I have spent some time looking at various shareware and commercial voice dialer apps this week.
I was really impressed with the specification of MS VoiceCommand No training required, context dependent actions (ie you say "Call So and So" and it will dial immediately if there is only one number, or will say "Mobile or Work?" if there is ambiguity, or you can just say"Call So and So at Work" and off it goes. Terrific.
Except it doesn't work on the XDA. Can't see why - it hears something (so "Show Calendar", "Help", "Yes" etc. work) but does not have enough mic sensitivity to do name recognition. This is so whether you hold the XDA 1 inch or 18 inches from your mouth, whether AGC is on or off.
So for a quarter of the cost I have bought NeuVoice Dialer, which works pretty well. Problems? Needs to be trained, no context dependency, so you either have to associate a specific number (Work, Mobile etc) with a voice tag, or you have to recognise the name first, the specific tag second, which means pressing the action button twice. Nause. Also not very easy in the car w/o a hands-free profile, which is what we are all after, isn't it?
So are my experiences unique? Would love to hear!
I'm using Voice Command with XDA II and it works great. How many processes are you running? I found that if you get close to the 32 process max then it doesnt work as well (see other posts in this forum about max processes). At 26 processes no problem.
Only two or three!! It is really strange - I can't see why it works so much worse than NeuVoice. Not noticed any particular probs with the phone either , so I don't think that the microphone itself is faulty, although it could be that.
How well is VOice Command working really? How many contacts do you have and does it really discrimate? I have about 500 contacts+.
Cheers
Stephen,
I doubt you only have 2 or 3 processes running, you mean applications visible through the memory option in settings. You need a third party tool like Taskmanager (available on Handango) to see the processes running (a bit like the Windows taskmanager) I have 500+ contacts and Voice Command really does a great job of discriminating between them. Try the stereo headset that comes in the box to rule out any microsphone issues. Also I run Voice Command with default settings, I didnt mess with the AGC Microsphone settings at all.
Out of the programs I tried for VoiceDialing, I found Fonix VoiceDial was the most accurate (using XDA 1)
Tried with the stereo lead - very, very slightly better, but no way is this stuff usable.
I'm pretty sure there is an architecture issue here - the fact that the AGC cannot be manually set, strange behaviour using teh recorder during phone calls etc. VoiceCommand may be great, but it don't work too well on my XDA2. Maybe I have a funny voice!!!
Cheers
XDAII - MS Voice Command experience
I am using MS VC with i-MATE for already several months and I have over 700 contacts...
Based on my experience - try to reinstall MS Voice Command - some times it works better.... Also do not speak to loud; do not keep it very close to your mouth. It works fine even if it is on a console between sits and I am driving (looking straight on the road).
And yes, you should check number of process running... http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/ppc_cn_overview.html - would be the best bet...
Good luck.
Paul
stephen_oliver said:
I'm pretty sure there is an architecture issue here - the fact that the AGC cannot be manually set, strange behaviour using teh recorder during phone calls etc. VoiceCommand may be great, but it don't work too well on my XDA2. Maybe I have a funny voice!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't forget, you need to speak with an American accent it you want this thing understand you...!
Yes, that has improved it - 135 notifications.
Not sure how to check active processes - got any suggestions on utilities?
I can now get recognition about 60-70% of the time. Sadly it still has problems with my "Yes"!! Maybe I should coach my voice to sound more patient :?
Thanks for the advice ...
How do you BUY VoiceCommand?? Won;t accept non-US addresses!!!!
As far as I know you can get trial for one or several days.
As per "buy it" I am not sure how you can do that not from states or Canada.
About YES - possibility that you just saying it too soon. Try pause for 1,5 2 seconds and after repeat if necessary.
Thanks - I've discovered Handandgo/uk so I'm all set now.
Cheers everyone!
Hate to say this but I tried Voice Command and gave up!
Sometimes it got it right, but for most of the time it got it wrong. I think I had better results when I tried an American Accent with a Scouse Accent (Livererpudlian for our international fans), but even then it was a burger less than a MacDonalds.
