Voice Recogniton

[mal]

Hi  When I last wrote about RM voice recognition it was working pretty well.  I have however not used it in the last two years but have now redesigned by railway and having got elite etc, railmaster all working I decided to go back to voice control.   I have gone from a high success rate to abysmal one.   Sometimes does a couple and then nothing or voice recog starts doing windows commands.   Every thing I have tried has failed.  I am running windows 10 and voice recognition works albeit I do not have cortana on.  All my software is up to date.

 

Any ideas would be appreciated many thanks Malcolm

[Chrissaf]

Have you retrained the voice recognition?

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Are you still using the same microphone / headset as before? Is there any way you can hear what the microphone is picking up in case it should be now distorted or noisy in some way.

[mal]

Have you retrained the voice recognition?

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Are you still using the same microphone / headset as before? Is there any way you can hear what t microphone is picking up in case it should be now distorted or noisy in some way.

thanks Chrissaf.   Yes and No to the headset.  I tried using the original bluetooth one which I eventually got to work but just like I have described.   I am now trying a different cable linked one and it again the first command I gave from this set up was  set signal 21 and to my surprise and delight it appeared no problem but after that I could not alter lights at all and could not call up a point or loco so do the normal start again from scratch and not a lot happened apart from getting one command accepted but then would not do anyting else apart from coming up with listening or some word command.

I did think I might need to retrain but dont seem to be able to get the tutorial up as it seems to want me to train with Cortana.

Cannot hear anything microphone is picking up

 

thanks

 

 

Malcolm

 

[Chrissaf]

Cannot hear anything microphone is picking up

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I should have given more clarity.

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When I said,

"Is there any way you can hear what the microphone is picking up..."

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I didn't mean ambient background noise. I meant can you listen to your own spoken voice, is your voice being reproduced clearly and distinctly by the microphone i.e not noisy, distorted or muffled.

[mal]

Cannot hear anything microphone is picking up

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I should have given more clarity.

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When I said,

"Is there any way you can hear what the microphone is picking up..."

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I didn't mean ambient background noise. I meant can you listen to your own spoken voice, is your voice being reproduced clearly and distinctly by the microphone i.e not noisy, distorted or muffled.

No but I have just done voice tutorial again and seemed to responding.  I have checked all settings including starting cortana    It seems to recognise first command  no problem but then nothing until I perhaps start a train manually and then when I go back seems to recognise loco number but then no control.  This is old software now and I think Hornby do need to restart giving it some attention   Just bought a new elite as well so feeling frustrated   notice on elite now only one extra controller whereas old one had two so noe need to find another splitter to enable my selects to be connected  and cannot find any reference to them     I was hoping after a yearaway from railway things would have improved seems not   Malcolm

[Chrissaf]

Can you do me a favour Mal. Can you stop using the 'Blue Button' to reply to posts. The 'Blue Button' is not a 'Reply to this post' button.

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R8237 Y splitter

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TIP: If you want to reply to any of the posts, scroll down and write your reply in the reply text box at the bottom of the page and click the Green 'Reply' button.

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See also – further TIPs on how to get the best user experience from this forum.

https://www.hornby.com/uk-en/forum/tips-on-using-the-forum/

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[96RAF]

Yes - new build Elites only have one Xpressnet port. This is because the motherboard had to be redesigned to accommodate larger sprung terminal clamps as the original size went unobtainable, hence the slightly larger ones which occupy more real-estate on the back panel.

[mal]

ooops  Sorry about the blue button -  not been on for a while and forgot.,  thanks for the information on the elite being different and the part number.  I will try to track one down now.   Tried the voice R tonight in desparation and hey presto it started working fine for about 10 minutes and then dropped to about 75%.    Done nothing since last use when nothing would happen.    Obviously my kit is working just something in the processing within railmaster and perhaps window voice recognition.   It does seem that RM locks up for a while and then kicks back in action.

Thanks to you both and you both have certainly been answering the forum for some years  - well done and thanks for  the time you give to us less knowledgeable.     Green button coming in view   Stay safe and be careful.  Malcolm

[Chrissaf]

I will try to track one down now.

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Just click my link in my last post. That will take you straight to the Hattons product page that have these items in stock.

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It does seem that RM locks up for a while and then kicks back in action.

