[News]

News

[Stats]

Stats

Hi guys!

If someone could help me, as explained in the dsl4x forum topic "speech synthesis & recognition", i made a "fast prototyping" murgalua 0.5.5 application script which is fully operating in French (not much tested in US-English, but i'm "natively" French, so my US-English accent is horrible!) in a DSL-NOT powered system.
Other systems are fully functional like MS-Windows XP, (MS W2K is not compatible with pocketsphinx), Debian4 (recognition engine is CMU-Sphinx2, present in the default repositories). These OS are supporting MBrola voices for espeak speech synthesis output...

So, i ask for your help for these two problems:

- searching, including and testing a good US-English language model for "Alfreid.lua" script (both versions Sphinx2 & pocketphinx)

- enabling MBrola support for DSL-Not (i tested espeak with default "robotic" voices, but no way for making the system speak with mbrola voices, "piping" the output of espeak to mbrola, then to alsaplayer (aplay). aplay is not present in the default install of DSL-N, i could notice that default sound driver was OSS (not compatible to my knowledge with espeak)

Once done, backporting to DSL 4x (Sphinx2 is in the default woody repositories) should be interesting...
Take a look at my homesite, where you will find all needed info and scripts (updated this 26/02/2013)

http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/index.html?n=15

Script Alfreid.lua includes a diagnostic part which will help you finding what's missing for a fully usage (either data or binary, Linux or Windows)

Greetings from France to all of you DSL & DSL-N users!

Long live DSL and DSL-Not!

CMU-Sphinx2 builds with MinGW.  I have the binaries if you want them

Yes, please, please, please lm, send me the Sphinx2 MS-Windows binaries at my personal mail (michel.terras@laposte.net). I tried to compile it, but it is a too complex task for me, as i don't know at all this MinGW!

For the speed differences between Linux and MS-Windows systems, there will be always the problem of this increasing "anti-viral" activity, eating always more ressources (RAM and CPY cycles)... But there are some other explanations, too...
Thanks in advance for your mail
Sincerly,

PS: Last minute notes
1/ I tried yesterday the debian package wmctrl for DSL-N, allowing (from command line) to give focus to any window of the desktop, and it works without ANY dependancies!!!! So, i quickly wrote a code for calling to foreground the main graphic window of Alfreid - for example, after it has launched firefox, which windows is hiding it -, i will update script on my website soon.
2/ I found marvelous freeware Nircmd, that does the focusing action as wmctrl, and much more (send keyboard token), but this time for MS-Windows version of Alfreid...

Hello everybody!
Project progresses slowly but surely. I got various prototypes "in operation", but as said previously, i focused mainly on the french language model.
So, i got three DSL-Not (kernel 2.6.12) powered systems running Alfreid, with some problems:
    - one P200MMX+256 MB RAM, audio hardware PCI ES1371 compatible with the last version of CMU-sphinx2 (0.6)
    - the second, Celeron500+128MB RAM (HP Pavilion 8545), audio hardware PCI-1371, compatible with sphinx2
    - the third, VIA Samuel2 800MHz+512MB RAM (mini ITX), audio hardware via82cxxx, compatible with sphinx2
    - the last, Celeron 450+256MB RAM (laptop Samsung VM 7000), audio hardware i810, NOT compatible with sphinx2, and giving this annoying message at launching time of cmu-sphinx2:

Audio ioctl(SPEED): 47280, expected: 16000
FATAL_ERROR: "tty-continuous.c", line 219: ad_open_sps failed

I noticed too that,
- because of a "generic" OSS driver in DSL-N, no alsa driver was installed, so "piping" of espeak to use mbrola higher quality voices is NOT possible, you'll have to use available synthetic poor quality voices (with french available)...
- espeak (binaries taken from debian etch repo) is NOT compatible with the VIA Samuel2 motherboard (floating point exception error), so you will have to use festival instead (with no default french voice, i think!?), but i've not tested festival with this machine, while it is implemented in Alfreid!!!!