I seemed to think it was down to the XDA II only having AGC on and off choices and not a manual audio gain setting. I did try it with both the free version and the *cough* cracked version (for evaluation purposes of course) to little success. Saying that, didn't have much success with Via Voice either.
Anybody willing to "share" this software.... long term.. hehehehe
e-mail me at [email protected]
fella's please persit with and you will be rewarded with porbably the best voice recognition program available....
i nearly gave up but i'am glad i did'nt
It helped me going to the website and reading the help files and watching the demostration video...
Zetex
MS Voice Command and Fonix
G'day Guys,
I've persisted with MS Voice Command and agree with the previous posts.. If you've got your alerts sorted out and processes running low, it's a REALLY good package...
The Fonix VoiceDial and Voice Commander has excellent potential but I couldn't get the accuracy up and the volume was lousy - Crackly and distorted.. So I'm sticking with MS VC...
Still can't get "DIAL 1 2 3 4" etc. working AT ALL.. It's ALWAYS wrong?!?! But "Call CONTACT NAME" is consistently excellent.. So that's all I need it for!
Beats the heck out of having accidents on the road while trying to stylus the iMate!!!!
P.S. For the SmartPhone, Fonix VoiceDial is absolutely brilliant - I've also used that and it's consistently good.. Just a shame that there seems to be an issue with the iMate PDA (O2 XDA II) hardware and Fonix VoiceDial...
Cheers
Andy
Voice Command in Oz
Andy,
How did you get VC in Oz?. I have used the trial version and found it great (after learning to americanise my "strine"), but non US addresses just can't download. I am happy to pay for my programs, but if MS don't want my money...
Che?
Voice Command in Oz
Andy,
How did you get VC in Oz?. I have used the trial version and found it great (after learning to americanise my "strine"), but non US addresses just can't download. I am happy to pay for my programs, but if MS don't want my money...
Che?
usa purchase
Its very simple if you are only purchasing a software download - Give your real email address but gìve any usa mail address that you can see on packaging or from the web and the sale will go through! important the ZIP Code must be real
Neuvoice for XDA II
Thanks for that Sam. In the meantime, I have tried Neuvoice, and have actually found it is a better product. Apart from the need to train it, the recognition is better and I don't have to alter my accent
I've started developing an application that allows the user to compose and send an email completely hands-free... by voice command only.
However I'm having trouble finding a decent, open source (free) speech recognition (speech-to-text) engine / API to use.
Does anyone know of one? I tried PocketSphinx but had trouble compiling it in Windows using VS2008.
I'm wondering what API the Windows Live Search app uses? Its speech recognition capabilities are already decent, and if it's included with Windows Mobile or .NET Compact Framework 3.5 or Windows Mobile 6.1 itself, then I would prefer to use that. But I'm having trouble determining if this speech recognition is available to 3rd-party developers and, if so, how to interface with it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
OMG I hate timeouts lol
So I had this nice long post about how I thought it might be one of three things and I whipped out my omnia and disconnected the network and blah blah.
When I hit post, I got a not logged in timeout.
So here's the short of it:
It uses a server, that's probably related to UC aka Office Communications Server aka Speech Server 2007... you can get to it (and all the Microsoft Speech technologies, including Voice Command) here:
http://www.microsoft.com/speech/speech2007/default.mspx
A little more searching lead me to read the MSDN Channel 9 blog on said subject:
http://blogs.msdn.com/speech/archiv...h-for-mobile-now-with-speech-recognition.aspx
which states:
"The speech recognition functionality for the application doesn't actually sit on the Windows Mobile phone. Instead, the phone takes your speech input, sends it to a server, the server does it's recognition magic, and sends the results back to the phone. "
Speech Server 2007
Thanks for the reply MerlinJim... sucks about the timeout! That's why on a long post I always copy the text to the clipboard... that way if it times out I can just paste it in! (It's happened to me too many times for me to not do that now!)
Yeah I've looked at Speech Server 2007 as well... and I was thinking that maybe Live Search offloaded the speech recognition to a server. There's a little lag between what you say and when it guesses what you said.
