voxpup - a voice controlled puppy

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
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greengeek
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#21 Post by greengeek »

ndujoe1 wrote: When I save the personal file which is placed on the sda1 drive as my other puppy flavors, VOX Puppy does not see it on boot up. Is it because my partition in sda1 is ext4,
I haven't used ext4 so I can't say for sure if Voxpup handles it ok - although I would expect it to be fine as I based Voxpup on Pemasu's Upup Raring 3992 which is pretty recent.

I do recall setting the iso to boot as pfix=ram as a default so that it would not grab or damage savefiles that an inexperienced user might not be aware of. I didn't think this would have any effect after the creation of a savefile but I guess this could be the most likely cause of your symptom. I think it may be necessary to add a kernel parameter in the boot stanza. I will have to research this a bit more. (I may need to get rid of the pfix=ram change that I put in the iso).

Sorry about this - I have been focusing on trying to make it run perfectly as a LiveCD and should have done more testing with a savefile. I will report back as soon as I have some suggestions...

I'm glad you are finding the voice recognition working ok though - that is good news.

ndujoe1
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#22 Post by ndujoe1 »

Now I understand, the source of the mixup. It makes sense what you were trying to prevent. Let me know when you have corrected this behaviour.

The Voice function is awesome.

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greengeek
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#23 Post by greengeek »

The method I used to force the CD to ignore savefiles was to modify the isolinux.cfg file with the additon of pfix=ram. However, as far as I can tell this should only ever affect the initial boot from CD, and have no effect at all on subsequent boots from HDD.

I have just tested Voxpup with a .2fs savefile, and also with a .4fs savefile without any problems. Obviously the 4fs format of the savefile is not quite the same thing as having the entire partition in ext4 but that is all I can test right at the moment - at least it suggests that voxpup is ext4 aware.

My boot stanza is as follows:

Code: Select all

title Voxpup001 frugal in sda1 dir Voxpup001
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /Voxpup001/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=Voxpup001 pfix=fsck
initrd /Voxpup001/initrd.gz
Is your boot stanza something similar?

ndujoe1
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#24 Post by ndujoe1 »

Sorry, where do I locate the boot stanza.

Also the partition is sda1 partition is ext4 would that make any difference?

Johnny Cache
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#25 Post by Johnny Cache »

Kill, Puppy! KILL!
Well my daddy left home when I was three, didn't leave much for mom and me
Just 512 MB of RAM, and an empty bottle of booze

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greengeek
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#26 Post by greengeek »

ndujoe1 wrote:Sorry, where do I locate the boot stanza.
What I refer to as the boot stanza is just one of the 'paragraphs' inside the menu.lst file - they define the title, location and kernel parameters to allow each pup to boot successfully once it is chosen from the boot screen/menu. (I guess you must have a number of such stanzas in your menu.lst file as you have multiple frugals I think?)
Also the partition is sda1 partition is ext4 would that make any difference?
Yes it could make a difference but I would not have expected that to be the reason for puppy to be unable to find the savefile. I have never used the ext4 format so I would only be guessing about the effects it might have. If I can dig out an empty HDD I will format it as ext4 and see if I get the same symptom.

As a matter of interest - what size did you make your savefile?

ndujoe1
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#27 Post by ndujoe1 »

I left it at 512 mb that standard configuration as I was just starting to work with this flavor of Puppylinux.

ndujoe1
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#28 Post by ndujoe1 »

I boot and operate Live CD, I don't install frugal. I saw the frugal statement in your boot statement, does this have any effect on the boot behavriour?

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greengeek
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#29 Post by greengeek »

ndujoe1 wrote:I boot and operate Live CD, I don't install frugal. I saw the frugal statement in your boot statement, does this have any effect on the boot behavriour?
Yes it does - If you INSTALL puppy (whether full or frugal does not matter...) then you will have a "bootloader" installed on a partition of your hard disk or usb stick (and this will contain a menu.lst file which contains 'stanzas' which define the name, location etc of each puppy). Now I realise that your puppies are not "installed". (sorry - took me a while to grasp that possibility)

So, just to clarify - is this the way you run your puppies:
1) First boot is from CD
2) At shutdown you create a savefile
3) Second boot and all subsequent boots are also from CD, and you need the boot process to find the previous savefile.

I did not think that using the CD in this way was common practice - I have only used it once in a machine which had no HDD. It only had a usb stick for storage - and that could not be used as a boot device so I was using the CD as a bootstrap to a savefile on usb.

What this means is that I need to release an iso that does not have the 'pfix=ram' parameter set.

I am close to finishing voxpup2 (more sensitive mouse control via voice command and also some extra vocabulary) but I might just decide to quickly modify 001 in the meantime. I will post back as soon as I have a new link

- This doesn't mean you will have to change your savefile in any way. It just means that you will need to burn a new CD which is capable of looking for the savefile - in all other respects it will be identical.
.
Last edited by greengeek on Sat 08 Mar 2014, 21:55, edited 1 time in total.

