Hololens Tutorial 211 - voice input not working [SOLVED]

cahorton

I'm working my way through the tutorials and for some reason, the spoken elements of 211 (move astronaut, expand model) are not working even when I use the finished code. Is there some setting I may have missed that is required to get voice input to work?

"Hey Cortana" works, so I know the Hololens can hear me - it seems to be specific to the 211 app. Thanks in advance!

gorgepir

How are you deploying? Because I think you should Start Debugging (or just click on the play button in Remote Machine), not Start without Debugging.

ahillier

@cahorton,
We encountered a similar issue during one of our Academy days where voice commands would fail on the first deploy. After re-deploying the app, however, voice commands worked again.

The only setting that you need for voice commands to work is the 'Microphone' capability. The course project should already have this set for you, but you can check in Unity by selecting Edit > Project Settings > Player, select the green Windows Store icon and then expand 'Publishing Settings'. At the bottom, in the Capabilities section, make sure that 'Microphone' is checked. You should also double-check the capabilities in VS by selecting the Package.appxmanifest file in your build solution and switch to the 'Capabilites' tab. Again, make sure that the 'Microphone' option is checked.

If you still encounter issues, then you can try running the app in debug mode as @gorgepir suggests above. There should be some debug console output that tells you if the phrase recognition system is failing to start.

Finally, you might want to reboot the HoloLens for a fresh start.

gorgepir

How are you deploying? Because I think you should Start Debugging (or just click on the play button in Remote Machine), not Start without Debugging.

ahillier

@cahorton,
We encountered a similar issue during one of our Academy days where voice commands would fail on the first deploy. After re-deploying the app, however, voice commands worked again.

The only setting that you need for voice commands to work is the 'Microphone' capability. The course project should already have this set for you, but you can check in Unity by selecting Edit > Project Settings > Player, select the green Windows Store icon and then expand 'Publishing Settings'. At the bottom, in the Capabilities section, make sure that 'Microphone' is checked. You should also double-check the capabilities in VS by selecting the Package.appxmanifest file in your build solution and switch to the 'Capabilites' tab. Again, make sure that the 'Microphone' option is checked.

If you still encounter issues, then you can try running the app in debug mode as @gorgepir suggests above. There should be some debug console output that tells you if the phrase recognition system is failing to start.

Finally, you might want to reboot the HoloLens for a fresh start.

cahorton

@gorgepir thanks for the suggestion - I ran with debugging on and sure enough, the problem was that the microphone capability was not set, just as @ahillier suggested. I solved the issue by pasting the following into the Package.appxmanifest right after the section in Visual Studio, though the Unity approach sounds easier:

  <Capabilities>
    <DeviceCapability Name="microphone"/>
  </Capabilities>

Thanks both for your help! It now works.

TresSims

I know this is an older thread, but I recently stumbled on a similar issue where the above didn't solve the problem.
We eventually fixed the issue by disconnecting our bluetooth keyboard from the HoloLens device, and the software was able to register voice commands.