myVoice Open Beta (1 Viewer)

[booyakasha]

Hi Jabberwock,

As you've probably discovered, there isn't a method to disable the shuffle. It's currently a global music related setting I've implemented, and although I could add the setting that Marcus describes above, I think it would be annoying to have to go in there and turn it off just for albums, and then when you want an artist, you'd probably want it back on. I'll make a note to look at it again whenever I get around to doing another version. Something probably where you'd say "Shuffle Music Artist xxx"

...booya

 

[Marcusb]

hey there, glad to see you back in here

I hope things are going well in real life.

Sorry for the mistake. I just figured a way to turn off shuffle was needed, not for specific modes (artist/album, etc).

 

[Jabberwock]

Questions and problems

Thank you for the information... This would really be useful...

However, now I have a bigger problem - the speech engine turns off completely after one use. That is, I can activate the plugin, but only once - it works perfectly, until the timeout kicks in. Then the whole speech engine does not work at all - no recognition, no TTS debug, even the commands from the Voice Window are not spoken, as well as the TTS "Test" option. When I restart MediaPortal, it works again, once.

Now some more questions and suggestions...

I've noticed that some people had a problem with the music silenced until My Voice times out. The solutions (very short timeout values, turning off level adujstment in the plugin etc.) are not that perfect. A solution might be an option (assigned at the command level) which would delay execution of the given command until the recognition times out. Of course, this would work only for simple, "flat" commands, where no feedback/interaction is required (i.e. playing music from "Music Artists" is OK, but menu selection is not), but they are used most often anyway... Or, there might be a delay value to be set, but that would be more complicated.

I am not sure (I got the idea when I had that speech engine problem already, so could not test it properly), but is it possible to create command trees which are not linked directly to windows? For example, "Automation -> Curtains -> Go down" instead of "Automation curtains go down" etc. The advantage would be that it would make creating commands much easier, but also recognition would be better (less options to confuse the engine). Of course, then there we have the issue of tree navigation (there would need to be an option that would tell the engine to leave the tree after "Go down" is executed, but not after "Curtains").

Yet another question - would it be possible to scan for speech purposes other, plugin-related databases, for example the list of games from My Emulators or comics from My Programs? I am not sure how well they are integrated in the core MP database system...

Sorry if that is too much, but I came to this late, so I'm just firing off ideas... The thing is, that when you see the potential of this plugin, then you really hate to do anything in MediaPortal with a different input method... This plugin (or, rather, the philosophy of interaction with it) should take the central place in further MediaPortal development, in my humble opinion, of course. If the core of MP was written with such interaction in mind, then anything would be possible...

 

[Marcusb]

Hi Jabberwock,
I had the issue with the one time only recognition as well, on and off. It was a while ago so can't remember what the solution was. I think it was bad characters in the music database or something.
Sorry for not being more help but just wanted to let you know it happened to others and there was a solution. I can't use the plugin anymore since I'm on Vista (and hating it). I tried going back to XP but for some reason my new motherboard has sound issues with XP. Go figure!

 

[booyakasha]

Hi Jabberwock,

Make sure you try the version from this post (just replace the files on your PC with the one's in the zip) if you haven't done so already. There were a couple of bug fixes in there.

Thanks for the ideas. They're always welcome.

The volume adjustment was really for when you're already playing a song, etc, and you issue another command. The background sound was too loud and could issue new commands from the feedback. I'm not sure how the solution you're proposing would solve that (I'm kinda slow today...lol)

For your second question, I've found that most plugins require special coding for the speech recognition to work with it. I would probably adopt a command structure like you said though. It's actually on my todo list, but as with many things, R/L gets in the way.

As for your third question, there is a way that you could get something like My Programs working, but it would be a manual one. You could create a new section, add a new phrase and have it launch an EXE or the like. I haven't looked at myEmulators at all, but I'd think that there is some database there, so as I stated above, it would require me to write code specifically for it.

..booya

 

[Jabberwock]

Thanks again.

I guess that in the case of programs the quickest way would be to edit the xml directly, using the list of relevant folders/files. One could even do it semiautomatically, writing a Perl script etc.

The hierarchy would be useful, you can go around this as well, so it's not a pressing concern. Besides, my dream automated home will not be built before next year

 

[MrMad]

Hi booyakasha!
I am working on a home automation plugin which currently dim the lights when starting/pausing/stopping a video.
What I would also like is to get voice support for it, so I can just say things like "Dim to level five". I think the right way would be to use your plugin in some way.
The things I have thought about for communication is for me to listen for OnAction, OnMessage or OnPropertyChanged.
Since both Actions and GUIMessages seem to be using enums in MediaPortal that are not available for me to change, it seems the best way for me would be to listen for changes of a certain property.
For example I could listen for the property #Lights.level and set the level accordingly.
That would however need changes to MyVoice...
What would you think about extending the functionality of MyVoice, so you can set properties?
So I could just add something like:

<grammarrule>
  <type>PROPERTY</type>
  <id>98765</id>
  <description>Dim the lights</description>
  <phrase>
    <id>1</id>
    <voice>Livingroom level</voice>
    <option>NUMBERS</option>
    <property>#LightDevice.1</property>
    <window></window>
    <response></response>
    <soundfile></soundfile>
    <exefile></exefile>
  </phrase>
</grammarrule>

If I then say "Livingroom level five", MyVoice would do

GUIPropertyManager.SetProperty("#LightDevice.1", "5");

and my plugin would then set device 1 (livingroom) to dim level 5.

What do you think, is that doable? Or is there a better way for me to accomplish something like that?

(I think that since the handling in MyVoice would be quite general, other plugins could also benefit from this.)

 

[booyakasha]

MrMad: I like the idea as it appears to be a fairly simple implementation at least on the surface. I'll PM you when I have something (not sure on the timeframe right now though).

 

[Datenshi]

Has development stopped for this plugin? i really like it but it could be improved

 

[booyakasha]

Has development stopped for this plugin? i really like it but it could be improved

Hi Datenshi,
I haven't really been working on it in quite some time as other projects are getting in the way for the most part. I finally got a Vista system to see why it's not working in that OS and to also see how it could go multi language. If there's improvements you'd like to see, please let me know, either through pm or forum. I'm open to suggestions

...booya