Welcome to Synthiam!

The easiest way to program the most powerful robots. Use technologies by leading industry experts. ARC is a free-to-use robot programming software that makes servo automation, computer vision, autonomous navigation, and artificial intelligence easy.

Get Started
United Kingdom
Asked — Edited
Resolved Resolved by CochranRobotics!

Two Questions Regarding Rss Feed Scripts

Hi guys.

I need a little help with an RSS feed script and hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

Question one.

Is there a way to have an RSS feed to be spoken through the EZB4 instead of through the PC's sound card as I haven't seen a "SpeakRSSEZB() script function?

Question 2.

I am looking for a way to insert something similar to a "Sleep()" function in-between each RSS feed in the script below with a 2 second gap between each feed read.

Code:


SpeakRSS("http://feeds.skynews.com/feeds/rss/uk.xml",1)
SpeakRSS("http://feeds.skynews.com/feeds/rss/uk.xml",2)
SpeakRSS("http://feeds.skynews.com/feeds/rss/uk.xml",3)
SpeakRSS("http://feeds.skynews.com/feeds/rss/uk.xml",4)


The "Sleep() script function is not a viable option as the length of the feeds spoken change length from day to day (or hour to hour) so I need something like a "SayWait() but not sure what or where to put the correct function in to my script.

Many thanks.

Steve G. :)


ARC Pro

Upgrade to ARC Pro

Synthiam ARC Pro is a cool new tool that will help unleash your creativity with programming robots in just seconds!

AI Support Bot
Related Content
Synthiam
Based on your post activity, we found some content that may be interesting to you. Explore these other tutorials and community conversations.
United Kingdom
#1  
Well I have spent some time and gone through the entire script command menu, but have not seen a command that will "speak" an RSS feed through the EZ-B v4's speaker, only through my PC's speakers. Is there a way to do this, and if not, can this be an ARC feature request? *confused*

Thanks.
Load More ...
#24  
You would have to modify the exe or build a new one using the code that is in the package. I will make a modification to this when I have time, that will allow you to pass a parameter with the rss feed into it, and it would then generate a file that is more generic. I will be publishing all 6 of these so that anyone can see how to modify the exe until I complete the addition.

The code for reworking the exe is in the notes section of the ez-robot job if you want to try your hand at making the change.
#25  
@David, I figured that much... I saw the code in the notes... Although I understand the code as I use C in the arduino IDE all the time... For the life of me, I wouldn't have a clue in how to compile it into a Window's executable...

Anyway, no worries I know you're busy....

Cheers
Richard
United Kingdom
#26  
@d.cochran.

That's fantastic David. It works like a charm :D. After my failed attemp I must admit it was a little over my head to achieve this (for now at least). I can't thank you enough for supplying this. Once I get Xmas out of the way I will look in to studying C# programming a bit more, but for now I have enough to do learning all what EZ Script can do and how to use it to try and fully get the most out of it before starting to learn a new language.

Anyway I really appreciate your help with this, and thank you once again.:)

Steve G.
#27  
The wife and daughter had a Christmas party to go to which left me with time to think about this and work on it. I decided to go ahead and give the exe the ability to accept and expect command line args. The project is
here

The new exe can be downloaded from

here

You need to put this into a directory on c:\rssfeeds which you will need to create. I didn't take the time to build a setup package as I am sure this will change with time. I have only tested this with one RSS feed which is skynews' rss feed.

Let me know if you run into any issues.

Thanks
David
#28  
I have been toying with this a bit. I have tested with News, Weather and Traffic. It is a bit better and also includes the title blocks in the RSS now. This makes the news and weather a bit easier to understand. I dont have a clue about your streets so I assume it is more clear.

Also, if you get to where you can work with C#, you could replace words with phonetically spelled words as you find them. One that I have replaced is Winds with Wends. it sounds much nicer when the robot is speaking.

Check it out. I will check back tomorrow for any issues you have in using this.
United Kingdom
#29  
Thanks for the update David. I tried the News, Weather, Traffic project but when I try to open rssGetter.exe I get the message "You must pass the RSS feed location". I'm not sure what I need to do here?


