I’m not a big fan of “always on” smart speakers such as Google Home, Alexa, etc. To me, it’s just too creepy to have a speaker closely tied to the Internet, built by companies with a vested interest in knowing more about you that’s always on and listening. If you’re paranoid like me, here are some steps to get on-demand (ie: requiring a button press) voice recognition on your smart phone that will work with SwitchBoard.

1. You’ll need Tasker for Android.
2. Open Tasker and go to the “Tasks” tab.
3. Click the “+” in the bottom right to create a new task. Enter “Voice” (or something) as the name.
4. Inside the “Voice” task, click the “+” to create a new Action.
5. Click Input, then Get Voice. You can leave the settings for Get Voice default.
6. Go back to the “Voice” task and click the “+” again to create another new Action.
7. This time, click Net, then HTTP Get.
8. Inside the settings for the network action, specify your Server:Port.
9. For the Path, enter: ?gerty=text-%VOICE. Note, if you’ve changed Gerty’s deviceId from the default in SwitchBoard, change that here to match.
10. In the main “Voice” task page, you’ll see an icon in the bottom center. Clicking this allows you to associate an icon. I had chosen Material and searched Voice.
11. Back at the home screen of your phone, long press on an empty space. When the menu pops up, selected Widgets. Scroll down to Tasker and hold the Task icon and drag it to your home screen.
12. In the Task Selection, choose your new “Voice” task.

You should now have an icon on your home screen allowing you to quickly fire voice commands to SwitchBoard.