This has been brought up before is some threads, but has come up again recently. I promised that I would make a post about this so, here it goes...
There have been some posts where people have asked to be able to use Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) with ARC. To do this, there would have to be a separate application installed which would handle this unless there is a change to ARC itself to allow this to happen. To build an application outside of ARC to allow this would require some programming and a $2000.00 investment in the DNS developer software. To use this new tool, you would have to launch a separate application on your computer to handle speech recognition, which would pass the spoken text back to a variable in ARC. You would have to develop scripts in ARC to handle what to do with this spoken text. Another application would also need to be written that would allow the user to train DNS.
The idea of crowd funding has been brought up a few times in the past, but always in other threads that not everyone might have seen. I would like to suggest crowd funding of this idea again. It would be great if we could crowd fund the purchase of DNS Developer for EZ-Robot to add the ability to choose either DNS or Windows Speech Recognition engine directly within ARC. If that is not possible and there were enough people willing to crowd fund the purchase of DNS Developer, I would be willing to develop the 3rd party apps that could be used to handle what was described above.
This is to see how much interest there is in doing this. Please post if you would be interested in donating to this project or to donating to see if we can get this feature added directly into ARC.
One important thing to remember here. This path would only enable DNS for the applications above. It would not enable it on every application outside of these. In other words, you wouldn't have all of DNS on your machine, but only for use with ARC.
No reasons to stop posting. You asked if anyone knew if it was better or how much better. I answered.
Keep posting all questions and comments. Every one of them is relevant and helpful to all.
WBS00001, you bring up some good questions. points of view and ideas you would like to try. Please don't think your being shut down. Your point of view seems that you would rather spend your money on getting the MS speech recognition to work better then donate money to a cause that wants to try a different platform. There is nothing wrong with that point of view or even you stating it here. Good luck with your efforts and I hope you share what you do to make that happen. Lots of people including myself are interested. We want all functions of ARC to work at top efficiency and be highly accurate. With that said many of us have struggled with MS's Speech Rec used through ARC and have spent lots of money getting the fastest processors, best microphones and optimum placements of equipment only to be flustered when the robot cant even understand a simple "Thank you". Lots of people cant afford all this expensive extra equipment even if they knew what to buy or even understand how to use it. It would be great to be able to offer them and others a better option then Microsoft that is proven to work better even right out of the box. Only cost would be an extra download and some simple learning curve time with help from the community.
Oh, one other thing. As far as placing the microphone on the robot. I'd love to do that also but it's been tried many times by members of this forum. There is just too much noise coming from the robot's motors and other stuff to allow this. The only thing I have been able to think would allow placement of a microphone on the robot is one that uses beam and seeking technology that will seek out and center on where a voice is coming from and cancel out other noise. This technology is just now becoming available in microphones used in conference room settings and is very expensive and large in size. Please let us know if you know of any other equipment that would work for mic placement like this. Perhaps we should start another thread exploring the different types of Speech Recognition equipment and programs that are available and what works better?
@d.cochran Yes, you did answer but you were snarky about it by putting in the phrase "This is not about microphone placement ... " I notice you have removed that part from your post so you must have realized that and thought better about it when I posted a response. But I also see you left in "This topic is really about if you would be willing to help fund the ability to choose which engine you want to use." This is true, still, the combination said to me, "Stick to the topic or shut up." Well, I'm the new guy here and am probably speaking out of turn and making an ass of myself (including in this post), so I'll shut up. So as to not turn this into a silly flame war (yeah, I know, too late), that is my final post in this topic.
You are right, I did remove the part about "This isn't really about microphone placement". I removed it because microphone placement does matter, however not to this particular topic. I think I have defended you on a previous post also. BTW, I removed it right after I hit Reply.
I don't get in flame battles on online forums. It is a waste of time.
The last thing that those who are interested want to see is this topic get derailed. With that said, you have made some very informative posts. I agree that being able to place the microphone in the robot would be a cool thing. I do think that having a mic port on the EZ=B would be cool. I am sure that this was considered and rejected by the EZ-B team. Nobody ever said the words that you are putting in other mouths.
The reason for the comment "This isn't really about microphone placement" was if you used DNS with a microphone in position x and used Windows SR in position x, DNS would blow the doors off of MS SR. It has been proven by many independent reviewers on the internet. I agree that there are other factors that go into good speech recognition and a good microphone and high connection speeds, along with a fast computer are all good recommendations. It makes mediocre good and good great.
The reason that I said that this is about if you want to fund the ability to have the choice of which speech recognition engine you want to use is because that is what it is about. You wont lose the ability to use the windows SR, unless DJ were to decide to do this and just replace the MS SR engine. That would be beyond our control and I don't really see him doing this, but it is possible I guess.
Please don't assume that I or anyone else is saying something that they aren't saying. It has caused more issues in community posts than I can count. I have tried to be helpful to you in the past. I am trying to be helpful to you now by providing insight into the reason that I think that this is a good project. I didn't argue any of your points and I didn't say you were wrong or say anything of a negative nature to you. Those who know me on this forum will attest that I don't do that. I am not saying that thoughts don't go through my head but I really attempt to help anyone that I can here. I am sorry if I came off short and normally spend far more time explaining my statements as I have here. I was on an Cell Phone at the time and hate typing long winded things on a cell phone.
Hi David,
i am still not finish to read the hole post ;-)
Amazing response!
What i said we will find some friends for this idea.
Ans also i am there to be sponsor this idea.
i am back again reading ;-)
Boris
Hello to all DNS friends:
Like i count we are now 6 Supporters
Steve G Dave Schulpius Richard R fxrtst WBS00001 and me Rentaprinta (Boris)
So if everybody of us can give 10% for DNS Code, we need only 4 another DNS friends.
Maybe on Monday DJ will see this post and will be also a big Sponsor, i think we can Start with this project this week.
I trust Dave to do this and also to have success!
So come on not long talking, doing!
Boris
@rentaprinta, I don't think Richard or WSB00001 have said that they will support it. I have said that I will support it at 20% though so we are still at 50% to 60% of the goal.
I do know of a couple of other people who might join in based on past conversations.