Topic: Does the dash have a microphone in it?

duane i know that this is off topic  but does the so u dash had a microphone in it? i don't know why but it crossed my mind talking to.alexa this morning lol

Re: Does the dash have a microphone in it?

It does have a microphone. It's on the upper left next to the screen.

Re: Does the dash have a microphone in it?

Duane wrote:

It does have a microphone. It's on the upper left next to the screen.

Do you know if any apps were released that made use of the mic? I can't remember seeing any & the wiki section on app development just says "Code to come".

Hmm, it'd be kinda nifty to have an app that calls another, based on voice command.

Chumby, bring me the Shakespeare Insult Generator! smile


Does any documentation still exist online for accessing Dash specific functionality?

Re: Does the dash have a microphone in it?

At one point, Sony had a deal with a third party company to provide voice command of the device.  Like Siri, etc, the device would send raw audio to a server, it would be interpreted, and the appropriate commands would be returned to the Control Panel and executed.  There was even a mechanism designed to allow individual widgets to supply a grammar.

Very late in the development process, they dropped the feature, but I don't know the reason.  Perhaps they intended to bring it back at some point but as you know, that never happened.

I haven't looked to see if any fragments of the code still exist in the firmware, however, I do know that the company that was to supply the backend has since gone out of business.

Re: Does the dash have a microphone in it?

Duane wrote:

Very late in the development process, they dropped the feature, but I don't know the reason.  Perhaps they intended to bring it back at some point but as you know, that never happened.

They might have found that, at that time, people were not entirely happy with the idea of an internet connected household/bedside device fitted with a microphone.
Now that over-sharing on social media has become so prevalent, and devices with microphones so ubiquitous that they are no longer even noticed, the results of similar focus testing might be quite different. Potential consumers would probably complain about the lack of a camera.

Re: Does the dash have a microphone in it?

would be great to have alexa or google home enabled to it  well the echo show does look pretty similar lol

Duane wrote:

At one point, Sony had a deal with a third party company to provide voice command of the device.  Like Siri, etc, the device would send raw audio to a server, it would be interpreted, and the appropriate commands would be returned to the Control Panel and executed.  There was even a mechanism designed to allow individual widgets to supply a grammar.

Very late in the development process, they dropped the feature, but I don't know the reason.  Perhaps they intended to bring it back at some point but as you know, that never happened.

I haven't looked to see if any fragments of the code still exist in the firmware, however, I do know that the company that was to supply the backend has since gone out of business.