do.
Click to expand...

I think that we should eventually be able to get to voice commands without initiation by a button. But I still see it as a limiting liability issue from Tesla. It'll be interesting to see what they do now that Amazon is coming out with the Echo Auto.
 
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