I go on with the fast-prototyping (Debian4+MS Windows XP), but give up for the DSL platforms (sorry, no time!)... If you're interested, go to my murgalua webpage, and download Alfreid's script, and fine-tune for DSL & DSL-N.

http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/index.html?n=15

This prototype IS FULLY WORKING for DSL-N users on compatible hardware (see below). CMU-Sphinx2 is accurate and WAY MORE REACTIVE THAN the later pocketsphinx version, that is used on my MS-XP platforms...

LM, if you're still in the corner, what about the MinGW compilation of CMU-sphinx2 to get MS-Windows binaries Possible or not???

I upload my murgalua webpage as soon as possible. (done this 03/02/2013, at 12h25!)

Goodbye!

Well, well, from huge, my project went to VHP (Very Huge Project), ie a lot to do!
For "universal" user (speaking US-english language), i decided to extend my project with an us-english language set.
Now, i'm working with:

• two Operating Systems (Windows & Linux Debian 4), with a very different command line syntax;
• two Speech Recognition Engines (Sphinx2 for Linux, and PocketSphinx for Windows), both rather easy to setup and use;
• two language sets (French & US-English), needing some tests for speed, accuracy, related to the selected language model
  

I've some difficulties to let the code (script) be OS- and language-independent!
My actual work (from 27/12/12) is about writing a better table for handling menus and spoken commands...
Will update soon the Alfreid.lua script on my site... as soon as i get a working prototype!

You all, spend a nice holiday season for this end of 2012!

Hi lm,
You're right about pocketsphinx, and i was currently testing it this evening within a MS-Windows XP powered system.
It's lite (as for the binaries), fast, and as accurate as previous version cmu-sphinx2. Language models & acoustic data (for French as well as for US-English) are easy to find on the sourceforge-CMU sphinx site, and easy to setup, too. The bad side is that pocketsphinx is not in the default and earlier debian repositories (it's mainly in the ubuntu repos, starting from the Lucid version   http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/pocketsphinx-utils ). If you can compile it (i think it's written in C language ?), i will be very insterested getting your binaries for my Linuxes systems (i386 arch).
I will "keep" CMU-Sphinx2 in this project for earlier versions of Linux kernels, like DSL and DSL-Not...
Thanks for your always relevant asking.
Sincerly,

Hi lm!
Downloading is working for me with attached "Alfreid.lua" script.
I upload it again as attached piece on this board, and put it on my site NOW!
(http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/, section "murgalua"), so you'll can download script from there.
You will have to make heavy changes in this script, as my primary development system was a Debian Etch, and focus was set on the French language model...
There is plenty of command line calls, which is very "system-specific", but with sites like http://ss64.com/, you can find quickly equivalent command-line commands between mac os X, MS Windows & linuxes.

If you're not interested in French recognition, you have just to install "basic" cmu-sphinx2 which comes with an english-american language model & dictionnary.

As for me, i'm very interested if you can send me the windows binaries of sphinx2, and for your codes or executables...
As soon as i have enough time, i'll make my script more "multi-platform", more smart, and more multi-language...

Thanks again for your interest, and for shaking me (i was just about to temporarily leave this project to begin another one!)

[i kill some unix processes with my voice]

Hi lm,

1/ i didn't imagine myself working on such a project ... hmm ... one year ago. Then, came murgaLua (scripting language with an embedded  powerful & simple to use graphic user interface) ... with it, all was possible. But my basic knowledges in computer science didn't let me write an entire engine for speech recognition, especially in a foreign -minor- language like French...

2/ Searching for an old but functional and -always- simple to use E.S.R. led me to fantastic <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmusphinx/files/sphinx2/">cmu sphinx2 </a> (open source naturally), present in debian repos, since woody (corresponding to Damn Small Linux!). This complex app (especially concerning its line command arguments) does for us a VERY SIMPLE task: it writes recognized text from your speech to a dummy file. Then murgalua reads periodically this files (every 2 seconds, for example), and extracts recognized words to send to system, with the help of the powerful line command!
DON'T EXPECT 100% recognition performances! You can increase these perfs reducing the set of words to be recognized... and selecting the best recognized words...