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#30 Post by greengeek »

Alternative version of voxpup001 (mofified to look for savefiles at boot time) is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/w4cjo ... efiles.iso
md5=1dbda82b6a6d2c0531abe5b703b52083

I will update my first post to reflect this.

I think in future I will revert to standard puppy behaviour and make voxpup002 etc look for savefiles as the default, but I will also offer a separate iso modified to 'ignore savefiles' (which is my preferred behaviour when booting from CDs)

ndujoe1
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#31 Post by ndujoe1 »

Thanks for the fast service. I apologize for being old fashioned I guess in how I use PuppyLinux. In my scheme of things, the hard drive doesn't have any boot sector on it. I boot from CD with the Personal Storage Files. Use SFS files with regularity, I have set up a partition for my common data, and setup a Linux swap partition that all puppy flavors that I try partake.

Just a lazy, if it ain't broke don't fix it way of using Puppylinux I guess.

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#32 Post by greengeek »

ndujoe1 wrote:Just a lazy, if it ain't broke don't fix it way of using Puppylinux I guess.
Nothing wrong with that methodology. That's one of the great things about Puppy - set it up exactly how you want to use it. Thanks for trying voxpup - all feedback is very helpful.

ndujoe1
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Restarting Vox Puppy

#33 Post by ndujoe1 »

My diction is not quite correct. I would like for the PocketSphinx to start again and learn my voice cadence.

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greengeek
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Re: Restarting Vox Puppy

#34 Post by greengeek »

ndujoe1 wrote:My diction is not quite correct. I would like for the PocketSphinx to start again and learn my voice cadence.
Actually - pocketsphinx does not do ANY learning of the cadence at all. In fact the opposite is true - it is up to the user to learn how pocketsphinx pronounces it's words. In some ways this is a strength (because other voice recognition software forces you to spend a ridiculous amount of time 'training' the software, which pocketsphinx does not) but in other ways is a weakness - the pocketsphinx programme has been written to perform well with the American English accent and extension to other languages and accents is still under way by the developers.

(Note that the first step in voxpup's usage of pocketsphinx is to get the user to speak "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" - this does not allow pocketsphinx to 'learn' the users voice - rather it allows the decoding software to lock in on sound quality from the microphone - volume & tone etc)

So - the short answer is that if the user is having recognition problems they can improve those issues by sometimes trying to emulate a slight American accent (slight rolling of the R's etc), or by modifying the word vocabulary to get around specific difficulties (this vocab modification is a procedure that needs more indepth description - it is not just a case of modifying text in a file)

Are you able to post specific words or phrases that are giving trouble?

If you open the command list and read each line - do most of them seem to work for you, or are specific ones troublesome?

I found some words are spoken quite differently in American English than in my New Zealand English - so I had to modify my speech.
Examples:
"kilo" seems to be pronounced as "killo" in the US, whereas I say "keelo"
"Lima" seems to be pronounced as "Lyma" in the US, whereas I say "Leema"

For this reason I added some "alternative" words to help get around such problems. (If using the NATO phonetic alphabet to spell out a sentence, I use "London" instead of 'Lima' and I use 'kitten' instead of 'kilo')

How would you describe your accent?

There can be other issues that affect word decoding - usually hardware issues such as power supply hum etc. And there is one other important point to make here - I have set up pocketsphinx to decode what I call 'junk words' if your sentence does not exactly match one of the phrases in the command list.
Example: - if someone rattles the cups in the pantry while you are in the middle of saying "voice-control-start-browser' you may see a decoded phrase such as 'boys cop stump dog blouse wart"

This is not a problem with pocketsphinx failing to understand your accent - simply a problem with purity of sound caught by the microphone.

Any examples you can highlight may allow me to make further suggestions, or help me to tailor the vocabulary / command list to overcome the problems.

EDIT : The best tips I can give for good speech recognition are - speak in a completely normal voice, at normal volume, and normal pace - don't try to separate words artificially, just say the phrase as if you were speaking to a friend in a normal conversation.
Also - after you speak the phrase you must be silent - pocketsphinx needs a moment of silence to 'realise' you have stopped talking and are waiting for it to decode what you just said. Try to avoid loud exhaling or sniffing as it tries to include those in your decoded sentence and of course those sounds do not appear in the vocab list :-)
.

ndujoe1
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#35 Post by ndujoe1 »

Well that is an interesting lingual approach for the computer. I will try to learn how it speaks the words.

I have a Southern - Midwestern accent according to a google test.

I say keelo, and Leema.

I may be trying to be too artificial in my pronunciation. I will attempt to talk in a more normal cadence. Since I was young always have had difficulty enunciating words properly. Using this interface may in fact help me improve my diction some you never know. I was able to open up the word processor and paint for example. And close the file manager window thus far.

hamoudoudou

That is a nice project, Greengeek.. Really.

#36 Post by hamoudoudou »

That is a nice project, Greengeek.. Really.

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