I guess something like that would work. If you're writing an email then you need an Internet connection, and so sending the voice data to a speech server would be plausible. The only downside would be if it used up a lot of data transfer/bandwidth, and the user was on metered bandwidth.
The lag would be a bit of a drawback, because if the Speech Server guessed incorrectly what you said, but you kept talking (due to the processing lag), then you would have to go back and correct what you had said.
And also sometimes the Live Maps speech recognition is WAY off. Like I'll say "1 Jefferson Parkway" and it will come back with something like "Did you say 'Parkstone Apartments?'"
It's also speaker-independent, so you don't do any training. I would rather train an app to recognize my voice specifically, because I would be the only user of it.
But it may be my only solution for right now. Thanks for the info! I was beginning to think that no one knew the answer.
acrosser said:
Thanks for the reply MerlinJim... sucks about the timeout! That's why on a long post I always copy the text to the clipboard... that way if it times out I can just paste it in! (It's happened to me too many times for me to not do that now!)
Yeah I've looked at Speech Server 2007 as well... and I was thinking that maybe Live Search offloaded the speech recognition to a server. There's a little lag between what you say and when it guesses what you said.
I guess something like that would work. If you're writing an email then you need an Internet connection, and so sending the voice data to a speech server would be plausible. The only downside would be if it used up a lot of data transfer/bandwidth, and the user was on metered bandwidth.
The lag would be a bit of a drawback, because if the Speech Server guessed incorrectly what you said, but you kept talking (due to the processing lag), then you would have to go back and correct what you had said.
And also sometimes the Live Maps speech recognition is WAY off. Like I'll say "1 Jefferson Parkway" and it will come back with something like "Did you say 'Parkstone Apartments?'"
It's also speaker-independent, so you don't do any training. I would rather train an app to recognize my voice specifically, because I would be the only user of it.
But it may be my only solution for right now. Thanks for the info! I was beginning to think that no one knew the answer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
perhaps, but there IS a speech application loaded ON a Windows Mobile 6.1 which has text-to-speech capabilities and speech recognition
(my Blackjack II loaded with Wm6.1 has this capability)
can't find any API to use it though... only way to activate this TTS capability is to
1) sms announcing
2) appointment announcing
3) call announcing
no actual program to do TTS...
Any progress on this or any other speech-to-text program? I'm really interested in finding one.
Wouldn't mind being a beta tester, either.
*Double Post*
DELETE
Let's say I have two or more voices installed for the same language - country combination, like "en-US". One could be female, the other male voice for example. How could I switch these programmatically? There seems to be no way...
I can easily switch any time between "en-UK" and "en-US" voices by using something like:
myTTS.setLanguage(locale);
but for switching voices within the same locale, nothing. Looks to me like a flaw in Android TextToSpeech class design... Or is there some way of which I'm not aware? FYI, the high quality IVONA voices (still in free beta in Google Play Store) have "Select preferred voice" setting for each language locale. The other TTS engines I have installed (Pico, Google and SVOX Classic) do not offer this option yet, so maybe the only way to do this would be to access the private settings of IVONA engine?
Greg
Hi, I am a Dyslexic android user, and I work in disability services for a small university. I am wondering if there is a practical TTS solution which would be simpler than the common "copy/paste" apps.
iOS has VoiceOver, which (for Dyslexics) puts Android TTS support to shame.
My dream is to be able to point to a chunk of text and have it read aloud without switching apps. Is there any workaround or plugin I could use to make this possible?
I have a Verizon HTC Droid DNA. I would be willing to root this if there is a possibility of this working.
Hello
I am working on my dissertation & I want to use Google Speech API to distinguish users by there voice.
I have seen and imported the Google Speech API Sample from
https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/android-docs-samples/tree/master/speech/Speech
Before I was trying to use DialogFlow (used to be API.AI), didnt have much luck. Thought it might be better to use Google Speech API instead.
is this even possible to start with?
I was also looking at "Actions on Google"
https://developers.google.com/actions/identity/user-info
thanks for any input
Have you figured out how to achieve it?