Voice control in a classroom AV system
Is it wise to use voice control in a classroom with consumer
devices like smart speakers? They are certainly in widespread use in home
environments. More than 100 million Amazon Echo devices have been sold as of
early 2019.
At Utah State University, we are fortunate to have a supportive
and technically savvy administration, and a teaching and learning technology program
that allows us to evaluate and test technology and teaching methods in a lab
environment. Consumer electronics and BYOD are often a focus of our efforts,
since consumer electronics and personal devices are always at the top of user
requests for accommodation.
In the fall of 2016, we decided to develop a test project to
see if voice control was possible and if it provided an improvement to the user
experience.
There were challenges to make this work. Smart speakers such
as Amazon’s Alexa control smart devices, typically consumer devices controlled
over wifi and discoverable on a local network. We would need IP control of
every classroom device, and a skill written for every item to be controlled. On
our campus enterprise network, device discovery would not be allowed, so we
would need to manually register each device with its skill. Newer connected
devices have network control API’s, but we use many devices of different brands
and age. Some are controllable via IP, some are not. We would need interfaces
for devices controlled by RS-232, infrared, or even relays.
We already have a system in place campus wide that is built
for control of any device regardless of it’s age and available control interfaces,
it is designed to do this, and does it well. In our case, this is Crestron. We
program in house, and have systems in nearly every classroom. The Crestron
processor can receive character strings via a network connection and can be
programmed to parse or compare these strings to run commands, controlling any
classroom device connected to the system
.
For voice control, Amazon’s Alexa was our choice because of
the easily accessible API. We wrote an Alexa skill to receive voice commands
and send ASCII strings to the Crestron processor, mirroring the existing
touchpanel controls. This worked well as a test project in our lab, but our campus
disability resource office heard about the project, and requested it for a
visually impaired instructor to use in a classroom. It seems we had accidently
created an accessible classroom system. The faculty member used it for two
semesters in two different rooms, powering on the room display, selecting the
presentation source, adjusting room volume, all controls available on the room touchpanel
and made available also by voice command.
Fascinating and even somewhat useful in practice, but
difficult to install in more than just one or two locations. Wide deployment
would require additional custom programming for each room, and multiple Echo
devices running multiple instances of the skill to talk to each processor. To
scale and deploy as part of a standard program and equipment package, we
rewrote the skill to utilize our instance of Crestron Fusion, a central
management system capable of exchanging control data with the Crestron
processors. This platform provides a central access point to address any
system, and provides a way to quickly deploy voice control when needed. Moving
the devices to different locations accommodating class schedule changes by
semester is possible.
Another limitation is the lack of feedback from the room
devices. The Alexa skill was inherently one-way, sending commands when
requested but unable to track current status or changes. Our rewrite of the
skill tracks status and gives real time feedback.
On the voice side, managing multiple Echo devices became
easier with the advent of Alexa for Business. We can configure multiple devices
all at once, activate our custom skill, assign each device to a room and manage
them with a single account.
Now our pilot project is a true
pilot, ten rooms were installed in early March during spring break, and we are
looking forward to thorough testing by the users this Semester.
So, is it wise to use voice control in a classroom? We hope
to find out soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment