Voice command HELP

Are you trying to communicate with it?

I know unequivocally it doesn't understand profanity

i can get it's attention but just about any address stated, it gets wrong an telling it find place then saying the place, I would have better luck letting a chimp type it in!!. I do have one of the British chicks as the voice. would it understand me (American) if I used the English guy or girl?

If you are giving an address

Get its attention

Say find address

When it responds

Say the street number one number at a time followed by the street name city and state.

So if the address is

12341 1st st, goof, Alaska

Say it as

One,
Two.
Three,
Four,
One,
First st,
Goof,
Alaska,

Not
Twelve three forty one first st, goof Alaska.

with Barney, but I have found on my 3597 that it does not understand numbers when spoken a numeral at a time. So if the address is 655 and I say six-five-five it doesn't get it but if I say six fifty five it seems to understand. I think that in general voice recognition on a Garmin device is pretty crude and inconsistent ... certainly no Siri or Contana.

Alan,

Thanks for chiming in.. no disagreements.. here's the other part of the conversation that I failed to present...

What I've found interesting is it seems to be a question of the length of the number.

You used 655 and it seems to understand that just fine, it seems to loose it's way with a numeric street number part that's anything longer than 3 numeric values.

I've said things like

I-495 as I-four-ninty-five or Interstate four-ninty-five
or
I-495 as I-four-nine-five or Interstate four-nine-five

If I say find intersection

and I want to find say I-85 & I-40 I can

get it's attention

say find intersection

When it asks city and state say the appropriate city and state

then say

I-85 as Eye eighty five for the 1st street

then say

I-40 as Eye forty for the 2nd street..

I've also had success saying for

I-85 as Interstate eight five for the first street

then say

I-40 as Interstate four zero.

So with that; just to keep a simple single format (especially when trying to teach some 85 year old drivers) I just use the single verbal interface so I don't confuse them with all the various nuances..

ARGH!!!!

Finding addresses is where I first stubbed my toe on what it would accept as a spoken number.

Like I said if the number part is 12341

it gets all confused if I were to say something like

twelve three forty one
12 thousand three hundred forty one

but saying

one two three four one

seems to work almost every time.

The other thing I've stubbed my toe on is

Talking directly to the unit sometimes doesn't work so speaking at an angle like maybe talking against the window or up towards the ceiling of the car might work..

about the only thing I can say is they seem to be persnickety, temperamental, obstinate and sometimes just plain dumber n' a brick.

Of course, sometimes it misbehaves worse than a child on crack!

If that's the case, then I hold down the power button on the back until I get the do you want to power off YES or NO and I say yes.

Then I restart the stupid thing and it USUALLY starts to act better... but not always...

I think voice command has a long way to go yet with Garmins.

I used to use a program to dictate letters called "Dragon Naturally Speaking". In this program you had to read pages of info so the program got trained in your pronunciation. This could be upwards of 30 minutes. You even had to chose which variety of English you speak, ie American, English, Australian etc.

In the Garmin there is no such provision so how is it supposed to understand someone from Iowa and/or Kentucky?

Having said that, the voice command in my opinion is far better in my ancient 855 than it is in my much newer 2797.

effects how well it works? I have always stayed away from the voice command because of this.

Background noise makes the voice recognition even less accurate and can generate some false positives.

I've even found the GPS voice command coming on obviously triggered by the radio.

I've been able to communicate when the:

~ Radio has been playing

~ with the windows down standing still

~ with the drivers window down while traveling 60+ MPH

~ With a lady changing her clothes in the passenger seat, but my tongue gets all tied up and my brain goes gooey

I have the Nuvi 2597 and have been very happy with the voice commands and feel not only Garmin but other vendors have come a long way on voice commands. I have used the command to turn up or down the volume,find a place and the one shot address http://www.poi-factory.com/node/42810 with no problems.

I feel your pain. Although mine is a Nuvicam most of the time I just used the touch screen mode instead of using voice command. Kind a frustrating.

Sitting in your car with thee GPS running and just sitting and practicing.

I have mind in the lower left corner of the windscreen. A buddy of mine has his in the center of the windscreen and we each use differing techniques to communicate to our devices. You may need to have the GPS literally sitting with the bottom edge on the dash or a little above. There are to many variables to make any suggestions. Foe me, mine works best stitting on the dash or up to about 1/2 inch off the dash and pointed slightly towards the center console.

The first thing I did was to change the wake up phrase from "Hello Garmin" to "Listen <_insert_name_here_>" (matilda, jane, spazmo, stupid...) dramatically reduces the number of times it wakes up because of door chimes, key chimes, things on the radio... and on and on.

Practice just getting it's attention. Try using various voice volumes and inflections.

Try speaking towards the drivers window (if it's up).

once you get its attention consistently, then try giving it commands going through each one individually.. start with volume and brighness.

Once you get those working, then try addresses... intersections, cities, places.

If your GPS chooses to not react to your commands, I do a complete power off and then a power on and it seems to reslove it's temporary stupidity.

But being able to communicate with it while driving has become an absolute necessity as it's illegal to do much more if you"re sitting in the drivers seat, with the engine running.

Good luck you guys..

Thanks for the great info. I'll give it a try this weekend.

I never had any problem talking to mine. Of course I take my time and speak slowly.

Yes, my Nuvi 2699 has problems with "Hello Garmin" waking. Changed it to "Good Day Hal" and wakes every time. I had to change the wake word on my Amazon Echo to "Computer" to wake it without saying "Alexa" a half dozen times!

Secondly, voice recognition. I have found that speaking clear and slow, one word at a time with minor pauses in between words improved accuracy dramatically. "Costco" was a problem until I said "Costco Wholesale" and then it got it right every time.

This is not Dragon Dictate software that learns as you go on with use. It is still far better than NO feature at all. Be patient and work with the known limitations.

Lots of good suggestions. I will play with it some more this weekend and also try the talking at an angle to it. I have my GPS mounted on the dash directly in front of me (this keeps the instrument dash scan directly in front of me) so I will ricochet my voice off different parts of the windshield and side window and see if that works.

Also I have no problems waking them up. one answers to "Alexa On"
and the other to "I'm Lost"

The phrase I use is "Wake up dummy"

Master, you called?

ROFLMAO

Voice command is a waste of time on the 2495LMT. I shut it off and don't even bother with it. Gets it wrong about 99.9% of the time.

you know it doesn't seem to understand the following languages:

Basic
Pascal
Assembler
Fortran
COBOL
RPG
APL
C
C++
ADA
or
Profanity!

with my 2598. Even with my European accent. What I found it works best when I say a comment in question form. Like raising the sound at the end. And of course turn down your stereo.

You forgot English. Maybe they should get some help from Apple on this one.

... confuses some folks is that there are two types, voice command and voice control. Why I have no idea!

sussamb, I don't mean the following in any disparaging way. I do like to watch certain British TV and Australian TV programs. With some I have the dickens of a time to understand all of the dialogue.

How does Garmin fare with that in the British isles where you may have a different dialect in a town 2o miles away, never mind the Scottish, Irish or Welsh accent.

BTW: I never had any problems with the Benny Hill show.

... I have no idea lol

Must be a minefield for anyone trying to offer VR programs. Mind you, similar in the US if you consider a texan versus a washingtonian