Raven was mainly build to gather samples to train a model with while still having a decently working custom wakeword. It is way better than pocketsphinx ever was and that was the only wakeword I could ever get running before Raven.
There is a fork of precise that is using tensorflow 2.2.0 but it hasnât been merged yet and to be frank, it is quite broken. Training models is slower than with the official precise release, the train-incremental script is completely broken, the export function was rewritten to export to a tensorflow light model and the model that is trained is now a .pb model instead of a .net but I have found no way to actually use it with rhasspy, just copying it over did not throw any errors, but I could not get a wakeword detected. I canât diagnose if it is because of the training not working properly and therefore the model just not recognizing me speaking or something else.
I agree with you that none of the wakeword systems we have now are cutting edge and that it could be better but I personally do not know how to write something like that, I had problems just trying to figure out the differences in the precise scripts of those two versions.
For right now we just have to work with what we have, and this thread is not geared towards any system at all, I am just looking for ways to collect data to train models on while using any non-raven KWS since they donât come with the handy inbuild collection that raven does.
I think the main reason that effort is put into snowboy is that it is open source, rhasspy already can use it and there is a need for an easy to train KWS for ppl that arenât well versed in linux and just want to have a private voice assistant. Not everyone in this community even knows how to code or understands the more technical parts (I gave up on reading your posts on microphones because I didnât understand most of it and I know I will continue to use my respeaker4 as long as I can keep it working, so I will try to decipher those if I actually need the information). With snowboy becoming open source it was an easy way to add this missing element without having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.
@synesthesiam is no expert in AI technology as far as I know and he is working on rhasspy mostly by himself. There are quite a few things that need work and I donât think it would be in anyoneâs interest if he pours all his time into getting a perfect cutting edge KWS system for rhasspy and neglecting everything else. If you know of a working open source framework that can be integrated into rhasspy, has a decent way to train, is kept up to date by the maintainers (since I donât think there is someone in this community that could keep something like that up to date, otherwise we would have something better already) and, most importantly is stable enough that an update to tensorflow or whatever it uses behind the scenes will not cause new models not to run without manually changing the integration into rhasspy then I am sure it could be integrated. This community has no one with the knowledge of how to and the time to actually work on this project and we canât just offload everything on synesthesiam, he has enough on his plate as is.
The reason it is coming from this community is because most of the community, me included, are no experts in any of this stuff. We also work on this as a hobby and if I tried to look up every unfamiliar term and technology I will never get anything done. So most ppl either get most of their information from this community or from skimming/half understanding the underlying concepts. So we assume ppl posting here about something know what they are talking about without using extensive research to prove it and if something is posted about often enough it sticks and becomes the norm. So we need experts or ppl with more time and interest to actually do the research to correct that opinion but after it being repeated all over the place it is hard to get it out of ppls mind. If I read about something in 10 different threads, mostly written by 10 different ppl then I assume that they have to at least know some of what they are talking about.
PS: If someone that can move things in this forum comes by, this discussion about KWS systems might be better off in its own thread.