Richard Harwood

Darren Harwood

In the 21st Century, we increasingly want to simplify the control of the real things that affect our daily lives! Don't you feel it's just about time we could simply talk with computers and get them to handle some of the everyday house automation tasks -- lights, doors, gates, curtains, televisions, music and other domestic appliances? Or even make the information super-highway slicker by talking with you and telling you about the information you requested to be retrieved from the web? Think of all the time and inconvenience you could save -- no more need to install yourself at a desk and fumble about with keyboard and mouse. Well now you can! This book details a project which will enable you to instruct your computer using your voice and get it to control electrical devices, tell you the time, get your share values, get the weather etc. and speak it all back to you in a natural human voice. It shows you the technology to interface with your computer using voice. Also, you will find that in using voice as an interface your computer gains a novel persona of its own. On calling the name we gave our computer, the machine listens furtively, responding appropriately and politely acknowledging us using a preceding phrase we gave it. The book guides you through practical speech recognition, speech annunciation and control of really useful peripherals, like the above. Software is explained in depth and consists of short tasks in VB, Perl and XML, interfacing with Microsoft SAPI and an extraordinarily human-like voice (which was purchased). Some software experience is desirable; Control hardware consists of a low cost mains I/O relay solution which interfaces to the PC using usb and was purchased, although there is nothing to stop you developing your own solution. Some experience with wiring and soldering is desirable. If you are interested in the practical technology of interfacing with machines using voice, such as talking with your own PC, then this book is your guide.

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