User-inserted image
#30  
@Steve That exe is supposed to be called from within the ARC example that d.cochran linked above... It's not a stand alone app... Download the ezb file project and edit it as you wish.....

@d.cochran... the new version works great.... thanks
United Kingdom
#31  
That's what I thought I did do but can't get this example to work like the other one did.


User-inserted image
#32  
Specifically, what is not working for you? See where your mouse is in the above picture? Use the edit box on each line to adjust your code to your specific needs... I have the news adjusted to the US and the weather set to a location close to my home town.... I haven't looked at the traffic yet....

check the path of the rssfeed.txt and see why the program can't find it....
United Kingdom
#33  
It's not finding the 'C:\rssfeeds\rssfeed.txt'. file to read the info according to the debug window. Not sure what I have done wrong here. The first project for the news worked absolutely fine, and still does, but for the life of me cannot figure out why the rssGetter.exe is not working for me. As far as I'm aware i followed the instructions to the letter.
#34  
I think I might know what's going on with steve. Check to make sure the exe isn't already running in the task manager in windows. If it is, kill it. I thought of a possible bug when I was about to fall asleep last night. If you run the exe without passing a parameter, it might not be exiting the app. I will look at it this morning.

If the app is running in task manager, kill it and then try again from the example ARC project.
United Kingdom
#35  
Thanks David and Richard. Well I got the News to work following Richards advice to check the rss feed path and edited it in the project, but no luck with the weather or traffic as there are no text files for them to be read.
#36  
Okay, the exe is working. What are you passing in for the rss feed for weather?

If it's one of the ones from earlier, try removing the ,1 from the end of the url.
United Kingdom
#37  
Right, success :D. I deleted everything and started again from scratch, reinstalled the project and RSS get file and it all works really well now. That is a great little project you made there David and will come in very useful. Thank you once again for what you have supplied and for all your help.

Steve.:)
#38  
@Setve G

I just updated the ARC project with rss feeds that should work for you.

The exe always writes to the same text file (c:\rssfeeds\rssfeed.txt). This allows you to only have to change the line in the script that looks like

Code:

Exec("c:\rssfeeds\rssGetter.exe", "http://www.rssweather.com/wx/gb/london/rss.php")


You can copy the script text and paste it into a new script and then change this line. You could make this a parameter and then set it, and call a single script that would read in this variable to read whatever rss feed you wanted also.

I will also setup a couple of scripts that will do this in the ARC project.
United Kingdom
#39  
Brilliant. Thanks again. One question, what does the init script in the rss script manager actually do, as it seems to work with out starting the init script?
#40  
It is setup in the connection to execute. Once you connect to the EZ-B it sets up a couple of variables that are going to be used for the RSS feed. It isnt necessary but I like to see all of my variables at the start of the project.

I have a new version here for you. You will see a few new scripts.

ReadNews, ReadWeather and ReadTraffic, along with readRSS. The readRSS script is what calls the exe and does the actual work of reading the RSS feed.

The other 3 are what you would modify to call the readRSS script. They set some variables so that readRSS can work.

This is the ReadTraffic script.

Code:


$feedDescription = "Traffic"
$rssLocation = "http://www.fta.co.uk/feeds/traffic_incidents.xml";
ControlCommand("Script Manager", ScriptStart, "readRSS")


This just makes it a bit easier to use and a bit easier to add new feeds as you need to. Download the EZ-B project again to see how its all used.

Your very welcome. I love adding features to ARC that haven't been put in yet. I am sure that DJ and team will put this in at some point, but this helps and can allow them to focus on something else for a bit.
#41  
Good Afternoon,

I am looking for some assistance with this program. I cannot find the latest .exe file to use?
#42  
Rss reader was added into the ez-ai package along with all of the other projects that I had going on. By adding it into ez-ai, I was able to allow the user to also do some phonetic changes to text, and clean up the encoding characters that were a part of the rss feeds. Ez-ai is being rewritten (and will also include this feature). Because it is being completely rewritten in a different language with a different database backend, I won't be able to help much without slowing down the production of the new ez-ai. My development resources are tied up with this project right now trying to meet a very tight deadline.
Switzerland
#43  
hello,

any news ?
or where can I get the old "rssGetter.exe" ?
Login to post a comment