GolfGTIforum.co.uk
Model specific boards => Golf mk7 => Topic started by: nigeldodd on 21 March 2018, 13:04
-
I didn't know voice control was available until I browsed the Media instruction book. When I press the voice button on the steering wheel a message popped up telling me that voice control could be activated by getting a key from my dealer.
Do you have to pay for this? Does it work well?
-
I didn't know voice control was available until I browsed the Media instruction book. When I press the voice button on the steering wheel a message popped up telling me that voice control could be activated by getting a key from my dealer.
Do you have to pay for this? Does it work well?
Yes and no.
-
Unfortunately yes you do have to pay for it. It's a £200 option from the factory. Don't know if it's any good as I didn't bother with it.
-
Voice control is useless, i gave up using it less than a week after buying the car, I think it came with the Tech Pack, I certainly wouldn’t spec it on its own or pay extra for it.
-
I'm surprised manufacturers even bother with their own dedicated voice control these days let alone charge for them. The one in my Beemer is shocking.
-
When I picked up my car, the dealer mentioned that it was an option but didn't try to sell it to me. In fact he said wasn't very good and not to bother with it.
-
Dunno if it works without normal voice control but if you have CarPlay and plug your phone in then hold the voice button for a couple of seconds you get Siri and not vw voice
-
Dunno if it works without normal voice control but if you have CarPlay and plug your phone in then hold the voice button for a couple of seconds you get Siri and not vw voice
Yeah I was going to ask that question. Can anyone confirm if that button activates Siri if you don’t have the voice control option? In fact do you even get the button? Might be handy as I find ‘hey Siri’ pretty hit and miss
-
You get the button as the OP said, but when you press it you get a message saying go to a vw dealer to activate it
-
No idea if apple car play works like that but Android auto does... Long press activates it.
Vw voice control is quite useful for me, comes with navpro. Both Google and Vw voice control sometimes can be hit or miss though, it's the nature of the beast.
-
I had it on my previous Audi. I found it great for entering a new destination into the Nav while on the move. Easy to use and effective.
I negotiated it as a dealer-activated extra (they said they normally charge £150 as opposed to the £200 factory-option).
However on the Golf it's far from as good as the Audi version (surprising as they're both VAG). Often does not recognise my input ("please speak more softly"; "please speak more loudly"; Sorry, I don't recognise 'Oxford' " etc!) and I have a pretty clear speaking voice.
I'm getting to know how to make it understand, and do find it useful, but it's not good enough to be worth paying for it.......
-
I have an iPhone and when it’s hooked up to CarPlay you can activate Siri by holding the voice button down for a few seconds. It works ok, I’ve only used it for directions whilst driving but does mean you have to use apple maps
-
Interesting to learn that Siri or Google Assistant can be activated with a long press.
It might be worth noting that Google phones home to get its supercomputers to do the actual speech recognition, so you will need a data connection. Presumably the native speech recognition software is built in to the Golf media centre and since this requires quite a bit of processing power (less these days with more sophisticated algorithms but still quite a demand) it might be slow and inaccurate. Good microphones are important but I think there is only one built into the Golf (?) so it can't triangulate and eliminate noise.
Ideally, like the new speaker pods sold by Google, Amazon, Apple, robust speech recognition in a noisy environment needs to be built-in from the ground up with multiple microphones and good pre-processing.
It would be a good security feature if this were built in to a car since the vocal tract is unique, like a fingerprint.