Hello,

 

Everyone wants to try if everything on their car is functioning and then I got to the voice control. I pushed the button on the dash ("VOICE") but it only muted my radio... I tried again but from the steering wheel and the same happened. I tried turning it on in all menus (Navigation and Bluetooth mostly) but no success!? Does anyone know the reason?

Do you have Columbus nav? Believe it comes with that as standard (at least in the UK). Otherwise voice control is optional.

 

I wouldn't worry unless you do have it - I find it more hassle than its worth. e.g;

 

Nav screen on head unit, press voice button on steering wheel then say 'call home'. It changes head unit to phone screen, then once phone call is ended, it stays on the phone screen, not the nav it was originally on. So you then have to press the nav button anyway. Don't they test this stuff?  

Do you have Columbus nav? Believe it comes with that as standard (at least in the UK). Otherwise voice control is optional.

 

Voice control is standard on all UK spec's isn't it?  It's standard on the vRS anyway, mine has is with Bolero...

Think there's a tick box somewhere in the system that may need ticking to activate it.

Whilst this doesn't help you directly, it's not a particularly good system. I don't use it. It's quicker to just do whatever you were doing manually.

As above, it is a pants after thought and more trouble than its worth. It gets my accent right (oddly) but is so slow at changing the radio station, CD track etc that I just use the buttons on the steering wheel instead.

 

For phone use yes it works sometimes, but as no-one ever calls me (& I call no-one bar the missus) it is never used.

 

If its an option to spec or not too, don't waste your money.

Got voice on the Amundsen+ in my Rapid Spaceback Black Edition and it works really well whereas the voice on the Columbus in my Octy III vRS is absolutely pants!

Go figure!

If you have the voice button then it "should" work. I gather cars without voice control have a TP (traffic programme) button instead.

Sounds to me that its either not enabled in the infotainment properly or the car is not properly coded. Dealer should be able to advise/resolve accordingly.

Beware though....the Voice Control system in these things is cack! More annoying as you can no longer look up your full phone book from maxidot/MFSW controls only last dialled/received calls. In order to dial a new number on the move without risk of death/injury you have to use voice dialling really and i'd say 3 or 4 attempts out of 10 it dials the wrong number.....unless i am missing something!

Edited 15 December, 201411 yr by pipsyp

Voice control is standard on all UK spec's isn't it?  It's standard on the vRS anyway, mine has is with Bolero...

 

Yep, and it usless, ask it to phone someone and it phones someone else with a completly different name

Put SWMBO in the car, I can guarantee two things will operate perfectly the driver and the cars voice control. 

I also found another feature that's not working except voice control - Traffic announcements? I do not know if the country matters but everytime I press "Traffic" nothing shows up...?

It is a complete waste of time. The only use for it is to make us all laugh when it does what it wants. 

It's standard on Bolero in my SE, but haven't had much luck with it so far! Asked it to switch to radio and it dialled a friend of mine!

I don't follow that voice control is useless.

Admittedly I haven't tried it on the media page, and the media page can be a nuisance anyway, but apart from that, whenever I use it, it is usually pretty good.

My main reason for using it is for starting the sat nav after I have left, or altering where I am going etc. 9 times out of 10, it is very good. Slightly slow yes, but still very good.

I used it for calling once, and that seemed OK as well. My phone doesn't fully send everything over to the car though, so to call anyone using voice control would require saying the whole number out loud. Seems fine although I rarely use this, as invariably I wont know the number I want off by heart.

Also, if its anything like the Nav setting, it checks with you to make sure it has the right name, before doing anything. If that's the case when calling, if it is calling a wrong number, you must be asking it to? Of course, it may be slightly different when it comes to calling.

 

Still, I disagree that its as bad as people make out. It has come in very handy frequently.

Can we turn voice control off? If so that would be great, I only ever accidentally hit it and it drives me mad!!!

Me: "Call Home"

 

Car: "CHRIS. JONES. OTHER. MOBILE. DIALLING."

 

Me: "f***"

Is it dependent on accents/pronunciation I wonder?

 

I find it works perfectly on my MK2 Octavia Columbus.

 

Has come in handy a couple of times when needing to programme in a destination on the sat nav while driving.

 

Phil

Fun bit I find is when I've given it a plain and simple command in a good, coherent and slowly spoken English voice, like "call Diane" (my wife)... and it decides to just randomly call someone completely different, like my plumber, after which I end up shouting just about every command that in some way or other means stop… like "stop, end, exit, close, cease, desist, shut-down, sleep"… generally followed by a series of expletives… and it still just carries on regardless (but sometimes switches to calling one of my ex-girfriends, my psychiatrist, the ex-wife's mother-in-law or someone who I would otherwise class as the last person in my phone book I actually want to speak to).

 

I am vundering eef eet voss programmed by ze peeples at VAG's headqauterz und I shud speek viz ze appropriet aksent!!!

That s the issue. You seem never have been able to speak international english properly, on your side of the Channel. ;-)

I'm from London (originally), but don't have the cockney accent... so the damn thing [voice control] should understand me.

 

Would perhaps understand if I had a local accent (native Jersey people have been said to sound like drunk South Africans)

Cant say I use it really. Its a bit slow with the sat nav but then the sat nav is sometimes a little slow, I guess due to clarity of GPS signal?

Maybe it was programmed in Yorkshire as it understands me perfectly fine! lol

 

Phil

It is actually the pits....i asked it to dial a number out of my phone book three times this morning...first two times it put my nav in night mode then tried to dial my voicemail. My accent is pretty ordinary too. To get it to work I had to both raise my voice and really verbalise what I was saying; like you'd perhaps do with an old person who is hard of hearing (without trying to be condescending).

Edited 19 December, 201411 yr by pipsyp