Voice_Index

🎙️ Voice Assistant

The voice assistant is a hands-free co-pilot that understands natural language questions and commands across every section of the app. It runs entirely on-device — no internet connection required.

What Can You Do?

Here’s a quick flavour of the things you can ask:

“Log diesel for fifty pounds”
“Where is the first aid kit?”
“Am I overweight?”
“Good night” (switches to Sleep mode)
“Remind me to buy gas canisters”
“When does my passport expire?”
“Will I fit under a 3.2 metre bridge?”
“What’s my Schengen status?”
“Turn on the kitchen lights”
“How much did I spend on fuel last month?”

Getting Started

→ Voice Overview — How the overlay works, the orb, the listening cycle, status indicators, speech synthesis, and privacy.

Command Reference

💷 Finance

→ Finance Commands

Log expenses, query spending by category or merchant, check account balances, calculate runway, look up scheduled payments, and transfer funds.

📦 Inventory

→ Inventory Commands

Find gear, add/move/delete items, check zone weights, run readiness checks, and audit expiring or unverified items.

🏠 Smart Van

→ Smart Van Commands

Switch van modes, control lights (on/off/brightness/colour), query temperatures and humidity, get a full van status report.

✅ Whiteboard

→ Whiteboard Commands

Add tasks to your to-do list or shopping list, with optional due dates and location-based reminders.

📁 Documents

→ Document Commands

Find documents in your Glovebox, check expiry dates, and get a proactive list of everything expiring in the next 90 days.

🚐 Van Specs

→ Van Specs Commands

Ask about van height, width, length, payload, tyre pressures, oil type, coolant, and MOT date. Includes bridge clearance checks.

🗺️ Travel

→ Travel Commands

Log a location check-in, ask where you are, check Schengen days used/remaining, get your return-to-Europe date, and query trip statistics.

Advanced: How It Works

→ Multi-Turn Conversations — Context chaining, two-step confirmations, closing phrases, Apple Intelligence fallback, speech normalisation, and ML confidence gating.

How the System Decides What You Mean

Every command passes through three layers:

On-device ML classifier — A custom model trained on vanlife phrases predicts the intent category with a confidence score. Only predictions above 75% are used; uncertain predictions are discarded.
Seven specialist handlers — Finance, Inventory, Van Specs, Navigation/Travel, Documents, Whiteboard, Smart Van. Each handler independently scores its confidence that it can handle the text. The highest-confidence handler wins.
Apple Intelligence fallback — For anything none of the seven handlers can claim, on-device Foundation Models handle open-ended questions. Requires compatible hardware.

Permissions Required

The voice assistant needs two iOS permissions:

Microphone — to capture your voice
Speech Recognition — to transcribe it on-device

Both are requested the first time the microphone button is tapped. If either is denied, voice commands won’t work. Update permissions in iOS Settings → Privacy → Microphone / Speech Recognition.

Tips for Best Results

Speak clearly and at a normal pace. The recogniser handles accents well, but very fast or mumbled speech may mis-transcribe.

You can interrupt. Tap the orb at any time — even while the assistant is speaking — to stop playback and start a new command.

Short and direct wins. “Van height” works just as well as “Can you please tell me what the height of my van is?” (filler words are stripped anyway, but shorter is clearer).

Use exact device names for Smart Van. “Turn on Kitchen Strip” works; “turn on the light in the kitchen area” may not match if your device isn’t named that way.

Check your data first. Van Specs, Finance, and Inventory answers come from your saved data. If something seems wrong, check that the value is set in the relevant section.