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a hacky voice-based typing assistant using chromium's built-in speech recognition cloud service.

i wrote this when my wrist pain was super bad and writing messages or notes was too painful to do much of. the idea was to be able to hold down a key on my keyboard, say things, and have what i said be transcribed as if my keyboard has just typed it!

how it works

there are 3 pieces running at the same time:

chromium web browser: this connects to the server, and uses g**gle apis to listen + transcribe what you say
globalkeypress: a system-wide keylogger that listens for presses/releases of the trigger key to make chromium start transcribing what you say
server: this hosts the website the chromium browser visits, listens for the trigger key to be pressed/released, and tells the chromium browser when to listen for audio input

it also uses

xdotool: a cool linux cli program that lets you simulate mouse and keyboard actions
notify-send: another nice linux program for sending "desktop notifications" to yourself

privacy

this uses g**gle apis to transcribe your voice to text. it only listens when you hold down the trigger key. this is gross, but it's the only good accessible speech-to-text engine i know of.

if you know of a better local-only one, please email me! i'd be verrry happy to collaborate on integrating it

install + use

install prerequisites

linux (probably)
nodejs
chromium or chrome web browser
xdotool
alsa-utils
libnotify-bin

setup this repo

run npm install in this directory

install global-keypress fork

this is a local keylogger, to track when you're holding down the dictation trigger key. i had to fork the project because i wanted it to track releasing the key as well as when it's pressed.

git clone https://github.com/noffle/global-keypress
cd global-keypress/src/linux
make
sudo ./globalkeypress  # starts the keylogger; run this in its own terminal

start up components

run node server.js (same directory as this README)
open chromium to https://localhost:4300 + skip the ssl warning

use

now you can hold the Right Alt key, say something, and when you release the key, it will simulate your keyboard typing whatever you said!

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