Thread: voice control sw

http://www.rpi.edu/~ringk/VoodooVoice/

Thanks BJ, It certainly looks interesting...Have you used it?? How does it stand in the real world??

I haven't used it in a car, but on my PC ot works fine.

The key to all speech recognition is having a good microphone setup. You need the mic close to your mouth, and you need to have the mic volume levels set properly.

I had Voodoo up and running perfectly within 10 minutes. The software is simple. It can be adjusted to accomodate for loud noises, ie loud music already playing, but it takes some time to iron it out.

Here is the problem: There are only 8 recognized commands! Basically, it is entirely worthless unless you simply want to stop, pause, go to next song, or last song. You cannot adjust volume, open playlists, or anything! Hell if it just included volume controls I'd use it, but without them it is entirely worthless.

Has anyone found any other alternatives?

If you're running Windows XP you could use XP Plus. It has built in voice control and I think it has more than 8 commands. (I know you can change the volume

Will the XP plus voice control work with winamp though, or just media player?

Sure you could use XP plus voice control, but from what I've seen it would be more work than its worth. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the idea of voice control is to make it EASIER to control your audio player (winamp).

If all you want is voice control, use Dragon Naturally speaking. It can be configured to do anything you want. I would create a few macros (based on winamp control sets - look at girder.nl export groups) and then use my voice to execute the macros. You are going to run into the same problem - this is a pain in the as*. Dragon Naturally Speaking will significantly slow down your system, and has an ugly interface. Not to mention its $$$. But it is complete voice control, and approached 99% accuracy after several uses. I won't waste anymore time on details, you can find info on it on pcmag.com.

Any other ideas?

Here is a work-in-progress plugin that my friends and i worked on a while ago. You will need the full speech sdk version 5 from M$ (free download) but it is usable. On SOME systems it is not entirly stable, but on others it works great. Commands are as follows (computer is the wakeup command):

select song ____
select artist ____
begin play
stop play
next track
back track
pause play
toggle dj
toggle shuffle
what is this

dj is a function that says the name of each song as it begins to play

It will recognize more than one command for play, stop, next etc, i just cant remember them all right now. Now i think this is the right file so if it says something weird, let me know, i will post the other one i have. (no time to test right now)

These are essentially the exact same commands as voodoo. Here are voodoo's 8 commands:

Actuating Command =Computer

Play = begin play
Stop = stop play
Pause = pause play
Next = next track
Back = back track
Select Song = switch to
Read Song = what is this
Refresh = refresh

As an added bonus with Voodoo, you can use KITTS voice from Knight Rider to respond to you. Yes, Michael, you too can have a talking car.

Now if only we could add commands...I tried emailing the author of Voodoo but have not received a reply. I would be more than willing to program in more commands if someone wants to furnish me with a good platform source code, such as Voodoo.