Does it really work without the internet?
Yes. The speech recognition, the verse lookup, and the display all run locally on your computer. You only need internet to download ICHOS the first time and to renew your subscription. The Sunday-service experience is fully offline.
Will it understand my accent?
The built-in speech engine handles most English accents out of the box, and we publish empirical word-error-rate numbers on a held-out accent corpus so you can verify before you buy. If your church's accent or language pushes the offline engine past comfort, switch to one of the four cloud engines and pick your locale from the admin panel — every major English variant plus French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and 100+ more locales are supported by the cloud providers.
Can I use my own speech-to-text provider?
Yes. ICHOS supports six engines: ICHOS offline (default), ICHOS enhanced offline, plus four cloud options (Deepgram, AssemblyAI, Azure, Google). Pick from the admin panel, paste your API key — done. We don't mark up vendor pricing; you pay them directly. Switch back to offline any week the church Wi-Fi has been flaky.
Does it do hymns and slides too, or just Bible verses?
Both. ICHOS has a hymn-lyrics library and a media-image library in the operator console — both display on the same projector. The verse-detection part is the headline use case but it's not the only thing the screen can show.
Can I add my own songs and hymns?
Yes. Open the operator console's Songs tab, click the + button, and fill in the title (required), author (optional), and the lyrics. Verses or stanzas are separated by blank lines so the projector can show one section at a time. Save and the song stays in the library — no per-song download, no song-account log-in. Search by title from the same tab to bring it back next service. There's no song-count limit on a Standard subscription.
What about images, photos, announcement slides?
Upload them through the operator console's Media tab — any standard image format works (JPEG, PNG, WebP). Click the entry to push it to the projector. Useful for: announcement slides, baptism photos, sermon-series cover art, missionary photos, anything visual you'd otherwise need a separate slide app for. Everything stays on your computer; no upload to the cloud.
What kind of computer do I need?
Any reasonably modern Mac or Windows machine with a microphone input. We'll publish exact specs with the public release; in practice, anything from the last five years handles ICHOS comfortably. The projector is a separate display — ICHOS doesn't care what model it is.
What does the Auto-Display toggle do?
A switch in the operator console that picks how detected verses reach the projector. Off (the default): ICHOS detects each reference and offers it to the operator — one tap and it goes live. Safer for high-stakes services because nothing reaches the projector unconfirmed. On: verses go live the instant they're detected, no operator action. Good for trusted small services or once the model has earned your confidence. You can flip it mid-service if needed.
Can the operator still pick verses by hand?
Yes. There's a search box in the admin panel for typing references the old-fashioned way, a service-plan editor for queueing up a whole sermon outline in advance, and a verse-history list for pulling back something the pastor already passed. Detection-based input is on by default, but the manual paths are always available.
What about wrong verses appearing on the projector?
When the model is unsure between two references it sounds like, it shows both as candidates and waits for the operator to pick — instead of guessing wrong on the screen. With Auto-Display off (the default), every detection is reviewed before it goes live, so a misrecognition stays off the projector entirely.
