VoxForge
VoxForge
Hi!
simon released its first alpha today.
You can download the .tar.bz2 at sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=190872).
It _should_ be able to:
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Stuff that is not working but should be:
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Stuff in active development (besides bugfixing, etc.):
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However, all this hasn't _really_ been tested with a real model and the list is more like an "what would work if there were no bugs at all".
You offered us your help some time ago - and we'd really appreciate it, if you could try out the current state of simon and give your comments. Please keep in mind that this is still an alpha version so it is not really stable and ABSOLUTELY not suited for productive use. Think of it as an (hopefully impressive ^^) tech-demo.
Looking forward to your feedback!
-- bedahr (aka Peter Grasch)
Project administrator
--- (Edited on 1/18/2008 9:50 am [GMT-0600] by bedahr) ---
--- (Edited on 1/23/2008 11:16 am [GMT-0500] by kmaclean) ---
Second alpha is out the door and imho a great release.
Tested it yesterday from scratch and generated a complete speechmodel with a simple grammar and a few words which opened a webbrowser, new tabs and new windows and surfed to google when told to do so. The whole thing was (at least in my opinion) very easy and took me (_with_ explanations) about 30 minutes and simon didn't crash _once_ on me :).
Anyways, don't want to brag, but I thought I'd check in and maybe encourage some testers to check out the new alpha as it really is a huge advancement over the first one.
Also, this new version has been completely translated to English (simon and Juliusd) and is shipped as source package or as precompiled windows binary. This should make testing for our windows folks a lot easier :).
Of course there are still bugs to sort out, missing features and issues to solve but all in all this is (again - imho) a great release.
Check it out!
-- bedahr
ps.: If you like this project, please consider a small donation: Support us!
--- (Edited on 6/23/2008 3:55 am [GMT-0500] by bedahr) ---
--- (Edited on 2008-06-23 1:32 pm [GMT-0500] by ralfherzog) ---
@ ralfherzog:
Sadly the comments on your blog (http://speech.blau.in/?p=30) are disabled so I am going to say this here (but it is on-topic):
> So to use this program successfully, there are several
> additional programs needed. I need the HTK toolkit, and Julius.
> And there are further components necessary. I think I will stop
> the installation now. Or should I continue? At the moment, I
> am not sure. I think, that I will hit the next button.
> I won’t publish a screenshot from the next step. But it is about
> HTK programs HDman, HCopy, and several other programs. I
> think (but I am not sure) that it is necessary to tell Simon the
> path on which location those programs are installed. A few
> months ago, I made some first steps with HTK and Julius, but
> everything was pretty complicated. At the moment, I am
> reading a few pages in the HTK book, everything is very
> abstract. And it takes a lot of time to get involved.
The beauty of simon is, that - if everything works well - the end-user never, ever (really :)) sees HTK or Julius at work.
Trust me - hit the next button :D
I am currently creating some instructional videos that outline the setup and the main workflows so that should be up soon.
Good luck testing simon everybody!
-- bedahr
--- (Edited on 6/23/2008 3:30 pm [GMT-0500] by bedahr) ---
--- (Edited on 2008-06-23 4:33 pm [GMT-0500] by ralfherzog) ---
> The beauty of simon is, that - if everything works well - the end-user never, ever (really :)) sees HTK or Julius at work.
Hm, that's quite interesting. Are you distributing HTK binaries with simon?
--- (Edited on 6/24/2008 3:09 am [GMT-0500] by nsh) ---
> Hm, that's quite interesting. Are you distributing HTK binaries with simon?
No as the licence of HTK does not allow redistribution.
What I meant was, that simon uses the supplied binaries (that the user still has to install himself but that is not really hard) to compile the model and everything.
The end-user does not even have to know what the HTK toolkit _is_ as long as he knows how to download a binary version of it and point simon to the executables.
-- bedahr
--- (Edited on 6/24/2008 3:48 am [GMT-0500] by bedahr) ---
> What I meant was, that simon uses the supplied binaries (that the user still has to install himself but that is not really hard) to compile the model and everything.
I see, thanks. Well, in a long term it doesn't look like a good decision.
Also I wanted to know, in theory generic model adapted for speaker must be much better than speaker-dependent one trained from a few utterances. At least for English where good models like wsj are available.
--- (Edited on 6/24/2008 3:41 pm [GMT-0500] by nsh) ---
> I see, thanks. Well, in a long term it doesn't look like a good decision.
Why? What do you mean?
> Also I wanted to know, in theory generic model adapted for speaker must be much better than speaker-dependent one trained from a few utterances. At least for English where good models like wsj are available.
Of course. There are generic models for English, German, etc. which would work way better for normal recognition for you and me. But as stated on the website the project specifically targets handicapped people. Our two testers for example suffer spastic disabilities which limits their motoric skills - they can't write. The disability also affects their voice and puts conventional solutions out of the question.
Or think about stroke vicitms that can only mumble a few distinct sounds. No problem - after an hour or so training they can use simon to e.g. control their webbrowser.
As for the "few utterances": The long term goal is to replace or at least accompany the therapy of the affected. Take for example children with spastic disabilities: Their therapy in schools is to draw circles and other figures to ultimatively improve their motorfunctions. The sad part of this: it doesn't work. (The founder of this project is a teacher in a special school for handicapped children)
If we could use this time spent on ineffective motor therapy (in school alone) we would have at least a few hundred hours which can easily be used to continuosly improve the model of the affected. But for this, simon has to be accepted as an alternative solution and be easy enough for teachers and non-technical savvy persons to use.
Hope this helps to understand a few core design principles of the software.
But if you want to use simon with other models - go ahead! If you can convert it to an HTK model you are free to use whatever you want. You can for example also use the voxforge corpus with simon.
-- bedahr
--- (Edited on 6/25/2008 12:45 am [GMT-0500] by bedahr) ---