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I find that Windows 10 has an annoying habit of over-riding RailMaster in order to perform house-keeping tasks. Maybe because Windows 10 doesn't recognise RailMaster as being an application natively written for W10, it assigns RM a low priority. I usually try to start up my W10 RM laptop at least half an hour before I want to use it for RM and let it do its own thing (i.e leave it idle) to get all those housekeeping tasks out of the way.

[mal]

I am sure you are right.  I have always Felt nit fully integrated.   I like your idea of getting it warmed up.   Will try that next time although I do feel the whole software is old in its structure.  Thanks again Malcolm 

[mal]

Ordered the splitter from Hattons.  Cost more for postage than product but in these times no other option but still only just over £5.    Tonight waited for a whilse for windows to do whatever it does then loaded railmaster and again waited and then activated voice recognition.    Worked well  (about 85/90% success) for about 20 minutes then started to misbehave in that long delays and eventually locked up.  but still progress thanks again for your help  Stay safe and be careful.  Malcolm

[mal]

Hi All  Just an update.  I have now got a splitter.  If you saw the size of the box from Hattons I thought I had bought the shop.  All Selects now working and the great news is that tonight I had an excellent session virtually all voice activated.   90% of commands got a first time response.   Does not like Double Horn or Whistle but great.   My daughters got me a new set of headphones for Fathers day and I had to test in case not suitable.   They have a boom mike which has to be plugged in and obviously mainly for gaming and the other mike is built into the headphones which are wireless via bluetooth.  At first no joy and though mike was not good enough being built in but did the tutorials again and had a play about and letting windows load fully as suggested they work a treat. YThey are OneOdio M Studion wireless M Y80B   they are good with music as well    thanks again Malcolm

[Chrissaf]

This is just posted for additional information.

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...and letting windows load fully as suggested, they work a treat.

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When Windows 10 starts up. The following Windows 10 Service hogs Windows 10 resources [specifically HDD] for about a 10 to 15 minute period "Service Host: SysMain".

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If you open 'Task Manager' and look at the 'Processes Tab' with the 'Disk Usage' column selected. You will notice that during the first 10 to 15 minutes after the initial Windows 10 loading, the above service will utilise 100% Hard Disk utilisation.

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Note: If you are lucky enough to have a solid state SSD disk instead of a mechanical magnetic HDD, then you will be pretty much unaffected by this start up behaviour.

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This 100% HDD utilisation I find severely limits the speed and efficiency of other Windows applications to load and run smoothly during this initial 10 -15 minute period. However if one continues to monitor the "Service Host: SysMain" HDD utilisation, you will find that after about 10 - 15 minutes, the HDD utilisation will dramatically drop to idle levels as this Windows Service completes its assigned tasks.

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So what does "Service Host: SysMain" actually do?

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Ironically, it is supposed to be a service to enhance application performance. It replaces the functionality of a previous Windows 'Pre-fetch' service that has now been superseded by this 'SysMain' service.

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Its function is to scan the HDD for applications, note which DLL files the applications will make calls upon and preload these files into memory so that applications start faster. This is why this service hogs the HDD so much during this initial scan period when Windows starts.

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Other tasks that can hog Windows resources are invariably more ad-hoc in nature, like checking for Windows update for example, or running 'defrag' on the HDD. But in the case of "Service Host: SysMain", this process is guaranteed to run each and every time Windows 10 is powered up from scratch. It is highly recommended by MS that this 'SysMain' service IS NOT disabled in the 'task manager' settings.

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This is why I suggested letting Windows fully load before trying to run RailMaster.

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[mal]

Thanks for that explanation.  I did not realise it was doing that but certainly a pain although now I do have an ssd drive which I fitted a couple of months ago.  I did it on my desktop and started from scratch and although a pain putting things back the performance is incredible.  cheaper than a new one. That is when I decided to do my laptop but I made the mistake of cloning the hdd ironically because of the hassle of reloading Railmaster.  I now realise I would have been better starting from scratch on it.    I do think though your advice has made a difference even though I have an sdd,.  I even give railmaster a little time to settle before opening voice recognition.  I only hope it will perform like it is at the moment more often than not and not go back to the poor intermittent performance.     What ever happened to those detectors  (I cannot remember the name) that Hornby promised for years and the Forum had a 'raffle' on when they would arrive.

 

thanks again for the information    Malcolm

[Chrissaf]

 What ever happened to those detectors....

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'Loco Detection' ..... nothing ... went into the oblivion of a 'black hole'.

[mal]

Thanks Thought it might have vanished without explanation.   They still need to get their act together on DCC   Be safe  Malcolm