Resolved by Rich!
Hi everyone.
I am looking for some much needed help and advice in regards to speech recognition, and I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction.
I'm currently waiting for my EZ robot kit to arrive, so in the meantime I have been familiarising myself with the EZ builder software and have been playing around with the speech recognition and Pandorabots options. EZ builder is currently installed on a Windows 7 64 bit laptop and I'm currently using a headset microphone, not a great quality one I admit, but it does work.
So after training the Windows speech recognition program a few times, and adjusting the microphone settings, I have been trying to use it with MS Word, Notepad, EZ builder with my pandorabot and the pandorabots website on its own, and I have come to the conclusion that Windows speech recognition is, well, "pants" to put it politely (unless I'm missing something). In a quiet room with no background noise, and speaking with a clear English accent, it only seems to pick up 40 to 50% of the correct responses of what I'm saying, compared to the 95% on getting on my iPhone, which is getting really frustrating now.
So would like to ask...
1.) Is there a better way of training Windows speech recognition?
2.) Can anyone suggest a decent well priced microphone to use?
3.) Is there any better speech recognition software I could use which will work with EZ builder?
4.) And finally, what sort of set up do you guys use that works well with your projects that use speech rec?
I really need to nail this, as speech recognition will play a big part of interacting with my robot when he is finished. So any help, thoughts, or suggestions you guys can offer really would be appreciated, and I thank you in advance.
Cheers.
Steve. 
Are you using a headset? Otherwise, speech recognition with an open dictionary is unusable in any form or fashion
What I mean by "open dictionary" is using the entire English dictionary. Where, if you were to use ARC's Speech Recognition Control, it only detects phrases that you have defined.
An open dictionary has a kabillion words, and therefore increases the chance of false positives by a kabillion times
Use a headset
Use the speech recognition control within ARC to control your project or robot via voice... Mine is now close to getting 100% accuracy... Pandora bot just doesn't work that well. Besides Pandora bot has limited use in context of most robotics projects... For one thing you can't use it to control your robot... As I said, use the speech rec control to utilize speech control in your project...
Richard, you can embed EZ-Script in PandoraBot personality to control your robot.
This is the link that explains how to use the PandoraBot control: https://synthiam.com/Tutorials/Help.aspx?id=189
It also explains how important it is to use a headset
Thanks for the response guys.
Yes I am using a headset at the moment as I am aware that using one is the best option for voice rec. I have played with numerous microphone settings but it just does not seem to make much difference.
As I mentioned before, it is not the best quality headset in the world but I should be getting better results than what I'm getting now. I just wondered if there is a better way to train the v/rec apart from reading the standard set up phrases in the control panel over and over? For example, one word it won't understand is "joke". It seems to think I'm saying "john" or "job" and I keep correcting it, but after a lot of corrections it still won't understand the joke (Maybe once out of about 30 attempts it will get it).
I knew controlling the EZ-B was possible through pandora after reading what DJ wrote saying about imbedding EZ script in to pandora response code (as DJ linked above). I just wondered if someone could suggest a good quality mic, better v/rec software or a better v/rec training process? Apparently the more Windows v/rec is used the better it learns but i've not seen evidence of this just yet, and it's getting a little frustrating.
Cheers guys.
Steve.
Didn't know that... thanks,,,, In the speech control settings you can also adjust sensitivity... Try lowering from .94 (or whatever it is at) to maybe .92 or something like that.... This will help improve the % that ARC's speech control understands you.... If I am using Windows 7, I usually turn off or set windows voice rec to sleep... That's so when I am in ARC only ARC is listening to me and not windows as well....
Thanks Richard. I will have a look at that a bit later and give it a try. But (putting ARC aside for a moment) even when I use the s/rec with something else such as MS Word or notepad, the results I get back are still quite poor.
As I mentioned in my first post, using my iPhone a/rec the results are about 95% accurate so when DJ and his crew release the iOS side of things, that is what I will probably end up using, as I have had great success using iOS speech recognition and a chatbot app on another project I did a while back. I can hold the iPhone at arms length and it is still over 90% accurate, and I have REALLY long arms
But for now it's Windows s/rec I need to use for for my project. What do you guys use on your projects that use speech recognition which you have had success with?
Steve.
i used a headset from medion eraser.it has some funny sound also like darth father.
If your results are poor you need to do one of two things;
Train it more Or Use a better mic
I've been training Jarvis for years now, once a day, three or four times a week, run the training. I believe the more you use the Windows SAPI the better it gets too, I read somewhere that it is always "training" even when just listening, how true that is I don't know though.
I get 80% positive results when using the built in mic on my webcam 3 meters from where I am. I get 95% positive results on a bluetooth headset.
Here are some more tips
It is true though, Windows SAPI is poor when compared to iOS, google or DNS.