3/ cmu sphinx2 came with default recognized language set for english (good for you?), so i had to find a French language model, and i found one  built for a similar project (but written in Perl) <a href="http://perlboxfr.tuxfamily.org/">PerlBox-fr</a>, model is part of this archive

4/ the rest is in the source script attached here (42kb!), named "Alfreid.lua"

5/ For your question about espeak versus flite, i selected espeak because of the easiness of adding for it the better quality voices of <a href="http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/">mbrola</a> (including two french voices), as Alfreid has for some commands a vocal "feedback", and for the user, understanding these vocal feedbacks is sometimes "critical". For example, with Alfreid, i kill some unix processes with my voice, amazing no?

6/ At this stage, i've no other material to upload to my personal website, than this script, so i share it with you (attached Alfreid.lua) before uploading a more "finished" version . Must say, too, that i had the mad idea of porting it to MS-Windows (XP) and Mac OS X (Tiger), but i've no time for it... So this attached script works in Windows, but as i haven't found a MS-Windows binary of cmu-Sphinx2 (i think i have to use the next version of sphinx2 called pocketsphinx, but other syntax for command line will take time to understand... or use embedded Microsoft Speech Recognition Engine -> not free nor open source => no way!), i used this Windows version as test for the vocal feedback (virtual loop with random commands sent to the "command manager" function.

7/ You can find some Linux-Mac-Windows murgaLua scripts on <a href="http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/">my home site </a>

thanks for your interest

PS: OUPS! i forget to say that this development script was made with a debian 4 powered system, and murgalua 0.5.5

Hi Vink8,
sorry to use english to reply, but it's an english forum
Thanx for trying the french package, and for your tests.
I didn't try to download my package from DSL servers, as i got it at home. But you're right to point this trouble for John.
The alternative to get it is downloading it  from my site at
http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/linux/dsl-fr.htm
or
http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/index.html?n=31
I'm a ReUser, and i must say that i write packages only for dead operating systems, like an hypercard stack for mac os 7, for example. So it's amazing how DSL is coming back...
For now, i'm working on debian4 with a french voice recognizing app written in murgaLua... it take sometimes (2 or three months from the beginning of the project)... I 'll try backporting this app to DSL-Not and DSL...
Again, thanx for your tests, Vink8
A Ciao!

Hi Guys!
Need to know if everything's right with my package, especially with last version 4.11.
Thanx in advance!

Hi Mir,
i made this operation several times. As hdd installation ships with an automatic hardware detection (the one on the live-cd), there is no problem doing this! But no luck if you want to try this with Windows (must pay before each install)
Good luck!

Hi everybody!
Actually working on a great project including oldies like espeak, cmu-sphinx2 and murgalua to command and script some repetitive tasks, like internet searching, mails reading, automating media-database updates, etc...
I'm scripting within a Debian Etch powered system (4.0, kernel 2.6.18), and will try to "backport" to DSL-N0.4RC1, and maybe DSL 4.x...

You can help backporting espeak and cmu-sphinx2 to sarge or better woody (woody is the base of hard-installed DSL 4.x)

My goal : making cry those who have throwing away their old PC!
Seriously: ReUse+optimizations is the Future of Computer science...
Sincerly,

Hi Kobzar,
Don't know if it's possible? (or reasonable?) But you can use DSL-Not having a 2.6.12 kernel, supporting more hardware, with a very small footprint, but with smaller repositories (the one of DSL are mostly usable)...
Otherwise, try TinyCore, shipping with 3.x kernel
Good luck!

Hi John,
info file is now available on http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/linux/dsl-fr.htm

By the way, i made a French translation package for DSL-Not 0.4 RC1, freely downloadable at:

http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/linux/dsl-n-fr.htm

Have a nice day!

Hello everybody!
I'm VERY glad DSL is back!
i wrote sometimes ago a french translation package for DSL 4.4.10, with some uninstallation abilities...
it's freely available for download on my homesite:
http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/linux/dsl-fr.htm
or
http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/index.html?n=31
(if redirection doesn't work)
Page is in French -only- for frenchie users of DSL!
you'll find it with the name "dsl4.4.10-fr.tar.gz", with MD5, size is 1.55MB

Is it possible to put it in the testing area, so users can test it with the last version 4.11RC1??? (before i test it at home)
Otherwise, i wrote a murgalua script for viewing CBR,CBZ and CB7 comics i will upload on my web site soon, so you can put in the testing area...

Very nice to hear again of all of you, DSL users!
Have a nice day!