Hi guys.
I need some advice with the Pandorabots control.
My problem is when I try to "talk" to my bot using the text input field (still training speech rec at the moment which is why I'm using the text input), the first one or two inputs are recognised and my bot responds as it should very quickly. But when I try to further speak to my bot some more using text, ARC seems to freeze for a while (cursor is non responsive & previous input is still displayed in text input field even when I type in something new). This will last for about 20 to 40 seconds then EZ builder unfreezes and starts working until the next text input where it will fteeze again.
I have tried restarting ARC and my EZ-B4 but the same thing happens. I thought it my be something to do with the Pandorabots server as I know it can be a bit flakey at the best of times, but when I opened my Pandorabot via my desktop, it responded almost instantly, and besides, this wouldn't cause a non responsive cursor.
Any help or knowledge to why this is happening? *confused*
Thanks in advance.
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I have a fast 100 m/bs Internet connection and using my MacBook Pro quad core i7, 8megs ram system.
Dave does bring up a very good point with antivirus. I've had nothing but trouble with Avast! Antivirus update and everything EZB. But in client mode I dont want to shut down antivirus.
Thanks for your reply Dave. The laptop I'm using is no slouch. It is coming up to 2 years old, has an i5 processor, 6 gig ram, 320 gig HDD running Windows 7 64 bit, drivers are up to date, and do not have many applications installed on it. And like @fxrtst, I also have a solid 100 m/bs connection speed. Every other control I have set up or tried in ARC work really well and never causes the freezing issue. It's just with the Pandorabot control.
Other times I have used it (up until this week) it has been fine for the most part, although there has been times it has frozen, so I don't think my antivirus (AVG) is an issue either, and I don't see how a network connection would cause a program, or part of a program to become temporarily unresponsive.
@fxrtst.
Yeah I read one of your posts about your Avast issues a little while ago. That's a real drag. I use AVG, so far without any issues (touch wood
Edit: I re read the post you are having issues with just typing it in. Hmmm.
About a week away from being done with the project I sent you a few months back. Will post here first in a few weeks.
Thanks Rich,
Will
it does infact move, but under the ARC desktop so nothing on ARC can be selected until it unfreezes and the cursor appears back on top of the desktop.
I noticed this when I opened my task manager and found that the cursor was visible and active on my system task bar and on the task manager. Move the cursor over to ARC and it would now appear on top of the desktop, but still unable to select any of the tabs or controls.
This is becoming a real pain now as anyone trying have a conversation with my bot gets frustrated with waiting for almost a minute for a response, and is almost pointless using. Any help or suggestions with this? *stress*
Another odd issue is the actual speech recognition. Most of my commands issued in "Speech Recognition" are understood, ie. this function works very well. When using the "Pandorabot" it translates my Aussie English into the strangest, sometimes very amusing phrases! The same results occur using different PCs and a variety of microphones. Maybe I need to speak "Canadian"?
Also I'm still not having any luck changing the voice type using the "Speech Synthesis Settings" even though the default voice is changed under the windows settings
Based on previous use of Pandora using other software, and including the time spent setting up the custom bot, Pandora's website did have more than average downtime. Understand that Pandora is a free service to you but those who run the service don't get the resources for free. Their resources are not going to be of the same quality of the likes of Spacebook and Twister etc. and will have downtime.
As for the misheard phrases, this is likely to be due to Windows SAPI and not being trained enough. Also, unless you have a professional quality mic and perfect pronunciation you may run into problems. This is an issue with Windows SAPI. It's an issue I have run in to even after 3 years of daily training. It comes from the input being dictation rather than from a specified list. This is why my other software uses payload files which vary and load on the fly depending on the first part of the phrase. For instance, if I say "Play Movie Planet Of The Apes" it picks up "Play Movie", loads the payload which has only my movie library titles in it and uses that for the last part as a fixed phrase list.
It is extremely difficult to have a conversation with voice recognition which relies on Windows SAPI.
The speech synthesis is also an odd one. It does seem like some voices just refuse to work with ARC. @fxrtst also has this problem (I couldn't get it to work either FYI). I'm not sure if DJ has added it to the list of things to look in to or not. Having said that, there are a lot of voices which do work fine. As far as I know this issue of the voices not working with any combination of settings is pretty new. Details of the voices (inc. links), examples of options tried etc. etc. may help solve it.
Back to the Pandorabot control, after a few days of starting this thread I am still having issues with ARC freezing for periods of time after a text input to the pandora control. One thing I tried was once when it froze, was to quickly open up my browser and launch my Pandorabot directly and try it. It worked and I could send an input and receive a response almost instantly, which leads me to think that the problem in not with the 3rd party application suffering down time, but lays with the pandora control itself.
So that being said, I have a question some will hopefully be able to help me with. Is there a way that I can have my Pandorabot (using my browser) actually speak its responses automatically when they appear on the screen using speech synthesis and the Cepstral voice I purchased, without having to use the V-host voices and avatars they offer (which quite frankly I don't like)?
I don't have programming experience and hoping for a software option or something I could set up myself relatively easily. I would love if there was a way to do this as having this ability in ARC was something I was initially excited about until I (and others) started facing this freezing issue. This way, I can run a small Pandorabot window next to ARC on my PC, and have dynamic conversations with my bot while ARC deals with my bots operations, at least until the pandora control issue is resolved.
If anyone can help me with this it REALLY would be appreciated, as I am having a lot of fun with the ARC platform at the moment except with this issue which is the one and only thing letting me down. *stress* *stress*
In order to mark this thread as resolved I just wanted to ask, was there a Pandorabot control issue that has now been resolved that anyone is aware of? There was no mention of anything in the release notes or Windows updates. *confused*
I would put money on the freezing issues being to do with Pandora not ARC, as previously mentioned.