Blather

Blather is a speech recognizer that will run commands when a user speaks preset sentences.

Requirements

pocketsphinx
gstreamer-0.10 (and what ever plugin has pocket sphinx support)
gstreamer-0.10 base plugins (required for alsa)
pyside (only required for the Qt based UI)
pygtk (only required for the Gtk based UI)
pyyaml (only required for reading the options file)

Note: it may also be required to install pocketsphinx-hmm-en-hub4wsj

Usage

move commands.tmp to ~/.config/blather/commands.conf and fill the file with sentences and command to run
Run Blather.py, this will generate ~/.config/blather/sentences.corpus based on sentences in the 'commands' file
quit blather (there is a good chance it will just segfault)
go to http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/tools/lmtool.html and upload the sentences.corpus file
download the resulting XXXX.lm file to the ~/.config/blather/language directory and rename to file to 'lm'
download the resulting XXXX.dic file to the ~/.config/blather/language directory and rename to file to 'dic'
run Blather.py
- for Qt GUI, run Blather.py -i q
- for Gtk GUI, run Blather.py -i g
- for Gtk Tray GUI, run Blather.py -i gt
- to start a UI in 'continuous' listen mode, use the -c flag
- to use a microphone other than the system default, use the -m flag
start talking

Note: to start Blather without needing to enter command line options all the time, copy options.yaml.tmp to ~/.config/blather/options.yaml and edit accordingly.

Bonus

once the sentences.corpus file has been created, run the language_updater.sh script to automate the process of creating and downloading language files.

Examples

To run blather with the GTK UI and start in continuous listen mode: ./Blather.py -i g -c
To run blather with no UI and using a USB microphone recognized and device 2: ./Blather.py -m 2
To have blather pass the matched sentence to the executing command: ./Blather.py -p

explanation: if the commands.conf contains: good morning world : example_command.sh then 3 arguments, 'good', 'morning', and 'world' would get passed to example_command.sh as example_command.sh good morning world
To run a command when a valid sentence has been detected: ./Blather.py --valid-sentence-command=/path/to/command note: this can be set in the options.yml file
To run a command when a invalid sentence has been detected: ./Blather.py --invalid-sentence-command=/path/to/command note: this can be set in the options.yml file

Finding the Device Number of a USB microphone

There are a few ways to find the device number of a USB microphone.